Welcome to a network simulation that your students may enjoy for a long period of time. Welcome to a networked story-builder to delight in. Welcome to the LINK2 universe. A wonderful place where many munchkins work together inventing marvelous stories together. You can hear their voices. You can imagine along with them. You can talk to them anytime you wish.
Look, you can hear them playing strange and wistful instruments in the distance. You can watch them gather things into their baskets to bring home. You can watch the fruits of their labours over long periods of time. You can even join them whenever you wish. Jump into their stories, savour their sounds, delight in their drawings and weird ideas. Join them and become a munchkin yourself.
Welcome to LINK2.
You are begged to put Link2 into an area where it will be readily accessible to the largest number of munchkins you possibly can. Let them loose on it. Make them work on it individually or in groups. Use it in a public mode, before the whole group of munchkins. Get familiar with it and then use it in front of a whole bunch of them to make a magical story all together.
The actual challenge here is this. Place LINK2 on any computer you have available. Leave it there for a period of time. If you allow the students access to it you will quickly find them building your network for you. It will become the most-oft used piece of computer software you own. (On a per-capita basis).
Please take the time to read the Introduction in this Manual. It is important in that it explains what LINK2 is designed to do. It is important in that the adult and student visions of what LINK2 is are extremely different. The idea here is that LINK2 enables and entices children to work on and build networks before they know what a network is. First they do, and then they learn what they have done. It will be your job to make explicit how their story-building activities can be translated into networking terms. Once they have done it, and seen it, it will be much easier for themto understand it.
When your students have finished with LINK2 is up to you. It's use may last a month, a year, or continue long after that. Your students will carry LINK2 forwards with them long after they have stopped using the software itself. They will have learned how to LINK2 (he he) others in a meaningful way via that funny box in the corner. They will have learned that the funny box allows them to LINK2 others in a meaningful way. Hopefully they will have learnt that LINK2 is a way of thinking with others in a meaningful way. You will have learnt that LINK2 is a meaningful way to use that funny box in the corner.
