CLASSROOM INTERNET USE OPENS DOORS.

Byline: Karen Thacker Special to the Daily News

When it came time for fifth-graders Danielle Genda and Tiffanie Montgomery to do a report on Abraham Lincoln, they simply turned to the Internet.

With the help of a Hyperstudio program, they created an opening page for their report with a time line. By choosing a year in Lincoln's life, viewers looking at their report can select what era they want to learn about. For each time slot, the girls pulled information from the World Wide Web sites.

``We put in pictures we pulled off the Internet of Lincoln and got a horse for the story about his accident with a horse,'' Tiffanie explained.

They listed his terms in the legislature and what partners he had when he was a lawyer.

``They even gave credit to their sources so there's no plagiarism,'' noted their teacher, Bart Hoffman.

The project is one of many ways computers and the Internet are being used in classrooms at Daisy Gibson Elementary School.

Recently returning from a workshop on computers in the classroom, Principal Bernette Torhan said that more schools are putting and using computers in the class instead of sending kids to a computer room for an hour once a week.

``We're taking computers back into rooms and looking for a way to use it creatively,'' Hoffman said. ``It's what the kids are going to use (in the future). If we don't train them, they'll be at a disadvantage.''

Le'Andre Franklin and Eduardo Jauregui, both 7, are in a second-grade class where teacher Debra Murphy is giving students a chance to create their own stories on the computer. With software available for rain forest animals and regular children's stories, the kids can then rewrite common stories in their own words, or they can create new ones.

Le'Andre and Eduardo were working on the scenery for a story from the rain forest last Friday, creating their illustrations before they write the story.

``We're adding insects,'' Le'Andre explained. ``Let's get the praying mantis.''

``Now let's do a spider - we can do a black widow spider,'' he said, while changing insects, moving them to the spot on the screen he wanted and then adjusting the size.

In a fifth-grade classroom, four students hovered over the multimedia computer while pulling up a National Parks listing from the Internet.

``They each have a state to do a report on,'' said teacher Bridget Turner, pointing out that they may want to find out what parks are in their states.

Each report will be handwritten for the rough draft, but then they'll put the final copy on the computer. There are three additional laptop computers in her room, plus three in the hallway, used jointly with four other classes in their school wing.

Each room at Gibson Elementary has a multimedia computer with Internet access and an additional TV monitor so the whole class can watch at once. It's used when the school has a newscast delivered every Friday morning complete with lunch menu, future events and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Another group of second-graders used the computer to write a story including math word problems.

While studying about Thomas Edison and inventions, the class looked for resources on the Internet before creating their own inventions. They'll use the computer again to write about the materials they used.

``We always try to use the CD player, the Internet, the computer whenever we can,'' said teacher Barbara Hoffman.

Another example is in teaching history - kids can interview World War II veterans on the Internet - a concept better taught and understood with real people.

Through workshops, teachers can ``see how to actually teach with it (computers, the Internet) - it's not something you just send the kids to,'' said Keppel Union District Superintendent Jean Fuller.

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Photo: (color) Teacher Bart Hoffman helps Amanda Montgomery, 11, Tiffanie Montgomery, 11, and Danielle Genda, 9, use the computers at Daisy Gibson Elementary School, where students log on to the Internet to do research and classwork.

Jeff Goldwater/Daily News