Internet & Education

What exactly is the Internet?

A short history of the Internet
Originated by the US Department of Defense as a communications network designed to survive a nuclear war, it transmits messages, text, and multimedia across an expanding international network of computers.

How to find useful information.

Search Engines:
Yahoo
Subject based search engine. All sites are categorized and sorted into a hierarchical directory.
ADVANTAGE - edits out irrelevant or poor sites
DISADVANTAGE - not all-encompasing
Altavista
Robot search engine. Robot software visits each Web server and indexes pages by keyword.
ADVANTAGE - As close to everything on the Web as possible.
DISADVANTAGE - your query ends up with irrelevant sites more often.
MetaCrawler
Meta search engines submit simultaneous queries to multiple search engines, correlating the results.
ADVANTAGE - Lets you use more than one search engine at the same time.
DISADVANTAGE - can be slow, and for most searches its overkill.

Search Help:
Internet Scout Tips for Searching
Power Search Tips
Where to search for anything

Mailing Lists.

Mailing lists automatically send e-mail on selected topics on a regular basis, like one a week or once a month. They are an execellent way to keep up with developments and contact other educators in your specialty area.

Mailing Lists I Subscribe To:
Education First:
Updates and information about initialtive funded by Pacific Bell to integrate Internet into the classroom.
The Internet Scout Report:
An invaluable resource for keeping up with Internet additions. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, it sends out a listing annotated with intelligent and useful comments of new additions to the Web. Its site also has other useful resources like an Internet toolkit and a site K.I.D.S. maintained by K-12 students.
Edupage:
A weekly newsletter compiling changes and developments in technology and how they impact education.

Finding Other Lists:
Mailing List Search:
This useful tool indexes over 90,000 mailing lists, providing descriptions and instructions for joining a list.

Some Interesting Web Sites:

The Math Forum:
An online math education community center funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
The NY Times Learning Network:
Resources for students grades 6-12, teachers, and parents.
From Beowulf to Lear:
Home page of a course taught at Pace University where students produce Web page related to literature from the Middle Ages.
From Jesus to Christ -- The First Christians:
Companion web site for PBS series on the beginnings of the Christian church, with links to maps and original source material.
Resources for Middle School Teachers:
A list of sites collected by the Eastchester, NY Middle School for all subject areas.

Suggestions for Future Workshops:

• Introduction to HTML
• Web Page Design
• Internet Projects for the Classroom

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comments to author: cdwyer@pace.edu,  
all contents copyright (c) 1999, Catherine Dwyer. All rights reserved. 
Revised: 1/7/99