Among all the teaching activities using ICTs, we can distinguish two types:

Certain teaching activities could be improved and intensified thanks to the Internet. Take for example e-mail. This activity is, in fact, a computerisation of an expensive epistolary exchange with active pedagogical methods. It takes on a new dimension thanks to Internet. The exchanges (several messages per week per pupil), are more diversified (each pupil can maintain a correspondence with several correspondents) faster (the messages are received the very same day) and more wide-reaching (planetary level).

Over this last year more than 600 messages were received by my pupils and as many if not more were sent. The electronic correspondence thus represents one of the principal activities carried out thanks to Internet. Each pupil receives on average about 7 messages per week. The most productive pupils sent between 10 and 15 messages per week whereas the least productive pupils sent only one or two messages per week. However, all the pupils tasted the pleasure of maintaining an on-going correspondence with one or more correspondents.

To choose the correspondents, we developed a data base bringing together all the pupils belonging to the Edunet network. At the beginning of the year, each pupil writes a small presentation using the computer. It is then placed in the data base developed using Fourth Dimension software. Using the database, each pupil thus the possibility to carry out a search by key words.

Two remarks however. I am in favour of a certain freedom with regard to the choice of the correspondents and the number of messages sent per week. In my view, to impose the writing of so many messages a week does not make sense. The changes of correspondents can thus be relatively frequent. On the other hand, experience shows that a completely free correspondence is blown at the end of a few months. The work of the teacher thus consists in stimulating the correspondence by suggesting topics of exchange to the pupils or by carrying out common researchwith other classes.

Concerning the correspondence I have a small anecdote to tell you. One day, one of my pupils, Cindy, received a message from Quebec. For several weeks, the exchanges were intensive. Cindy talked with her correspondent about her hobbies, passions, and various activities. As for the correspondent he, precisely explained to her what Halloween was. One day, Cindy came to me and asked: "Tell me Laurent, how old is my correspondent? " I answered that she should ask him. A few days later, Cindy received a reply. When she read message, she shouted out letting all the class know: "He is sixty-five years, my correspondent is sixty-five years old" In fact, I knew her correspondent very well. He was a retired veterinary surgeon who spent part of his time surfing the Net.

In so-called "traditional" activities, it is necessary to mention the publication of a school newspaper. Thanks to the network of all networks, the newspaper is not only no longer exclusively intended for the pupils of a school and their parents, but also for all the Net surfers of the planet.

Other activities also seem to benefit from the advantages of the Internet. Let us note, for example, mathematical challenges, exchanges of poems and contests.

Internet opens the gate to new teaching activities which could not exist without it. Indeed, the advantage of this tool is certainly in the new possibilities of information and communication:

These new possibilities thus make it possible to set up very rich teaching activities since using a pallet of very diversified means :

The teaching activity presented below, the "class-resource", aims in particular to connect several French-speaking classes and experts distributed around the world around a same topic, in this case Astronomy.

Initially, the pupils of the class-resource carry out an in-depth search on a selected topic. For several weeks, in small groups, they collect and study information using various media (encyclopaedias, videos, CD-Rom, the Web). Parallel to this first stage, the teacher carries out training activities in class on explanatory texts. These more structured tasks are intended to improve comprehension of the texts read by the pupils and to prepare them to produce this kind of text. It also gives them the opportunity to study certain spelling and syntactic phenomena. At the same time, the class-resource uses e-mail to contact other classes which will join the project later by studying the same topic superficially and by drawing up a list of questions.

In the second stage, the pupils of the class-resource write texts on their subject. This can lead to the development of an exhibition within the school, to the creation of a Web site or to the production of a file distributed in the classes of the school. This stage aims at sharing all the information collected during the research phase.

It is only during the third stage that the class-resource invites the classes associated with the project to send their questions. Benefitting from the knowledge obtained at the time of their research, the pupils then send the answers to all of the classes taking part in this activity. The most advanced questions are submitted to experts contacted by e-mail at the time of the first phase. All these answers, completed by interviews, are then displayed on the web site.

In this project, Internet is omnipresent. It is regarded as a tool amongst others. It allows in particular :

To search for information (WEB).

To produce information and to distribute it (creation of Web pages).

To contact experts and other classes (electronic mail).

To centralise questions and answers (electronic mail and WEB).

However, in this particular case, Internet turned out to be a particularly powerful tool, because it made it possible to join together easily and quickly people world-wide having a centre of common interest.

The expanded class consists of making pupils of a class work with pupils from another class. For example, 2 pupils of a class have to produce a text, carry out a search, with 2 pupils from another class. A teacher of a third class will try to co-ordinate the two groups of children.

Im going to present another teaching activity: the class co-ordinator. Around the topic of waste management, it consisted of working out a Web site while collaborating with other classes. The work of the class co-ordinator was thus, initially, to inform by e-mail a couple of dozens of classes. Participating classes were requested either to answer a questionnaire prepared by the class co-ordinator, or to carry out a complete search on the topic of waste management. All these contributions were gathered on a single site.

It is not enough to install one or more computers at the back of a class to have ICTs really used in learning. "Surfing" the Internet and exchanging messages without didactic intention is certainly not learningful. Let us insist on the fact that the introduction of the ICTs requires a careful thought on behalf of the teachers on the necessary teaching conditions and on the implications of such technologies.

A teaching condition requires that the pupils be in a project. The steps which they carry out must be directed by a complex situation, a particular case study or by an open question. In these contexts, the pupils must resort to several sources of information, they must treat them in a significant way, they must select those which are most likely to provide adequate answers, and they must reorganise them in order to distribute them.

To use a project-based pedagogy, it is initially necessary to adhere to the recent theories of learning which postulate a distinction between teaching and learning. This distinction singularly modifies the relations within the didactic triangle "main - raises - to know". Accordingly, the teacher is not longer the person who transmits knowledge, the pupil is no longer the more or less passive subject of the lessons, the access to knowledge is no longer a question of successive platings of concepts.

The teacher convinced by these principles will find in project-based pedagogy an answer to many of the teaching implications resulting from the socio-constructivist theories of the learning.

The project-based pedagogy makes it possible, in my opinion, to give direction to the learning of the pupils. In a project of correspondence, for example, the pupils see themselves constrained to master some rules related to this type of text, if they want what they write to be comprehensible by their correspondents. Themselves, they are concerned about their spelling, their syntax and their formatting. They frequently solicit the teacher or one of their class-mates in order to improve their written production, and sometimes spontaneously consult the reference works. Other projects cause the same attitudes relating to the written expression, like the realisation of a presentation, the publication of a school newspaper or a booklet of information about the clothes industry. However, all is not so rosy in project-based pedagogy. Despite the fact that most of the activities have a clear direction, some pupils nevertheless develop strategies of avoidance. Concerning the correspondence, the remark of the one of my pupils is eloquent: "I like to receive messages, but not so much to send them". Project-based pedagogy is demanding and requires an effort on behalf of all the actors. The teacher thus sees himself sometimes constrained to start the projects again and to find easy ways to motivate his pupils.

In project-based pedagogy, the teacher is no longer the holder of knowledge. He organises the activities and tries to bring a didactic perspective with an view to engaging learning. Thus, he or she will find, during the development of a play, the means to make it possible to improve the oral expression of the pupils. This mediator can also bring ideas and encourage the whole of the class. At all events, he or she also has a fundamental role to restart those pupils or groups of pupils who have "broken down", and finally, to institutionalise the learning process. This last mission enables him to be strictly accurate to establish the link between the project and the various concepts to be acquired at the primary school, defined concepts, partly, in the curriculum.

The detractors of project-based pedagogy tend to believe that it does not at all fit in the primary school curriculum. However, to look at the question more closely, one realises that if the curriculum mentions a list of basic knowledge to be acquired, it also mentions a list of know-how that will come into play throughout compulsory schooling. These are these competencies that project-based pedagogy tries to develop.

Thus, for example, publishing a school newspaper satisfies a considerable number of objectives to be honoured, such as for example: "the pupil is able to express his or her feelings, experiments, judgements, opinions, desires" since in this project, one will find a multitude of different types of text.

Concerning the basic knowledge, project-based pedagogy takes it into account although not always overtly. Let us not forget, some knowledge is necessary to conclude the whole of the teaching projects. In project-based pedagogy, it is thus essential to highlight certain concepts, certain tools which correspond to those explicitly mentioned in the curriculum.

In spite of this optimistic reflection, it is advisable to distinguish what concerns the conscious training by "didactic structured regulation", from what can be acquired by immersion. To study certain types of text and certain linguistic phenomena through structured didactic sequences or, more simply, to exert mental calculation and the operations, make it possible without any doubt to provide the pupils with instruments which will enable them to carry out increasingly complex projects.

I do not conceive project-based pedagogy as a succession of free activities, but rather as ceaseless comings and goings between an original task, the "project", and activities which make it possible for the pupils to be questioned compared to this task, to structure their knowledge and to stabilise knowledge and know-how.

A didactic intentionality also implies a reflection concerning other orientations of modern pedagogy. It is necessary to wonder about the mechanisms of co-operation, collaboration and tutoring. How to gather the pupils in front of a computer and why? It is in the same way necessary to reflect on the manner of evaluating the knowledge and the know-how developed thanks to the ICTs. Tools like the instrumented self-evaluation, the co-evaluation and formative evaluation seem suitable. Lastly, we have noticed that Internet encourages a transdisciplinary approach to pedagogy.