The present paper focuses on how students and educators perceive of and represent the educational gains (social, cognitive, didactical) of children's collaborative and communicative activities in electronic communities. The electronic community discussed in this work was established to mediate the collaboration of 141 students from two elementary schools located in the northern and the southern parts of the country respectively. This collaboration was hosted by a content, community, and collaboration management system (C3MS) which was set up on the web server of one of the schools involved. The collaboration was centered around a project- based activity which involved three distinct components (c.f. Karasavvidis & Malandrakis, 2003). More specifically, students (a) wrote a letter to their city mayor describing environmental problems faced in their neighborhoods, (b) conducted a field study to research the problems identified, and (c) presented their letters and field study results to the city mayor. Students communicated after the letters were written, so that through discussion they could arrive at the conclusion that regardless of the distance the problems experienced by fellow students far apart are strikingly similar. On the other hand, students also communicated after the field study was completed so that they could realize the magnitude of the problems identified. All relevant project materials (letters, field study reports) as well as a complete record of the communication (forum posts) were made available through the school portal which functioned as a virtual space hosting the student collaboration and communication. The current study draws on data from a more comprehensive research project focused on the effectiveness of electronic communication. This paper examines the perceived educational gains of the project-based activity described above by a small group of in-service educators who critically reviewed the school portal and studied the collaboration materials and communication record based on a model of pedagogical principles (c.f. Chronaki & Bourdakis, 2003). After an elaborate consideration of these project materials, the educators produced written accounts of what they thought the cognitive and learning value of such a project was. Moreover, they were encouraged to contact the students and teacher who participated in the project and ask any questions they wished. Both the teacher and the students produced written responses to the questions asked by the in-service teachers. A three-level analysis was conducted. On a first level, drawing on the student responses, we examined their perceptions of the project, their likes and dislikes, how valuable they thought it was, and whether they would recommend it to other students. On a second level, we examined the understanding of the teacher who designed and implemented the project regarding its effectiveness and educational value. Finally, the in-service teachers' perceptions of the educational gain of the project is also analyzed. As the accounts from all three parties (students, teacher, in-service teachers) involved are in the form of narratives, our analysis necessarily revolves around narrative analysis and the reconstruction of the experiences of the participants. References Chronaki, A. & Bourdakis, V. (2003). Cyberspace, Open Education and Learning Communities: Basic Principles for Pedagogic Design. In A. Lionarakis (ed.) Open and Distance Education. Conference Proceedings. Patras, Greece. Probobos Publications. Karasavvidis, I. & Malandrakis, G. (2003). The impact of an Environmental Education based Informatics module on the attitudes of students in grades 5 and 6 towards the environment. In C.P. Constantinou & Z.C. Zacharia (Eds.). Computer Based Learning In Science. Conference proceedings, Vol. 1 (pp. 771-780). Nicosia, Cyprus: Dept of Educational Sciences Publications.