Background Information
What's It All About?

Combining patriotism with traditional academic curricula, middle schoolers in upstate New York use an extensive variety of computer technology to communicate with United States Navy ships at sea, during six month deployments to the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. Students use computers, digital cameras, scanners, videos, live online chats, Navy satellites, email, school web pages, the Internet, and multimedia software to continue an 18 year long tradition of writing letters and sharing projects.

For the past 19 years, students in Niskayuna Middle School have written to and shared a special relationship with the United States Navy. Students reach out to the crews of ships deployed in troubled waters, far away from home, for the purpose of letting them know that people back home care about them and appreciate the jobs they do for our country. Students use a variety of technology related software and hardware to accomplish this, and the project has evolved from pen and paper to modern day uses of technology.

Students use the school computer lab to compose their friendly letters. They create graphics of ships, helicopters, jets, and planes for their stationery, using educational software. They make computer generated banners for each of the ships, with phrases such as, "We Stand Behind You," or "We appreciate all you do for the USA." They use the Internet to do WEB searches about their pen pal ships, learning all the facts they can about the ships, their histories, and their crews. They create WEB "treasure hunts" to do this, posting information and urls for each other to follow. Email messages are exchanged between the ships and the classroom. Digital graphics are attached to the email, with the ships sending pictures of life onboard, replenishment at sea, helicopters and jets landing on deck, crewmembers posing for their pen pals, sailors receiving student mail by helicopter, countries they've visited, and pictures of how they celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah, while away from their families. They send videos of their ships' cruises and send actual battle footage from the Persian Gulf or Bosnia. They send all sorts of memorabilia from the ships - hats, pictures, shirts, flags, etc. The students, in turn, send pictures of themselves, their families, the school, and candids of them working on the letters for the sailors. Sometimes, the ships recognize the school on their WEB pages.

Once the project is underway, the captains of the ships are in continual email communication with the classroom. The students get reports of ships' activities. Questions are posed back and forth. Captains have done live, online chats with the students, answering questions they have about the crew, the ships, or the Navy, in general. There have been ship-to-shore radio contacts, via Navy satellites. 

Over the years, the students have been invited to visit ships when they return to the US. If the ships come to NYC or Boston, the students go on an "all day" trip to meet their pen pals. The students bring homemade cookies and signs to hold up as they board the ships. They wear color coded name tags, with scanned pictures of the ship they have found for the visit. They bring presents for their pen pals and assemble on deck to sing Anchors Aweigh and America the Beautiful to the crew as part of a ceremony the Navy hosts for them. The sailors, in turn, open the ship to the students. They tour them around the entire ship, allowing them to have a "hands on" experience. Sometimes, they give them rides in boats and let them sit in helicopters and crawl on tanks. The students are served meals onboard and are given time to visit with their pen pals.

One year, a Navy SeaKnight helicopter flew from Norfolk, VA, to Niskayuna, NY, and landed in the school's soccer fields. Fourteen officers and pilots stepped off the helicopter to thank the students for their letters, telling them that their letters were important to the defense of the country. The town and the school board hosted the Navy for a four day "Navy Appreciation" event. Even the police and fire departments were involved. The Navy sent "Navy News" to cover the event.

During Desert Storm, the students sent 2,000 boxes of chocolate chip cookies, donated by a local baking company, to their pen pal ships, and the Air National Guard assisted in the transport. Even the Pentagon was involved because the cookies went from upstate New York to the Persian Gulf via Military Airlift Command.

The project has been covered in newspapers, on television, and Navy bases throughout the world via Navy News. It has been covered numerous times over the years, receiving recognition from the White House, the Secretary of the Navy, the House of Representatives, the NY State Senate, and the Schenectady County Legislature. The Navy has given the school and the teacher several plaques and proclamations, thanking them for their humanitarian and patriotic project. Once, the thank you came in the form of a three day "at sea" cruise on a Navy guided missile cruiser for ten lucky students and their teacher. During the cruise, sailors volunteered to be running mates for the students, allowing the children to work alongside them.

This past spring, Knolls Atomic Power Lab, in Schenectady, NY, which designs the propulsion systems for nuclear powered submarines and ships, was so impressed with this project, they sent two managers to the school to thank the teacher for her efforts. They presented the teacher with a letter of recognition and wrote to the Board of Education, praising the efforts of the school on behalf of the Navy. 

It started as a simple pen pal project with one Navy ship back in 1982, but it has grown to a multifaceted, interdisciplinary technology project which now entails an entire battlegroup that goes to sea each year. It is a patriotic and humanitarian effort, as well as an academic one. Students carry on a "well established" tradition of reaching out to sailors in troubled waters, during the holiday season, when they are the most lonely. They tell the sailors they appreciate the jobs they do for our country and let them know they are not forgotten. 

To see one ship's response to the project, please visit the WEB page of the destroyer, USS Carney DDG-64.

http://www.spear.navy.mil/ships/ddg64/school.html 

The Navy project has been made into a multimedia presentation, and the teacher has included it in presentations she does at educational conferences and school districts in NY State. She also uses it in technology inservice courses she teaches to other educators, demonstrating how multimedia software and computers can be incorporated into the curriculum. And, it is used to introduce students to the project or show parents what students have been doing in school. The project can be archived via digital pictures and video from digital cameras or scanners, allowing the teacher to introduce the project to incoming classes.