Iwatsuki Nishihara Junior High School
	The school Iwatsuki Nishihara Junior High School is a medium-sized school set in pleasant surroundings in Saitama, North of Tokyo. Their partner school is Northfleet school for girls in Kent.
	BT GSN English teachers at Nishihara School have been involved with the British Telecom global schools network project. The project involves twelve schools in six different countries that are linked through a password-protected web site. Classes in each of the schools are assigned tasks and they exchange information through e-mail and bulletin boards on the site. Pupils at Nishihara School have been working on a project on music.
	During the class that has been especially set aside for work on the BT GSN project pupils are each sat in front a multimedia computer. The computers are set up so that a teacher can control the display on every screen in the class. This allows teachers to get everyone's attention and to demonstrate how to perform different operations on the site. The computer room also has a loudspeaker system to ensure that all the students can follow what the teacher is saying.
	In the class pictured here students were writing to key pals they had chosen themselves through the BT GSN site. Sioned prepared a worksheet to help them write longer and more interesting e-mails. Pupils are able to develop basic computer skills such as typing and file management during the lesson. The teachers involved with the project reported that having contact with children from other countries and the opportunity to use computers in their English lessons was very motivating for their pupils
	e-link Toru, Miho and Sioned, the English teachers at Nishihara, are enthusiastic and hard working and they have put a lot of time into the BT GSN project and e-link. Sioned even visited Northfleet School while she was in the UK. She shot a video to show the pupils and other teachers back in Japan
	Making use of opportunities Although the number of letters exchanged between pupils in the two schools has not been particularly great, the teachers at Nishihara have been ingenious in exploiting the educational opportunities provided by e-link. Introductory letters received from pupils at Northfleet School were prominently displayed on the school notice board together with photos of the students. This attracted the attention of many children in the school, not just those in the English club. Sioned also displayed bullet-point summaries of the letters. These summaries were then used as the basis for speaking practice activities in oral communication classes.
	The children at Iwatsuki also helped with preparations for Northfleet School's Japan day. They were sent questions on the physical geography of Japan, food, clothes, the weather and festivals. The children replied with e-mail messages, photos, tables and graphs. This provided a focus for activities in Nishihara's English club The tasks set by the British school provided Sioned with an excellent context for teaching different language points in her classes. For example, if the target structure of the lesson was questions with 'How' she was able to point to questions asked by the British students such as 'How many people are their in your class?' or 'How much time do you spend doing homework?'
	Issues raised The exchanges between the schools have already raised a number of interesting and unexpected issues. When children in the Japanese school had difficultly understanding the letters they received it was usually due to cultural differences rather than problems with vocabulary or grammar. The letters were full of references to TV programmes and pop stars that they had never heard of. Pupils found that learning about popular culture in another country can be just as important as studying from a grammar book when you are learning a language. Even the teachers at Nishihara occasionally had difficulty understanding parts of the letters!