Manual Arts High School, A Pacific Bell Education First Demonstration Site (High School Level: Videoconferencing, Internet Research, E-Mail, Collaboration, School to Work, and Visual Arts) Making the Transition John Santos has been working diligently with students to help them move from the classroom into the boardroom, and he's making a difference. One of his current ideas is to work with his students to develop web pages for the graphic design program with free art at the bottom designed by his students. New art will be posted every month to keep people coming to the site, which John hopes will become a standing forum for the students to expose their talents to possible job opportunities. The students will hone their web publishing skills working with John and Tom March, one of the SDSU Education First Fellows, to create web pages for Sacramento's PBS station as part of Tom's Nonprofit Prophets. John tries to give his students as much real experience as possible, believing that when the work is genuine his students will give their best. Nonprofit Prophets is a web-based community action project in which student teams identify social or environmental problems in their own or the global community and create a web site with an actual nonprofit organization. "Everything I do, I try to show the students how they can profit from it; profit from their education and their skills." John Santos Discussing Specifications... To gain web publishing skills and to develop the content of their nonprofit web site, John's students have been videoconferencing with Tom March and with the staff members at the PBS station, collaboratively creating the design for the new pages. Talking to Adults John feels one of the benefits his students receive from these videoconferences is that "they have gained the experience of being able to talk to adults. Something that a lot of teachers do is talk down to their students without knowing it." There's more! Click here to see page 2! Manual Arts High School September, 1998