"Clicking in the Classroom with Bill the Magic Kat" & trade; integrates an interactive multimedia technology with innovative instructional techniques to create learning experiences for youth with varying capabilities and diverse cultural experiences. Youth, teachers, and Net citizens come together with iC to explore students' emotional and intellectual needs. Our mentoring program is created for youth and by youth under the guidance of emotional intelligence principles, the program's foundation. In tandem with school curriculum, the program increases literacy, problem-solving, creativity, and emotional intelligence skills. Using constructivist and systematic methodologies, Phase I allows iC staff and consultants to research and utilize El principles to write the interactive dialog while high school students design and develop a prototype for an emotional intelligence learning environment for youth. ages 7-12. Then we use program evaluation methods to assess the effectiveness of the project on targeted populations. During Phase III, we create an expanded version and market it to classrooms nationwide via theInternet. The program will reach its pinnacle when it becomes a full-fledged learning program for youth and when the children see their stories in books and CD-ROM stories on the bookshelves of libraries and bookstores across the country.Summary Of Anticipated Results And Implications:Results of Phase I: 1. Design an unexpanded version of Clicking in the Classroom with Bill the Magic Kat & trade; using El data and related psychological theories to write and develop interactive dialogue, the project's foundation. 2. Develop engaging World Wide Web (Web) pages to launch on the Internet as the primary delivery method. 3. Create a unique framework to encourage high school youth to solve technology and Web-based development problems. More specifically, students will learn how to:a. Review all content and responsibilities for creating a professional project.b. Analyze challenges behind creating proposed Web pages.c. Develop Web page designs.d. Collaborate with instructors and iC staff to create an acceptable plan for the design and programming specified pages.e. Build Web pages that meet professional standards and students' own expectations.f. Evaluate their Web pages by their own standards and improve them as necessary.Anticipated Research Results:1. The iC director and staff will consult with El experts and consulting writer to isolate and incorporate El principles into the interactive dialog with the story characters, so that the unexpanded version of the project can be launched on the Web.2. Establish collaborative agreements with elementary schools to allow us to test the unexpanded version via the Internet in preparation for the formal program research. Our goal is to confirm that Clicking in the Classroom with Bill the Magic Kat & trade; meets each of its objectives.3. Create program models which work in tandem with educational curricula.4. Demonstrate that content and instructional properties of the prototype are user-friendly and appropriate for students, ages 7-12, in classroom settings.
