Moore teaches Grade 10 history at the St. Stithians Girls' College, a well-resourced independent school in the city of Johannesburg. He realised that even though he had clever students and all the facilities he could wish for, he would not secure his students' interest in history unless he could harness these resources to stimulate their thinking and excitement about the subject. He decided to introduce them to the idea of creating a virtual museum.

Moore had been teaching a five-week section on the Vietnam War using, in his words, "the traditional chalk-and-talk" delivery method. He had tried to make it interesting by including some full-length feature movies as well as some protest music. He asked the students to process all this information by providing an overview of the topic. The result did not satisfy him or the students-it was too static and predictable.

"I wanted to motivate my class to 'pull out all the stops' by creating something not just for me but for the world," said Moore. "Most projects are created for the teacher and are rarely seen by anyone else. Creating work for publication on the Internet and a global audience raises the stakes. Suddenly, the potential audience is enormous. Consequently, the students realise that their reputation is at stake and this increases their level of input."

Moore also wanted the students to use technology so that they could emulate the way that he had taught them. Besides traditional methods, he had used movie clips from "Good Morning Vietnam," "Born on the 4th of July," and "Platoon," as well as the protest music of Joan Baez, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan. "An HTML editor allows for the integration of multimedia clips. I wanted them to make history come alive with their own hands rather than let it be a boring written document," said Moore.

The class was asked to create the virtual museum for publication on the Internet. Moore provided them with the floor plan of the museum which was divided into halls.

The class as a whole debated what topic each hall should contain so that a visitor, walking from hall to hall, would get a good overview of the conflict, its origins, and impact. Once the divisions had been determined, pairs of students volunteered to be the virtual "curators" of a specific hall. Their task was to write the narrative, and collect illustrations, photos, and sounds appropriate to the content. Once the material had been researched and collected from books, textbooks, magazines, and the Internet, the curators needed to create four or five Web pages to showcase their work.

Web pages included narrative and images, self-reflection journals, and multiple-choice quizzes written in JavaScript*. Moore provided the code for the quiz and showed them how to paste it into their Web page code. The students had to formulate the questions and answer choices, and then provide feedback for both wrong selections as well as the right ones.

Andrew Moore

Moore realized that the project was a great success when he managed to motivate even the most cynical of his students. Moore explains, "When I told the class that they were designing for a world audience one girl who was bright, but lazy, looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'You are very clever, Mr. Moore.' She gave me a look that seemed to say I had finally found a secret way to persuade her to really care about my subject. She and her partner went on to produce a fantastic hall!"

Moore "sewed" these pages together into the museum interface and provided a map to guide visitors. "I was really pleased that the virtual museum and its promise of a world audience persuaded these girls to give their best for history. Not only was their work of a superior quality, but it has awakened an interest in Web publishing in these girls," says Moore. Now the students plan to persuade other teachers to allow them to produce their work in Web-based formats.