Our motto is “Nothing Takes the Place of the Fire”. That is, Cradleboard is not about technology: it’s about helping children to communicate with one another. Like getting to know someone around a campfire, it’s the human communication and the content which are important, not the vehicle. For many years we ran the project using print curriculum, phone calls and the post office to help children to get to know each other. However, as early pioneers in using new technologies to assist in the delivery of the project and connect students with their cross cultural peers, we adopted digital technologies in the early nineties, and even though some of our teachers started out computer phobic, we haven’t lost a single one.

All Cradleboard Teaching Project curriculum products, conferences and teacher training workshops are cross platform and are designed to work with both Macintosh and Windows platforms. The general public is invited to use the Cradleboard website interactive core curriculum in Social Studies and Supplements; and to use our Native American Resources area as an internet on-ramp to Indian Country.

For subscribers, in order to enable students and teachers to communicate with one another as an organized group of individual classes, in our Electronic Powwow and Partnering models we rely on discussion boards, chat rooms, faxes, snail mail, telephones, video conferencing, and whatever else classes have available. Students and teachers can leave email messages for one another asynchronously, no matter what time zone they call home. They can also communicate “live” at the same time, seeing each other’s messages appear onscreen spontaneously. We have our own server and have created unique, exclusive graphical icons to organize curriculum material; direct student, teacher and staff email; host and save Live Chats between partnering classes as text; store photos; post announcements; and in general serve as a visual guide for the children and teachers in their daily interactions during this part of the project.

To teachers in our custom Cradleboard Partnering program, we offer a free cradleboard.org email account. For classes to see their remote partners’ faces online, we sometimes use a different technology: video conferencing. You can imagine the excitement as the school year develops when first postal packages, then email messages, then live chat text, and finally video conferencing adds to the experience of building new friendships with other children far away.

• Our interactive multimedia CD Rom SCIENCE: Through Native American Eyes requires a CD Rom drive. The CD must be in the drive for the program to run.

• Teacher Instructional Videos and DVDs are helpful in maximizing use of the SCIENCE: Through Native American Eyes CD-ROM. Available at the Cradleboard Store online.

• We recommend a scanner or digital camera, a basic video conferencing unit like C-U-See Me, and a printer for Cradleboard Partnering program classes, although it is not necessary to own these in order to participate.

• Cradleboard 101 Teacher Training Workshops are 2-3 day hands on sessions hosted in a computer lab setting where teachers become masters at using or teaching the SCIENCE: Through Native American Eyes CD-ROM, and all our online resources, tools, and curriculum units.