Wanting the students to have an experience creating a web site, this project began taking form. Since there are other web pages dedicated to the creating of the 21 California Missions, it was important to take a new view of these missions. Thus, came the character, Cyber Serra.  A modern, Father Junipero Serra; he is a little more plump, and has  some computer skills, but for the most part is still interested in his 21 missions, and especially the eight he actually help to build. Cyber Serra comes back to view the missions from his perspective, sporting a laptop computer and a box of doughnuts! He enjoys looking at each mission, including the landforms surrounding the mission. Join us as Cyber Serra helps you tour the 21 California Missions.

We hope you will enjoy the Newhall Elementary Cyber Serra virtual Mission tour, presented by Mrs. Ried's 1997-1998 4th grade class.

The Project

Cyber Serra was the brain child of Mary Ried, 4th grade teacher and Sue Feldman, parent at Newhall Elementary School. We started this project by giving the students a fact sheet to complete about each mission. They were to comment on the name and year built and the founder of the mission. The students needed to describe the facade, bells, if any, what the grounds look like and any special events at this mission. Each child was given one mission to focus on. They had a variety of ways to gather information: actually visiting the mission, publications, or Internet resources.  The next step was to formulate their facts into a clear and concise first person paragraph. Then they presented their paragraphs orally to the class in the proper order. Now they were ready to learn how to put this information into a web page.

Sue Feldman set up a template using MS Front Page. The template included the navigation bar at the left of each page and our Cyber Serra tour guide. The students provided all of the pictures and the typing.

Mary Ried is the creator of Cyber Serra. She painted him in watercolors and then he was scanned into the computer. In addition to our classroom computer here is a list of the supplies that we used:

The students had a good time researching their mission and writing their mission summaries from Cyber Serra's point of view. Thank you for visiting.