Christmas Around the World Electronic Bulletin Board

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Dec 4, 2001

Electronic bulletin boards are great for students to practice research and writing, plus they can be used as study guides for exams and to show student work to parents. Electronic bulletin boards are graphical web sites. I like to use FrontPage2000 because it is an easy-to-use HTML/Web Site editor and because many schools and homes have access to it. While FrontPage2000 is a good editor, any editor that allows students to visually layout their pages will work.

As a group, you and your students should devise a list of questions that they need to look for when they are doing their research. I like to brainstorm on a whiteboard or chalkboard so that it is easy to revise our list. Once you and your class have decided on questions, you should hand out recipe cards so that your students can write down one question per recipe card. When they are researching, they can write their answers on the cards. I usually hear a lot of groans from students when they have to write their research down rather than use the computer. But, what I have found is that writing down summaries on recipe cards cuts down on copying and pasting paragraphs of text.

Below are several resources for finding information about how Christmas is celebrated around the world. I like to work this lesson in with several lessons about different holiday traditions that are celebrated around the world.

Christmas Around the World http://members.fortunecity.com/vlbrennan/

Christmas Around the World http://christmas.com/worldview/

Christmas Around the World http://www.soon.org.uk/country/christmas...

Holidays from Around the World http://www.zuzu.org/daze.html

Merry Christmas in Many Languages http://www.travlang.com/languages/christ...

Official Site of Santa Clause http://www.saintnick.org/

Italy http://www.fort-mill.k12.sc.us/fmms/Comp...

Netherlands http://www.cvc.org/christmas/nland.htm

France & Canada http://www.culture.fr/culture/noel/angl/...

Ukraine http://209.82.14.226/culture/traditions/...

Iceland http://www.simnet.is/gardarj/

Egypt http://www.cvc.org/christmas/egypt.htm

Phillipines http://sim.soe.umich.edu/parol/

Greenland http://www.santa.gl/asp/index.asp?langua...

Finland http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/...

Mexico http://www.demon.co.uk/mexuk/dic95/navid...

Sweden http://www.uk.umea.se/grubbero/comenius/...

Country Factbook http://www.yahooligans.com/reference/fac...

After students have collected their data, I ask them to write their research paper. For writing assignments, I like to vary whether my students compose online or by hand. I try to allow them to do both throughout the semester. I discourage the use of spell checkers, grammar checkers and the online thesaurus when we compose online. I have found many students (and adults!) who agree to whatever the computer suggests, without actually proofreading their work.

Once students have written and proofread their research paper, it is time to begin the layout and publishing process. Usually my students have not worked with FrontPage2000 before this lesson, so we create the pages together.

Once we are in the lab, I have my students open the FrontPage program. I have them create a new page by clicking on the “New Document” icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen. As a group, we then change the background color of the page by going to FORMAT and choosing BACKGROUND. I have my students create a custom background color that would reflect the information that they have learned about how their country celebrates Christmas. I then have them copy their research papers into this page. (NOTE: If you had your students save their documents in Microsoft Word, you will need to have them copy the document into Microsoft Notepad and from Notepad into FrontPage. Otherwise, you will have several odd formatting errors.) I then have the students format their text so that they have headings for each of their sections.

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