Vol. 1, No. 1 | Spring 2002
SITE NOTES
The Magical Web Fifth Dimension
A new UC Links site, the Magical Web Fifth Dimension at Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School in Sacramento, opened in February, 2002. The site brings together fourteen CSU Sacramento undergraduates and twenty-four first- through fifth-graders to explore educational technology after school. Children work in collaborative groups on a variety of computer and non-computer activities. Program participants work in a school lab equipped with twenty-six new computers; they also play board games, read, and write in a fourth grade classroom or in the school courtyard.
Like other Fifth Dimension programs around the world, the Magical Web includes a "mythical entity" who writes to participants and encourages their learning. Because the majority of the school's children are African American, UC Links collaborators chose a trickster and sage from African folklore, Anansi the Spider, as the program's mythical entity.
After a rough start, the program is running smoothly. Start-up challenges included recruiting undergraduates, developing materials to guide after-school activities, and informing elementary school students about the new program. Once they learned about the after-school activities, over a hundred students applied for just twenty-four openings.
Janet Wallace is the Program Manager and Professor Lynda Stone (Education, CSU Sacramento) and Daniel Roy (School-University Partnerships, UC Davis) are co-principal investigators for the Father Keith B. Kenny UC Links program.
La Clase Mágica: New Communities of Learners
HumaniFest Online: Linking Humanities Out There and the Whittier Fifth Dimension
Site Notes
The Magical Web Fifth Dimension
Digital Storytelling in West Oakland
Brianna Guillermo-Newton, Miranda Cheang, and Robyn Rachac
Links for Kids
How to Make Links: Social Capital and Community-University Collaboration
Growing up with UC Links: An Interview with Jesse Paulos