What Is The Monster Exchange?

Monster Exchange began in 1995 when John Thompson, a dedicated parent of a Brunner Elementary student in New Jersey, joined with Brian Maguire, a former third grade teacher, to create and participate in an educational project for the Kindergarten-8th grade level.

Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.

The written descriptions, original monster pictures, and redrawn monster pictures are scanned and uploaded to the Internet using the browser-based Monster Gallery Builder. The Monster Gallery Builder is entirely form-based and does not require the teacher or student to know any HTML code.

The Monster Galleries are then published, and feedback is provided via e-mail.

Students and teachers can also take advantage of the chat rooms and discussion boards available in Monster Exchange for further conversation/feedback about their project.

Any communication, material, pictures, descriptions of monsters and other content you post or transmit to the Monster Exchange, by any means, is and will be treated as, non-confidential and non-proprietary. You assume full responsibility for anything you create, post or transmit, and you grant MonsterExchange.org, its parent, affiliates and subsidiaries the right to edit, copy, publish and distribute any information or content you post or transmit for any purpose, without credit or compensation.

Monster Exchange Example

	"Mental Robot "
ORIGINAL	His name is Mental Robot. He has a triangular head, a banana-shaped mouth, and triangular ears. His head, his mouth, his ears, and his eyes are pink. Mental Robot has a male body and he has four fingers on each hand. He has a belt with a circle in the middle and he has red arms. He is wearing a blue shirt and a green belt. His arms have lots of scales on them. He has three spikes on each foot, his legs are human legs and his tail has five spikes on the club. His foot and tail are red.	REDRAWN

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