Sunday, February 24, 1991 - North Shore News - 37

Operation Telstar is making fast friends

AT A time when the world’s attention is focused on the
bitter international conflict in the Persian Gulf, a small
group of North Vancouver students is forging friendships

with students in foreign lands.

While Operation Desert Shield
is well under way in fraq, Opera-
tion Telstar is in full swing in
Tony Hassard’s Grade 4 class at
the Dorothy Lynas Elementary
School.

Hassard says the basic aim of
the project is to develop inter-
global communication access by
teachers and students using dif-
ferent means of technology. the
ultimate of which is the use of
satellite technology to communi-
cate with students and teachers in
different countries.

The project has generated a lot
of interest, and it has received the
full support of the North Van-
couver District 44 Schvol Board
(NVSB) and the federal govern-
ment.

But if Hassard had not been
listening to a radio news broadcast
one day in 1978, the Telstar pro-
ject may never have come about.

“I got the idea from listening to
the radio in 1978. There was a
news item on that basically said
that we (Canada) have satellites
that are not being used,’’ says
Hassard.

In 1987, Hassard proposed the
idea of communicating with peo-
ple in the Antarctic, but that pro-
ject never got off the ground. In
1990, while teaching at Sherwood
Park Elementary School, Hassard
managed to set the wheels in mo-
tion for project Telstar after
receiving support from his prin-
cipal, the NVSB, the Canadian
Teachers’ Federation and the fed-
eral government's twinning pro-
gram.

Later that year, West Africa
was selected to take part in the
program using the cooperation of
teacher Francis Samou and _ his
students at a school in Sierra
Leone, Freetown, West Africa.

While West Africa is still the

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1991

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main foreign country involved in
the program, some of Hassard’s
students asked if they could pick
their own couniries and the pro-
ject now includes such nations as
Turkey, Australia, the Philippines,
Poland, Holland, the Soviet
Union, Hong Kong,
Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway,
France, Scotland, England, Japan
and even Canada.

Hassard’s students, who are ag-
ed nine and 10, then looked up
the telephone numbers of the dif-
ferent consulates; wrote speeches
to deliver over the phone; re-
corded information regarding
schools they could write to in the
countries they picked; wrote in
long hand rough drafts; typed
them on computers and saved
them for print-out when com-
Mmunciations were established with
schools; wrote reports on the
countries they picked; and, final-
ly, prepared tape recordings.

The types of technology stu-
dents are using in their com-
munication with foreign pen pals
include audio cassettes, video re-
corders and fax machines.

The ultimate goal is to work up
to the Jevel of using satellite tech-
nology to communicate, and
Hassard hopes his students and
Samou’s students in West Africa
will be able to talk to each other
via satellite on Oct. 15, 1995.

“It is my intention, with the
help of my school district, my
class, the provincial and federal
governments, to promote better
understanding between children of
the world and, yes, adults too,”’
Hassard says in his covering let-
ters sent to the different schools.

GRADE 4 Dorothy Lynas
Elementary Schoo! students
have embarked on a project
that will see them use state-
of-the-art technology, including
satellites, to communicate with
foreign pen pais in other
schools around the worid.

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