A、Mark received responses from 53 schools. B、There were about 1,500 bags decorated with one announcement. C、It was a huge succes

Nicole: Mark, I am truly impressed with how successful the Earth Day Groceries Project has been. How did this all come about? Mark: I got an Internet account in 1993 from NASA--that was very exciting--and got on some educational discussion lists. I tried this project at my schools: borrowing grocery bags from the local supermarket with the agreement that the kids would decorate them and bring them back, and the store would distribute them to customers on Earth Day, April 22. It would be an environmental education project where the students were actually empowered as teachers to educate their community on the importance of Earth Day and of protecting their environment and so on. And they did that through the artwork that they put on each grocery bag.
It was a huge hit. I involved most of the school the next year. And, after that, I wanted to share it even more. The Internet Was just starling with discussion lists for educators, and so I sent this invitation out to Ednet and Kidsphere in 1994. I received responses from 43 schools, mostly in the U.S. and Canada. There were about 15,000 bags decorated just through this one little announcement! I was just blown away. The power of this medium is something!
That summer I began building our school website. And for the first 4 years of the project, the Earth Day Groceries Project was part of that site. It’s continued to grow. I established it with its own domain name several years ago, and 2 years ago, I set it up as a nonprofit organization. I still run it myself, but we do have a board. The reason for doing that is that it became a very big project in terms of the amount of time required.
Nicole: Looking at the website, it’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into the project. How did you develop the skills you needed to construct the site?
Mark: There were no books on HTML--hypertext mark-up language, the tagging system used to create most webpages--published when I started working on the school website. Basically, I went to a few web-sites, and I looked at the source of the webpages. I learned how to copy and paste, put my own information in, and look at the page locally. That’s how I learned how HTML worked. Then I found a very simple HTML editor and learned a little bit more. So, I was self-taught, and trial and error was one of the first ways that I got started.
Nicole: How have things changed since then?
Mark: Now there are a lot of books, and terrific online resources and courses. The opportunities to learn are all over the place. The biggest challenge for teachers is finding the time to do it. That’s the biggest challenge for me--just finding the time to keep my skills.
Nicole: Jean, introducing computers into the classroom seems like a somewhat unlikely thing for an art teacher to do. What prompted you to do it?
Jean: I started constructing webpages a couple of yearn ago, and just continued to develop with it. Being an art teacher, I like doing anything visual, and doing webpages became a way for me to become visually and "artically" challenged.
Nicole: What were your goals for your students when you started to participate in the project?
Jean: I just wanted them to come up with a message and make a picture that related to the message--those are the most important things.
Nicole: How did you help them to achieve those goals?
Jean: I would introduce the lesson by talking about recycling, ecology, the environment, and ways that we can improve the environment. We’d talk about what Earth Day is--the whole meaning behind it.
From an art standpoint, we would talk about the graphics: What is the best way to design the product to get interest in it? We would talk about advertising, too--the message in the advertising, whether through the words or the pictures. And then we’d talk about how to design it.
The one thing I tell my students is not to get too wordy, because if they get too wordy, people aren’t going to read it. Keep it simple. And the kids really take it from there. I do not believe in saying no to them, because it is their imagination--as long as they are working within the themes of the earth, Earth Day, recycling, and ecology. And they seem to catch on pretty quickly.