I am a "newbie" to the internet, and being a school board member, subscribe to a mailing list of educators from all over the world. This mailing list is called "kidsphere," and information is exchanged back and forth regarding K-12 schools, curriculae, computers and technology in schools and online classroom projects.

A few months after subscribing to this list, I started to notice posts asking for 100 day greetings. I understand that the original 100 day celebrations comes from an activity supplement to the Barretta-Lorton 'Math Their Way' math program. This is a fun way to study math and the number 100, and gives a purpose to keeping track of days in school.

Since my daughter is in kindergarten and her class was having its own 100 Days of School celebration, I decided to post a message to this mailing list asking for 100 Day Greetings for Miss Reed's Kindergarten Class in Greenwood, N.Y. My goal was to get 100 messages here at home, print the messages out and forward them onto the kindergarten class.

Most schools celebrate the 100 days from mid-January to mid-February, so this mailing list is pretty busy with posts from teachers all over asking for greetings for their school's celebration.

The students were able to correlate the origin of the email messages to a world map in their classroom to give them an appreciation of the vast geography they were covering. They posted the greetings in the school hallway for the entire student body to enjoy and read. After three weeks, during which my printer got a workout, we received a total of 157 messages from all over the world, including Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Greece, Japan and Sweden!

We were just nine states shy of all 50 in the U.S., so we almost had a greeting from every state. Some greetings were simply "Happy 100 Days," and most messages from teachers and students gave a brief description of their town, school and local economy in their part of the world.

In their messages, teachers and students described how they were celebrating their 100 days, such as: counting to 100; making a necklace or "lei" from 100 individual fruit loops; walking 100 steps; making 100 snowflakes; writing numbers to 100; and predicting what the earth would look like in 100 years. Many more creative 100 day activities were exchanged through this list. There are two web pages on the internet devoted exclusively to 100 Day Activities.

Through 100 Day Greeting exchanges such as this, students are able to see concrete examples of how the internet can help them communicate other children, teachers, parents and professional people from all over the world.

In the end, the best reward for me was to see how the internet was able to let 16 five-year-olds from a rural school with limited technology connect an email message to a state or country, and learn about math and world geography. It also introduced the concept of space and maps to these kindergarteners. Now, this will be a yearly tradition at our school, and we look forward to receiving messages from the four corners of the globe during next year's 100 Days celebration!

Here are three examples of the email which the class received.

• First: Use your Web Browser
• Second: Go to: NGS MAP MACHINE ATLAS: HAWAII (U.S.)
• Third: Click on the Map for an enlarged view
• Fourth: Can you find where I live?
• Hint: Wahiawa, HI is located on the Island of Oahu.

Subject: 100 days

Happy 100 days of school from the students of the American Community School of Abu Dhabi. We are in the Middle East on the Arabian Penninsula in the United Arab Emirates.

Bob Kranz/Nancy Simon
P.O. Box 3005
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Greetings from Orlando, Florida~home of Disney World; Gatorland; Sea World of FL; Universal Studios, FL; Cypress Gardens*****and many more! We are centrally located in the state and have the ability to 'watch ' every space shuttle lift off from Kennedy Space Center (this is the ONLY lift-off launch pad in the US~shuttles may land in CA but they always come home to lift-off!) as well as get to either our east-coast beaches (Atlantic Ocean) or our west-coast beaches (Gulf of Mexico) within an hour. Our 'city' was originally orange grove's and merely a quiet resting place for travelers; the entire complextion changed with Mr. Disney's purchase of thousands of acres for his dream (about 30 years ago). We are now a growing metropolis and a haven for travelers from around the world. Although winter temperatures may get to the "20's", our daytime highs range in the 70's. We hope you have a wonderful "100-Day" celebration!