Japanese Zen Gardens was developed through the sponsorship of IU's East Asian Studies Center, providing an innovative way for Cathedral High School teacher Sara Koehler to add a new dimension to the Zen Buddhism unit of her World Religions course. IU Southeast Education professor Claudia Crump developed curricular unit on Japanese gardens to provide students with an understanding of the design principles and the symbolic and spiritual meanings associated with elements used in Japanese gardens. The ISIS delivered by Professor Crump, prepared students for the hands-on part of the unit plan, in which they created their own miniature "Shoebox" Japanese gardens.

Designing a Japanese garden:
IU art education major Karen Fiore presented a hands-on ISIS program, Designing a Japanese Garden, to the 4th grade students of Rosedale Elementary School teacher Mary Ellen Williams. In this truly interactive program, Karen and the students used graph paper to design their own Japanese gardens. She took the students through the design process step-by-step, first introducing each element of the garden by teaching the class the Japanese word for that element. The students were really quick to correctly pronounce the words for water, rock, sand, bridge, lantern, and water-basin. Then Karen showed photographs of how this element is used in different gardens as she explained the special meaning of the element for Japanese. After each design element, Karen had the students draw that element on their garden plans until they had each completed a design, ready to implement during classroom garden-building sessions. Karen concluded the program by having students compose three-line Japanese haiku poem about their new garden, as she took them line by line through the poem composition. By the end of the program, the Rosedale students hadclearly learned a lot about Japanese gardens and really enjoyed the learning process.

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The Japanese Tea Ceremony:
This was a dual-site presentation that also brought twenty-six third graders to the CEE broadcasting room. The Tea Ceremony featured Nagako Hirohashi, an IU graduate student from Japan, and Jeffrey Johnson of IU? East Asian Studies Center. Because of transmission problems, this Tea Ceremony program proved to be our least successful ISIS broadcast.

Japanese Earth Sciences:
This pprogram was presented by Michiru Tomida, an IU geology graduate student from Japan. IU's East Asian Studies Center developed this program at the request of teacher Carol Whitaker, to assist in the preparation of Southmont Junior High School's Academic Quiz Bowl team. Michiru, who specialized in geophysics and plate tectonics, was well-suited to tutor the team on East Asian earth sciences. She introduced team members to the basics of plate tectonics and it's influence on the active volcano and earthquake profile of the Japanese islands. She used the document camera to show illustrative graphs and newspaper photos of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Michiru also guided students to two informative websites on volcanoes and earthquakes.

East Asia Stereotyping:
The East Asian Studies Center Outreach Coordinator, Anjali Sengupta, and IU graduate student, Nagako Hirohashi, presented this ISIS program to Kokomo High School teacher Lisa Browning's Diversity Group. This group, composed of 10th-12th grade students, meets weekly to discuss different diversity issues. The ISIS program examined cross-cultural stereotyping from both American and Japanese perspectives. A brainstorming session concerning commonly-held American stereotypes of East Asians began the program. The students were given the opportunity to ask questions after an interactive exercise that analyzed the dynamics of stereotyping.

Exploring East Asia through Storytelling:
This series, sponsored by IU's East Asian Studies Center, feature popular folktales from China, Japan, or Korea told by a professional storyteller. The presentations also involved an IU student from the relevant country, who discussed modern-day issues addressed by the folktale.

This spring, three interactive presentations focused on the much-loved Japanese folktale, "The Crane Wife". Professional storyteller Mary Fraser performed the story of the marriage of a simple farmer and his crane-wife who could weave enchanted cloth. Following the story, Mary fielded student questions about the characters and meaning of the tale. The second part of the program, was presented by IU student Yasuko Murphy of Japan. She introduced the students to Japanese 'dancing' red-crowned, the importance of the crane in Japanese culture and art, and recent efforts to protect this now-endangered species.

The program was presented to Lebanon Middle School's 7th grade East Asian study group, and to two 3rd grade classes - the students of Longfellow Elementary School teacher JoAnn Beleslin and on the students of Grissom Elementary School teacher Lois Johnson. Both of the elementary schools are located in Gary, Indiana, and IU's ability to reach these two faraway sites via the Vision Athena network once again demonstrated the values of this distance learning technology as an outreach tool. In all presentations, the 3rd and 7th graders asked many questions and seemed quite at ease interacting with guest speakers who were, in fact, quite far away.

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The Death of Deng Xiaoping:
This current events program about the political significance of the death of the Chinese head-of-state was presented to two broadcast sites?outhport High School (teacher Floyd Chamberlin) and Perry Meridian High School (teacher Rosemarie Kuntz). The presenter for this program was Dr. Jean Robinson, a faculty member of IU's Political Science Department who is a specialist in Chinese politics. Dr. Robinson presented a program that was very informative and accessible to high school students.

Middle Eastern Foodways program:
Majd Al-Mallah, Outreach Coordinator of IU's Middle Eastern Studies Program presented an ISIS program on Middle Eastern Foodways to Lebanon Middle School's 7th grade Middle Eastern study group. This was a hands-on presentation in which Majd took the students step-by-step through the process of preparing hummus, a classic Middle Eastern food typically eaten for breakfast on Friday, the Islamic weekly holy day. This interactive food preparation program marked an ISIS first. As Majd went through the steps for making hummus, two teams of Lebanon students followed along - squeezing lemons, chopping garlic, and blending it all with tahini and chickpeas. The students were able to see close-ups of Majd at work through ISIS use of an auxiliary video camcorder. At the end of the process, the students were able to taste the results of their labors and to ask Majd questions about daily life in the Middle East. As the program concluded, teacher Mary Shirley was confident that this interactive hands-on program had succeeded in preparing the students to make this Middle Eastern dish for the International Food Court a their school's spring Worlds Fair.

Tai Chi:
The East Asian Studies Center and ISIS presented a Tai Chi Interactive Video Program for 7th grade students at Lebanon Middle School. The program presenters were four members of the IU Tai Chi Club. Prior to the program, two introductory Tai Chi readings were sent as preparatory/supplementary materials to Lebanon M.S. seventh grade team leader Mary Shirley. The interactive broadcast focused on teaching the students some basic Tai Chi movements. The four presenters first introduced and demonstrated the Tai Chi movement before having the students try the different Tai Chi moves themselves. Students learned individual movements and Tai Chi exercises that are learned in pairs. As the program progressed, the students learned about the importance of Tai Chi in Chinese daily life and as a school physical education activity. They also learned about the differences between Tai Chi and other East Asian physical movement philosophies.

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