Led by Carol

Mohor, Susan Miller, Phyllis Huff and Denise Thompson, the project used

such tools as video, computer scanners and digital photography, along

with Internet research. The collaborative effort between fifth grade students

and the community taught them about their area's Civil War events and

the people who once lived, fought and died in that conflict.

The students

ultimately produced a virtual field trip that was uploaded to a school

Web site they created and maintained as online historians, which was available

to all River's Edge Elementary students.

From historical

journeys like the children from Fayetteville, to digital archeological

digs happening in Minnesota, innovative teachers in more than 16,000 U.S.

schools are creatively using their free classroom cable services to captivate

young learners. The AT&T Broadband Emerging Technology Awards add

to this free classroom connection by bestowing cash grants and digital

video cameras to the teachers with the most innovative projects using

cable-television programming or Internet resources in the classroom.

"We are

consistently amazed by the creative lesson planning that we see in teachers'

award entries every year," said Jennifer Snyder, director of Education

Outreach for AT&T Broadband. "The program, 'In Our Own Backyard,'

really brought to contemporary life an experience that greatly impacted

the historical development of the community."

Last year,

54 teams of teachers and school administrators won AT&T Broadband

Emerging Technology Awards. After receiving their cash grant and digital

cameras, each class implemented their lesson plan.

At the end

of the school year, these winners, including the team from River's Edge,

were able to submit the results for a second round of awards. River's

Edge tied for second place, coming in behind a school from New Hampshire.

The other Award winners also used innovation and technology, though they

had widely varying themes:

The Grand Prize

Winner was the Kindergarten and Second Grade Dinosaur Cooperative Unit

from Main Street School in Exeter, N.H. Teachers Janet Boggess, Nina Baillargeon

and Jane McCaffery led the program in which second grade students worked

cooperatively with kindergarteners to learn about dinosaurs.

Using educational

programming from NETWORKS and informational Internet sites about dinosaurs,

second graders videotaped presentations and dinosaur models to share with

the younger children. The kindergartners then prepared watercolor pictures

and dinosaur poems and relayed their learnings