Web based School

Education on the Internet

Chapter 22 Education on the Internet

By now, everyone has heard of the great educational benefit of the Internet. Is it all hype? Most certainly not. In fact, as part of my work for Michigan State University, I have used the Internet as an integral part of various educational programs at all levels.

In this lesson, the following questions about education on the Internet will be answered:

How can I get in touch with other teachers through the Internet?
What are some specific K-12 resources on the Internet?
What are some resources available for higher education institutions?
Can you give me some examples of how one would find research and other academic information on the Internet?

You first are going to learn how you might connect with some other educators. From there, you will look at some resources geared specifically toward higher education professionals.

Educators on the Internet

Bob Matthews is an elementary mathematics and special education teacher at Green Hills School in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is interested in distance education, math, and special education. If our hypothetical teacher wants to get in touch with other teachers and resources, what would he do? That's what you will find out.

Just A Minute: You might note that there is a pretty heavy emphasis on listservs in this section. Unfortunately, many K-12 teachers out there have very limited Internet access and often don't have access to the latest technology and computers. The K-12 resources you will see in this lesson try to take these factors into account.

Your Old Friend the Listserv

A vast number of K-12 teachers take advantage of the hundreds of educational listservs that are out there. They can locate listservs on many topics and can contact professionals and experts in their fields with the click of a mouse.

Bob is no different. He has decided that he would like to start off subscribing to three such listservs to see what will happen. Because he has read this guide, he is going to start out at the Catalist Web site at http://segate.sunet.se/lists/LIST_Q.asp (which was reviewed at length in Lesson 8, "Communicating with the World: Using Mailing Lists").

First, he is interested in distance education, so he would like to see if there are any listservs out there to help him. When he types in distance education in the search field at Catalist, he sees that there are indeed some listservs in which he's interested (see Figure 22.1).

Figure 22.1.

Catalist finds 16 distance education listservs, some of which look very promising.

Just A Minute: Pay attention to how many subscribers there are on these listservs. Lists with a lot of subscribers will have a lot of information but might be hard to keep current with all the mail they generate. Lists with a low number of subscribers might be easy to keep up with but might have little traffic.

After reading the information on how to subscribe to that list, Bob returns to the search page to search for a mathematics listserv. Because he doesn't really know where to begin, he searches for math,mathematics so that Catalist will find any listserv with either of these words in the title.

He is rewarded with 64 matches. Many of them are not really what he is looking for. However, two of them, the Methods of Teaching Mathematics at teachmat@listserv.uic.edu and the Mathematical, Logical, and Word Puzzles Discussion List at PUZZLE-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU, look particularly interesting.

Finally, he conducts a search for special education and finds the Special Education Discussion List at SPECED-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU among the several matches. After he has subscribed to these lists, he will probably monitor his e-mail for a few days to see what shows up, introduce himself to his new electronic colleagues, and begin gathering information.

K-12 News

There are other places Bob can go on the Internet to find other people who are interested in the same topics as he. After he starts WinVN, his newsreader, and brings up a list of all the newsgroups his news server carries, he is ready to find some relevant newsgroup. Maybe you'd like to find some newsgroups you are interested in, too.

Time Saver: Unlike Catalist searches for listservs, newsgroups won't have full "English" names. For example, don't look for a special education newsgroup. Instead, try special,education.special, or even sped or speced. Be creative in your search terms to find a newsgroup that's right for you.

To Do: Look for Interesting Newsgroups

1. By choosing Group|Find or clicking the Search toolbar button, search for distance. You will notice that WinVN locates the alt.education.distance newsgroup (see Figure 22.2).

2. With the group highlighted, choose Group|Subscribe Selected Groups.

3. Repeat the first two steps by conducting a search for math. Choose Group|Find Next (or press the F3 key) until you locate k12.ed.math.

4. Repeat the first two steps again, this time looking for special. If you repeat the search several times, you will find the group k12.ed.special.

You might notice that a few of the newsgroups you found were in the k12.* hierarchy. You might want to spend some time perusing the groups there. If you are a K-12 educator, you are sure to find a group that interests you.

Also, if you are interested in what educators in other countries are doing in education, just keep searching your newsgroups, and you'll come in contact with educators all over the world. If you continue your search for math, you will find math-related newsgroups in Canada, Germany, Taiwan, and other locales.

Figure 22.2.

WinVN can help you find a newsgroup on just about any educational topic, including Distance Education.

Just A Minute: Although this section has focused on K-12 education, there are plenty of listservs and newsgroups available for those in post-secondary education as well. You can use the techniques learned in this section to search for just about any listserv or newsgroup.

K-12 on the Internet

It should be noted right away that, in essence, there really is little difference between finding educational resources and finding any other information on the Internet. World Wide Web and Gopher search engines are useful, as are many of the libraries and files available through Telnet and FTP.

Don't hesitate to use the same resources you would use for other purposes when you are looking for information on education. For example, an Excite search for k-12 +education produced over two million hits! The Internet is particularly useful to educators for many reasons, and you're going to look at these other resources in a little more detail now.

The World Is Your Classroom

One of the most exciting projects I ever worked on was a science project that was completed by two elementary schools in Michigan and Texas. For our project, the two schools took samples from nearby rivers and compared them. They took careful notes on indigenous vegetation, weather patterns, and other factors, all of which were gathered over the Internet.

They then used the Internet to compare their results and compose a final project. The power of collaboration like this can't be denied, but how would you start?

One of the first sites to look at would be the listing of K-12 Web servers located at The Texas Education NETwork (TENET) at http://www-tenet.cc.utexas.edu/Pub/
education/K_12states.asp. (see Figure 22.3). From there, you can click any state's K-12 schools, school districts, or other resources.

Figure 22.3.

The U.S. is full of schools to collaborate with on projects of all types.

For example, suppose you are looking for an elementary school in Michigan with which to do a collaborative project.

To Do: Look for a School

1. From the state-by-state listing, click Michigan.

2. Next, click the School Districts link.

3. Now click Ingham Intermediate School District.

4. From there, click Ingham County Schools. You then could proceed to any school you like.

5. To finish the exercise, click Lansing.

6. Finally, scroll down and click Home Pages. After you do, you can e-mail or contact many staff and teachers in the Lansing School District.

CAUTION: If you would like to collaborate on a project, have a very specific, well-designed project in mind. It is an undue burden (not to mention bad etiquette) to just start e-mailing teachers asking if they'd like to "work on some kind of project" with you.

Of course, you could click any state and follow many links to other schools and teachers throughout the nation. You might find that you can forge some lasting educational relationships with the help of the Internet.

The Computer Without the Internet

As shocking as it might seem, some teachers might want to use their classroom computers for reasons other than accessing the Internet. Many teachers want to make use of educational software. Although there is a lot of commercial software out there, it often is too expensive for teachers and school districts to purchase.

However, the Internet offers a wealth of educational software for all K-12 levels. But how do you find it?

You could go to http://www.shareware.com, and you'd probably eventually find quite a bit. However, Ziff-Davis already has compiled over 10,000 shareware titles for you in ZD Net Software Library, located at http://www.hotfiles.com/educate.asp (see Figure 22.4).

Figure 22.4.

Browse by grade level or conduct a search for the software you want.

Suppose you were looking for some software to use in your high school chemistry class. Could you locate some? Let's find out.

To Do: Find Some Chemistry Software

1. Click the High School and College link to find higher-level programs.

2. Notice that there are two pages of high school and college shareware programs from which to choose. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Next link.

3. Scroll down on the next page until you find the four-star-rated Periodic Table of the Elements (Cyber) v.2.1. Click its link.

4. You'll be taken to an information page on the Periodic Table software (see Figure 22.5). From here, you can simply click the Download button to put the software on your computer.

Figure 22.5.

This nifty piece of software will set you back only $5 if you decide to keep it.

In addition to this piece of software, there were almost a dozen other chemistry and high school science programs available at this site. If you simply cannot find something for which you're looking, you can always conduct a search of the site.

There are many other ways in which you can use the Internet in your classroom. Collaboration and educational software use are just two of them. Feel free to explore some more on your own to discover even more uses.

Who's Who in Higher Education

The amount of higher education material out there is staggering. Literally hundreds of universities now are on the Web, giving users access to libraries, research, and other resources that only universities can offer.

When searching for anything, it's good to have a jumping-off point from which you can find your way to any university you want. This "jumping-off" place for higher education resources has got to be http://web.mit.edu/cdemello/www/geog.asp. This page lists over 3,000 uni-versities worldwide.

If you are interested in only U.S. universities, click the United States link to go to http:// www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/american-universities.asp. This page will take you to Web sites for hundreds of universities from Abilene Christian to Youngstown State.

Just A Minute: If community colleges are more your speed, check out http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/search.asp. It has over 500 community colleges from which to choose.

Research, Research, Research

Knowing how to get to other universities and their resources is valuable, of course, but it's research that really drives higher education. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could use the Internet to conduct some of that research?

Well, you can. Many journals and other research sources are already online, and more are joining them every day. Suppose you were a professor interested in 19th-century literature doing research on Edgar Allan Poe; where would you go?

An outstanding starting point would be the Washington and Lee University's Libraries and Research Web page at http://liberty.uc.wlu.edu/~dgrefe/various/libres.asp (see Figure 22.6). You would see jumping-off points for a variety of different research resources.

Figure 22.6.

Periodicals, libraries, electronic journals, reference sources, mailing lists, and more. You'd better guidemark this one!

Although the second section of this page says that the listed resources are for Washington and Lee departments, these resources are generally available for anyone interested in the related topics. You will note that there is a section on the Arts and Humanities; you'll return to them later.

First, you might want to try your hand at some of the general resources.

To Do: Look for Some Periodical Information

1. Click the Periodical Indexes link.

2. Go to UnCover. By the way, you might want to spend some time exploring UnCover more in-depth on your own time. It is an excellent resource in and of itself.

3. Scroll down and click Search the UnCover Databases.

4. Next, click Search UnCover Now.

5. From the search page, type Poe on line 2 and press Enter.

6. At the time of this search, there were 151 articles about Poe. I found one article titled "The Violence of Melancholy: Poe against Himself," published in the Fall 1996 American Literary History periodical (see Figure 22.7).

Figure 22.7.

There is a wealth of information about Edgar Allan Poe being written even today.

If you go back to the Libraries and Research page, you might want to explore a few of the other general resources available. In particular to our topic, following these paths will take you to even more information:

Electronic Journals | Philosophy and Literature | Search | edgar AND poe will find a lot of related articles available through Project Muse, which is a pay for service database.
Other Library Catalogs/Libweb/Keyword Search/search fo Humanities/Getty Research Institute/Iris on the Web/General Keywords/edgar poe will find 33 resources, including a particularly interesting guide on Poe written in 1908.
Reference Sources | Argus Clearinghouse | Humanities | Search | edgar and poe/Edgar Allen Poe/hypertex will take you to a Web page that points to entire Web sites devoted to Edgar Allen Poe.

Before you're finished at Washington and Lee, take a look at one of the departmental links available.

To Do: Link Up with the Department

1. Click Arts and Humanities.

2. Next, click English and then select the Literary Resources and Guides option.

3. Now choose Literary Resources on the Net, and click the American category on the resulting page.

4. The next page shows a large number of links all related to American Literary resources. Scroll down and click Nineteenth-Century, and on the next page, find the 19th-Century link and click it.

5. Finally, scroll down the page until you find the entire section dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe pictured in Figure 22.8.

Before you go on, it is important to remember once again that, even though you chose to explore a 19th-century American author, you could have just as easily searched for information on modern quantum mechanics theory or the latest writings on supply-side economics. The topic really is irrelevant; the process is not.

Figure 22.8.

This mysterious 19th-century bard seems to have followers everywhere.

Summary

This lesson gave you some examples of what can be found on the Internet for educators at all levels. You learned how to find listservs and newsgroups to talk to colleagues and find information. As an added bonus, you found out how you can find educational software that you can actually use.

In addition, you are now able to find any university in the world through the Internet. Finally, with the help of Washington and Lee University, you can now look for research information on just about any topic.

Q&A

Q I'm really surprised you didn't mention ERIC. Isn't it accessible on the Internet?

A It sure is! Go to http://www.askeric.org for information on education. Visit its virtual library, ask one of its staff a hard-to-answer question through its Question and Answer service, or search its ERIC database. I didn't cover it because it is very easy to use and lots of guides cover it. I wanted to give you some more in-depth coverage of resources that might be just as useful, but possibly harder to find and use.

Q It sounds like you could probably write a whole guide on education and the Internet. Does one already exist?

A Yes. Education on the Internet by Jill Ellsworth (Sams Publishing, ISBN: 0-672-30595-X) is still available. Even though it is now more than two years old, it still contains a lot of useful information.

Workshop

The following workshop helps solidify the skills that you learned in this lesson.

Quiz

Take the following quiz to see how much you've learned.

Questions

1. When searching for a mathematics education newsgroup, what term would most likely find a newsgroup for you? (a) math

(b) mathematics

math education
2. Which of the following would not be a likely way to use the Internet for most K-12 teachers in their instruction? (a) Location and use of educational software

(b) Collaboration with other schools or educators

Real-time video collaboration with other students around the world
3. True or False: After you have a good starting point for doing research, the topic on which you are trying to find information really isn't that important.

Answers

1. (a)

2. The TV commercials look nice, but most schools simply aren't ready to take advantage of this technology yet.

3. True. The method, not the specific subject, is the important thing when doing research on the Internet.

Activities

For K-12 teachers:

Using the methods you learned in this chapter, find at least one listserv and one newsgroup related to what you teach. Using a project that you already use for your class, see if you can turn it into a collaborative project and locate a school or teacher to share it with.

For post-secondary educators:

Pick a topic on which you currently need information and, using the techniques and sites you learned about in this lesson, find at least five resources on the Internet to help you.