Bardstown Primary School Mission Statement
To provide a safe and positive environment while teaching the foundation for our children become life long learners
Digital recordings, photos accompany yesterday’s letters
Photo by Frank Johnson
The pen pals project at this Bardstown Primary School first-grade class is a fusion of modern technologies. The large touchscreen “smart board” on the wall is linked directly to teacher Mark McLaren’s desktop computer. In this photo, one of the students is pictured after recording an audio copy of his letter.
By Frank Johnson
For decades, students across the nation have followed tradition and dutifully scribed short letters to pen pals in neighboring states. It’s an activity most adults can recall doing throughout their educational careers, but at Bardstown Primary School, this venerable student project has received a 21st century upgrade.
The pupils of Heather Evans-Krupp and Mark McLaren’s first-grade class (the two teachers work as a pair) recently were given more than just letters from their correspondents in Virginia. Along with old-fashioned print versions, the class also received spoken readings of the notes from the students themselves in addition to a picture tour of their school.
On Thursday morning, the students busied themselves by preparing an equivalent packet to send back. Seated at a desk, McLaren asked the children up one at a time to read their letter aloud. A smart board linked to the desktop computer then displayed the child’s picture while he played their recently recorded audio account to verify its contents.
McLaren said a piece of software called Photostory helped Evans-Krupp and him pull together the various media and easily package it for delivery.
“They have been able to see their pen pal,” Evans-Krupp said. “They love it. They’ve been talking about what they look like.”
McLaren added that the program allows the experience to become multidimensional.
“It motivates them to really answer their questions and get attached to their partners,” he said.
Student Annie Roberts-Nault has already found out about several similarities she shares with her pen pal, Emily.
“She likes to play in PE in school … I told her PE was my favorite class, too,” Roberts-Nault said. 
Photo by Frank Johnson
First-grader Jake Hoerter works with McLaren to record a spoken version of his written pen pal letter. The students are exchanging letters, audio and pictures of their school with a group of students in Virginia.
Dogs are a common feature in both households as well with her pen pal having one pup while Roberts-Nault’s family has three. According to Roberts-Nault, however, more does not necessarily equal better as one of her pets, Rigley, possesses a bad habit. The canine has a tendency to poop on her family’s deck, a definite defecation no-zone.
In an e-mail from Bardstown communications director Kim Lacy, McLaren said this modern pen pal program does more than give students the experience of finding simple connections across state lines. It is equipping students with the tools of the tech age by helping them become comfortable using pictures, audio and video to communicate through the expansive highway of the Internet.
“As they begin to accept technology in their own lives, how can education stay the same?” McLaren said. “It has to change with it.”
McLaren said he hopes one day classes will be able to interact not just with students in another state, but on an entirely different continent. And not just in pictures, but with live, streaming video.
“What we can get in the future is live interaction,” he said, sketching a scenario in which his class could wave to a group of students in China who would then wave back.
For now, the first-graders appear to be having enough fun snapping shots of their playground, library and classroom “reading nook” while expressing the reaction common to human beings of all ages upon hearing their voice in a recording.
“That doesn’t sound like me at all!” one student exclaimed. Technology, it seems, no matter how advanced, is never perfect.
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