Bermudian students will be offered "a classroom without borders, learning without limits" in the autumn through a new, multi-media, international exchange programme piloted for students in Bermuda and the Low Country of South Carolina.

Local teachers are being invited to learn more about this exciting new initiative to get kids switched on to Social Studies at an introductory presentation of the World News Share programme today at 5 p.m.

The presentation, which should last about an hour, will be held on the ground floor of Crown House on Par-la-Ville Road. All middle and high school teachers are welcome to attend.

World News Share, an academic international exchange programme, uses technology and the world of the Internet to provide a platform for students from the two countries to share knowledge and develop informed opinions on the current events, culture, politics and economies of their respective communities.

Using the newspaper as the main text, students will follow a ten-week course of study designed by their teachers to meet the goals of the English and Social Studies curricula, developing writing and research skills in the process.

Participating teachers will lead their students to online lessons each week. Once the students have completed their lessons and had their work approved by their teachers, the completed assignments will be exchanged via a secure Internet share site with those of a partner class in the Low Country, South Carolina who have completed the same assignment.

The students then review and critique each other's work. Samples of the students' work will be published weekly in The Royal Gazette, allowing the whole community to share in the students' learning.

The World News Share programme was developed by Robie Scott of The Charleston Post and Courier and is sponsored by the Rotary Club of North Charleston and Rotary International, The Post and Courier Foundation and The Royal Gazette.

Piloting the programme locally in September 2008 are three Social Studies teachers from CedarBridge Academy and Warwick Academy who have been developing a programme of study with their US counterparts.

Given the close connections between Charleston and Bermuda, this is further enhanced as the programme leads into Bermuda's 400th anniversary in 2009.

William Sayle, one-time Governor of Bermuda, started the English colonisation of South Carolina in 1669/70 together with other Bermudian settlers. In colonial times there was considerable trade – legal and illegal – between Bermuda and the Carolinas, with several Bermudian mercantile families, including the Saltus family, making regular voyages to Charleston.

During the American Civil War, Bermuda was a haven for Confederate ships attempting to run the Northern blockade.

One of the first black members of Congress, Joseph Hayne Rainey, took refuge in Bermuda during that war.

Another free black, Denmark Vesey, who may have been involved in planning an aborted slave insurrection in 1822 in Charleston, was once owned and later freed by a Bermudian sea captain, Joseph Vesey, who settled in Charleston.

Teachers interested in learning more about this innovative programme are urged to attend the presentation this evening. For more information, contact Jennifer Hind at nie@royalgazette.bm or 278-0136.