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THE NET INVADES THE CLASSROOM
Academia is smitten with the Web, but the effectiveness of many
Contents schoolhouse efforts is something that still needs studying
The 3 Rs + WWW
From ambitious plans to wire the nation's schools to ground-breaking
Beyond The Glitz applications that bring the power of the Web to students and teachers,
the education community is embracing the Internet as a vital new
Enter Internet 2 teaching tool.
Reaping Dividends It seems only fitting that the Internet should play a major role in
education today, since its roots go back to university researchers who
MORE ONLINE helped shape the ever-exploding World Wide Web.
Academia-universities at first, but very quickly even K-12 institutions-have enthusiastically
grabbed hold of the Web.
Now that some of the newness is gone, the question remains: How effective are these
educational efforts? Despite its allure and the success of many leading-edge educational sites,
the results of many school projects are mixed.
The 3 Rs + WWW
"The traditional educational infrastructure is there, and will be there for a very long time. We'll
always have textbooks and classrooms," says James Hake, chairman and founder of the GII
Awards organization based in Foster City, Calif.
The awards were founded in 1995 to recognize new models and best practices in Internet and
communications applications, including education.
"Finding ways to integrate Web technology into classrooms can be very powerful. In some ways,
wiring the schools is the easy part. Transforming education from a process standpoint to take
advantage of these new technologies is really the hard part," Hake says.
Indeed, as InternetWeek launches this six-part series examining the Internet's impact on key
industries and institutions-culminating in the GII Awards presentation to be held in New York next
March-we believe there's no better place to start than with education, which provides a foundation
for the future.
Past GII Award finalists in the education category demonstrate the kind of thinking that academia
can bring to Internet technologies with the right funding and vision.
These Internet achievers have presented the inner workings of cells via Net-delivered video clips;
they have followed the Pathfinder space probe to Mars; and they have learned about the nation's
past via an online collection of historically significant digital photos.
The awards have helped bring to light some best-practice applications that show what is possible
when educators bring the Net into the schoolhouse.
Yet, for all these success stories, there's a lot more to implementation than simply running a few
wires or posting some home pages. Education experts say the Web has begun to penetrate
schools, but they report mixed results in terms of how effectively schools are using these new
technologies and whether teachers are properly trained to use them.
The sheer numbers are impressive. More than 8,000 schools have registered home pages with
Web66, a Web site that tracks K-12 home pages on the Web (web66.coled.umn.edu). About 20
new pages register every day, and about twice as many pages are live but unregistered, says
Stephen Collins, network specialist at the University of Minnesota, College of Education and
Human Development, and Webmaster for the Access Minnesota site
(www.mes.umn.edu/accessmn).
Beyond The Glitz
However, probably only several hundred schools are actively using the Web in the classroom,
says Collins. "A lot of schools have grabbed on to the glitz of the Web, and announced their
presence. There's lots of fancy graphics and animated GIFs. I'm not sure that's progress," he
says.
Fewer schools, he contends, are using the Web for what it does best: enabling "kids to do
research, to communicate with other kids, and to publish reports to the Web," says Collins. "What
you see in schools these days is that the top administrators know about the Web, and they want
control. Unfortunately, that takes away the creativity and initiative."
The problem, say educators, is technology alone isn't enough. Teachers need to learn how to use
computers and networks as teaching tools; they also need proper funding for their ideas. Some
technology education experts estimate that 5 percent of the annual per-pupil education costs
need to go to technology implementation and training if projects are to succeed.
"The main practical issue in most of the schools we've looked at is professional development and
teacher training," says Talbot Bielefeldt, research associate and Webmaster for the International
Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), which is working on standards and accreditation for
bringing technology into classrooms.
"The need is insatiable, in part because of the constant changes in technology. You can wire up a
classroom and make a technology leap of 50 years in a few weeks, but the teachers can't make
that 50-year jump so quickly."
Helping to fuel those leaps into the future in many cases is the federal government.
In a memo last April from the White House to the heads of all executive agencies and
departments, President Clinton outlined a call to action to bring every classroom and library to
the Internet by the year 2000.
More specifically, he asked every agency to deliver resources to schools as learning aids. Some
federal grants are available to institutions, as are funds from private and corporate sources.
Unfortunately, not all schools know how to find these resources.
The Feds are off to a fast start. For example, the White House has a "White House for Kids"
home page, as do many of the other executive agencies. Elsewhere, the AskERIC (Education
Resources Information Center),which is supported by the Department of Education, has more
than 900 lesson plans for K-12, accessible via the Internet (ericir.syr.edu). And Lawrence
Berkeley Laboratories (www.lbl.gov)-with the support of the National Science Foundation, the
Department of Energy and the Department of Defense-has developed a program that lets high
school students request and download over the Internet observations from the university's
telescopes.
More ambitious is Internet 2, the "next version" of the Internet being planned by more than 100
universities and supported by the Clinton administration. Participating universities are shelling out
about $50 million to jump-start the project, which promises to run 100 times faster than today's
Internet using high-speed and high-bandwidth technologies. Internet 2 is part of the Clinton
administration's $100 million Next Generation Internet initiative (www.internet2.edu).
Enter Internet 2
Internet 2 is seen as a test bed for next-generation applications including real-time virtual reality
research, multimedia digital libraries and more. Like the original, Internet 2 will initially serve
research and academic needs, with the technology eventually moving into the public sector.
But with broadband Internet access still some ways off, today the emphasis is on getting even the
most basic Internet connections into schools. Teachers can't worry about how to use the In-ternet
if their schools aren't wired first.
Perhaps the most visible is a volunteer effort to wire up schools called NetDay (www.netday.org).
The first NetDay was held in March 1996 in California, with an estimated 100,000 volunteers
wiring 4,000 institutions-almost a third of California's K-12 schools.
Up next is NetDay 97, slated for October 25. Its goal? To get all of America's 130,000 public and
private K-12 schools to make at least one connection to the Internet and participate in a NetDay
"Internet Roll Call," says John Gage, co-founder of NetDay and chief scientist at Sun
Microsystems.
The Internet gives teachers and classrooms access "to a vast cornucopia of materials," says
Gage. "It takes time for teachers to explore, but suddenly it's free. It enables access to
information to a whole set of schools that can't afford to replace outdated textbooks."
NetDay-which was a finalist in last year's GII Awards in the Public Access category-is not the only
attempt to bootstrap networks into schools.
Other projects that have caught the attention of the GII Awards include Access Minnesota; the
Los Angeles Public Library's Virtual Electronic Library (www.lapl.org); and the North Carolina
Information Highway (www.state.nc.us).
Literally thousands of these so-called "community" networks have sprung up, often based on
partnerships among community schools, government organizations and universities.
In some cases, schools have even played the lead role in getting a town wired. In Mendocino,
Calif., the Mendocino Unified School District runs its community network as a business, providing
access to 56-kilobit-per-second modem dial-up, ISDN, frame relay and more.
The school district serves more than 2,000 paying customers, which lets them deliver free
accounts to its schools, including ISDN to school LANs and dial-up accounts for all the district's
teachers, according to Rennie Innis, the program's business manager.
With connectivity in place, the Internet is woven into all the schools' curriculum, including a class
called "Windows to the Future," which uses computers and the Internet as tools in regular school
subjects. "Rather than taking a class in computers, the students use technology and the Internet
as part of their English and history lessons," according to Innis.
For NetDay founder Gage: "The wiring of schools is an absolutely critical component for creating
a base from which all these other activities and applications can take place."
Reaping Dividends
Indeed, once educators and students have access to the Web, compelling applications follow
quickly. And those applications pay major dividends in the classroom.
"Many students in class go way beyond the expectations of the teacher if they have access to
technology that lets them explore subjects at their own pace, and go out and look for more
information if they want to," says Bonnie Bracey, director of networks at the McGuffey Project,
which is working at bringing technology into schools.
Bracey is also a teacher in Arlington County, Va., and a judge for the GII Awards Education
category.
According to Bracey, the best Net-based education applications not only consist of a cool Web
site that costs a lot to develop, but an integrated curriculum that helps teachers deliver the
information to their students.
Last year's GII Award winner in the education category is a good example of such an approach.
The Jason Project VII: Adapting to a Changing Sea-the brainchild of scientist and explorer Bob
Ballard, who discovered the Titanic among other expeditions-immediately draws children in with
topics about undersea exploration.
Who wouldn't be interested in an underwater ocean habitat? But integrated lesson plans and
interactive events like Net-delivered video footage and online chats make the information not just
interesting, but educational, says Tim Armour, the executive founder of The Jason Foundation
(www.jason.org).
"We provide teachers with all the information they need in the classroom to participate in the
Jason project," Armour says. "The Internet has the opportunity to make education much more
intimate and personalized. It is ironic because the Internet is much more broad-scaled than other
mediums, yet it has the potential to be much more individualized."
Other education category finalists also demonstrate the power of Net-based applications. "CELLS
alive!," a sort of off-the-cuff project of videographer James Sullivan, gives students access to
video footage of cells in action. "It's very visual, and we put together short vignettes about the
cells and what they are doing" says Sullivan, whose Web-savvy sons prodded him to put his work
online (www.cellsalive.com).
One of the biggest backers of education and the Internet is NASA, whose K-12 initiative was a
finalist in last year's GII Awards. Using NASA's Quest site, (quest.arch.nasa.gov) students can
follow the space shuttle team online, including live chats with the crew, or they can track the Mars
Path-finder mission with live video feeds.
In the meantime, a Teacher's Lounge offers full lesson plans, online discussion groups, mailing
lists, and access to NASA scientists and teaching mentors to help teachers make the most of the
online materials.
In addition, The Odyssey in Egypt project-another GII Award finalist last year-racked an
archaeological excavation with online transcripts and chats, while engaging students and
teachers with fully integrated lesson plans, according to Steve Boggess of WebSite One,
technical developer of the site (www.scriptorium.org/odyssey).
"We didn't want to make it a slide show, we wanted to give it some real depth. We intended it to
be a jumping-off point for teachers in the classroom," Boggess says.
Indeed, that's what the Net seems most suited for in schools, say education experts: another tool-
albeit an extremely powerful one-that helps teachers make a connection with their students.
"We use technology in almost every aspect of our lives," says GII Awards judge Bracey. "Of
course, it can benefit our schools.
"The biggest challenge is getting teachers trained. As we get more computers and Internet
access and better software, the benefits increase depending on the ability of teachers to reach
students with all of this new technology," says Bracey.
MORE ONLINE
Read an article about the latest implementations of intranets by leading universities
For more information about how to apply for the GII Awards
www.internetwk.com/links
PHOTO (COLOR): GLOBAL POWER: GII chairman James Hake sees Web technology as a
powerful new tool for education.
PHOTO (COLOR): NEW CONNECTIONS: NetDay's John Gage
DIAGRAM: WHO YA GONNA ASK? -- The U.S. Department of Education's AskERIC home page
is an entry point to more than 900 lesson plans accessible on the Net.
Source: Dept. of Education
Chart by Jennifer Garman
DIAGRAM: GETTING SPACEY -- NASA is a big backer of education on the Internet. Using its
Quest site, students can follow the space shuttle team or track the mars Pathfinder online.
Source: NASA
Chart by Jennifer Garman
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By Richard Karpinski