Marjorie Duby, a fifth grade teacher at Joseph Lee School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, is in the third year of an Internet project she authored that chronicles the travels of the "Looney Lobsters." In its first year, the project took the form of Looney Lobsters on the Loose. Two soft, plush lobsters left Boston and traveled around the United States, accepting the gracious hospitality of numerous elementary school classrooms along the way. After one week in a school, they were mailed to another classroom, eventually returning to Boston. The stuffed crustaceans received cuddles, pets, and tours of local sites, and they learned of customs and culture in each region they visited. Students kept in touch with them by means of electronic mail and their Looney Lobster website.

The Looneys loved traveling so much that they wanted to do it again, this time with a focus on learning about regional literature in the United States. So, in 1998, Ms. Duby launched the Looney Lobsters Love Regional Literature project. Again in 1999 the Looneys, now numbering four plush lobsters, are traveling the United States in a project titled Where in the USA Is Looney Lobster Reading?. At the end of this school year, the Looney's will have visited 36 states and traveled 49,593 miles -- or almost 80,000 kilometers!

To solicit participation from elementary schools across the United States, Ms. Duby announces the project on various listservs, asking if any classroom teachers would be willing to host a traveling Looney for one school week. She asks that the teachers and students be willing to read aloud picture books based on local lore -- folktales, stories that talk about a custom or local event, or tales that depict some aspect of regionally identifiable daily life -- while a Looney is visiting. Hosting classrooms also agree to complete the following tasks before their lobster arrives:

• Each class prepares and mails a 2- to 3-minute videoecording in which they introduce their town, city, or state through artifacts, pictures, and primary source documents.
• Students e-mail to Ms. Duby's class the titles of two or three picture books that feature a local or state setting or event, or are written by a local author or illustrator.
• Each class mails a photo or e-mails a digital picture of themselves for a participant booklet.
• Participating students complete and e-mail the "mystery informational clue" template so others can try to determine where in the USA the Looney Lobster is reading. The template includes areas to input latitude, a nearby river, a local tourist attraction, an area historical event, a notable person, a state tourist attraction, and the state bird. (Examples can be found at http://lee.boston.k12.ma.us/d4/looney99/where99/whereis1.asp and http://lee.boston.k12.ma.us/d4/looney99/where99/whereis2.asp.)

Ms. Duby then sends to the hosting class a small box, which holds the following:

• a pouch containing one of the Looney Lobsters;
• a photo album showing her students on their travels around Boston and in their class;
• the Looney Lobster's itinerary;
• a single-use camera for optimal multimedia sharing; and
• a pouch of self-addressed stamped envelopes.

For the 1999 project, Ms. Duby has added the following to the contents of the box:

• a blank videotape;
• a blank audiotape;
• computer diskettes; and
• a few tourist-type souvenirs from Boston.

When the package arrives, each participating class notifies Ms. Duby's class by e-mail (and they also send a message when the Looney is mailed to the next site). The project then continues, with the hosting class reading aloud the regional literature titles it recommended and e-mailing messages describing the Looney's experiences to the looney99 participant mailing list. Those on the mailing list are welcome to send student-generated questions to the hosting class, and discussions related to the regional literature often ensue. If possible, hosting classes are also encouraged to create school-based webpages of their Looney's local travels and experiences, linking them to the main "Where in the USA Is Looney Lobster Reading?" webpage maintained by Ms. Duby's students.

A number of other media are also involved in documenting the project. With the single-use camera, each hosting class is to take a close-up picture of a car license plate from their state and another picture of their choice that somehow depicts their part of the United States. They are asked to view and, if possible, add their own creations to the video- and audiotape in their Looney's box. They are also invited to share on diskette a multimedia computer-related project (a KidPix slideshow or HyperStudio stack) about their region, class, or the Looney's visit.

At the end of their designated week, each hosting class writes a group response describing what they liked about the project and what could make it better. They then use one of the self-addressed, stamped envelopes to return their response to Ms. Duby's class, enclosing a copy of a recent front page from their local newspaper. Hosts are also encouraged to send small artifacts for inclusion in the regioinal museum exhibit Ms. Duby's class is preparing. They then rewrap their Looney, affix the prewritten mailing label, and send the package to its next destination by priority mail. (There is always at least one Looney Lobster at a site while others are enroute to their next locations.)

Before and during the project, students in Ms. Duby's class have a number of responsibilities. As the videos come in from cooperating classes, Ms. Duby's students must transfer all segments to one tape, and return a copy of the composite to each participant in a self-addressed, stamped mailing pouch they provide. They compile data from the mystery informational clues into a mix-and-match online puzzle; create a regional literature book list; create and mail a project participant photo booklet; create and monitor the lobsters' itinerary; create the looney99 mailing list; and create and maintain webpages related to the project.

This list of this year's project participants can be viewed at http://lee.boston.k12.ma.us/d4/looney99/looney99sched.asp. During the week of 25 January 1999, a Looney named Luigi visited a reading methods course at the University of Central Arkansas. This was the first time any of the Looneys had visited a university, and the preservice teachers were happy to welcome him. They involved Looney Luigi in several activities that familiarized him with college life and with Arkansas. He attended classes and learned about how to be a good elementary teacher (he even took notes!), he stayed in the dorm, and he ate lunch with the students. He spent a day visiting a fifth grade classroom at Clinton Elementary Magnet School in Little Rock and a Reading Recovery classroom at Ida Burns Elementary in Conway. He visited the historic city of Hot Springs and listened to read-alouds of regional literature and books by Arkansas authors. All of these activities were described in a message to the Looney Lobster mailing list that included URLs of websites giving information about the state. The preservice teachers sent pictures, artifacts, and a video back to the fifth graders in Boston; they also sent Looney Luigi's honorary diploma to Ms. Duby's students. The week-long visit allowed the preservice teachers to experience first-hand the excitement and enthusiasm their future students might feel if an Internet project were integrated into their classrooms and curricula.

Students in Ms. Duby's class and the students in the host schools benefit greatly by participating in this project. They are guided to use the Internet as an information resource. This use of technology broadens and enriches existing curricula. Ms Duby has done an outstanding job of constructing this project to support learning in the classroom. For further information that might prove valuable for those considering a travel buddy project, visit http://lee.boston.k12.ma.us/d4/d4.html.

Johnson (e-mail denisej@mail.uca.edu), a former elementary classroom teacher and middle school reading specialist, is an assistant professor of reading education and volunteers as a Reading Recovery teacher. Her research interests focus on the integration of technology into preservice and inservice education courses and elementary classrooms.

Go to index of project descriptions posted from May 1997 to June 2000