Cyberspace - September 1997

Have you seen Staples' TV ad for back-to-school supplies? It's humorous (we'd link you to the staples.com Web site, but it's boring - no reference to the ad campaign): The father is jubilantly running around the Staples store grabbing supplies to the theme of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," while his children stand by woodenly and watch. Well, we real parents probably aren't quite that jubilant, but we are happy to have survived the first week of school, right? And now we have more time to think about the onslaught of homework, science projects, dioramas, etc.

The Internet can help. This month we're focusing on homework with the Web for students and their parents. In this issue, you'll find:

• A parent's story about his daughter's Web work.
• Two Web-savvy teachers' tips for parents on schoolwork and the 'Net.
• Some top Homework Help links.

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We've found some interesting sources for this letter. James Napoleon, whom we introduce below, lives in Kent, Conn., where his Web-using daughter Claire goes to public school. Library director and teacher Marel Rogers - who offers tips to parents of Web-using students - is also in Kent, but uses the Internet as a teaching tool at Kent School, a private boarding and day school in that town. Kent has a population of just over 1,000 people (and no movie theater!), and both its schools have laptop-for-students programs (see the links below for more information). Chicago junior-high science teacher Judy Whitcomb offers tips for parents from her urban-school perspective.

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Interview with a Web-user's dad
James Napoleon, an information and graphic designer, e-mailed us this past summer with his story about his daughter's experience with the Web. Claire, we note, has the expectations of a professional journalist or researcher for the freshest of information for her work. This is undoubtedly one way the Internet is affecting education, the media, and our children.

"Claire is 13 years old and 'computer literate' as a result of her school's being awarded a state (Connecticut) grant funding Toshiba/Microsoft laptop computers for every 7th-grade student. That was last year; the students keep the laptops through 8th grade. In this very structured program, the students are not permitted to use their laptops for online access (mainly in fear of viruses)."

But Claire has access in another, very safe environment: "I have a home office with Internet access, as do many of the parents of Claire's classmates; thus Claire is aware of the Web as a resource - and as a source of entertainment. While school was in session Claire would go online at least once each week for research, usually Sunday evening, mainly for social studies and science homework, not math or 'language arts' (i.e., English), or foreign language. Claire announced flatly she dislikes encyclopedias - even CD-ROM encyclopedias - because 'the information is old.'

"For example, there was an extended social studies unit in which each student was assigned a country - Claire's was Morocco - and required to prepare a travel plan, write 'letters home' (from a hypothetical visit to their assigned country), and present a culture demonstration on their country.

"Claire used the American Airlines Web site for the travel plan, finding fares, mileage charts, connection to other carriers, and aircraft-seating and amenities charts via easy-to-use forms on the site (she printed the results and composed her report offline).

"Claire used the Maghreb (a northern Africa tourism organization) site to locate details, including photos, of current attractions, events and places of interest for her 'letter home.' And she returned to Magreb to find recipes for couscous and mint tea - Moroccan ubiquities - which she prepared and served to her classmates as her 'culture report.' I seem to recall Claire's searching and printing pages on various small mammals and amphibians (squirrel monkeys, turtles, etc.) for science homework."

We asked James about how or whether he supervises Claire's time on the Web, and his answer represents some practical advice for parents echoed by many wise Web sources.

"I never leave the room while Claire is online. Not that I camp right beside her at the monitor - I just find something to do in the room so that I can be aware of what is going on. Of course I am concerned about her stumbling onto pornography (I have no such sites bookmarked!) and even, to a lesser extent, her seeking it out, especially if friends are with her. I am also not convinced of the supposed 'anonymity' of Web use, so I try to be alert to how Claire uses sites which might attract stalkers (i.e., child-oriented sites). I do not use chat personally, so chat is disabled on my PC, and so far Claire has not shown any interest in using it.

"She does not spend a lot of time online each session, usually about 30 minutes, for homework; for entertainment - trading Beanie Babies, teen bulletin boards, etc. - I usually chase her off after an hour online."

We asked James if he had any other tips for fellow parents, and he prefaced them with, "Note I am a part-time single parent....

"I feel my investing the time in thoroughly showing Claire how to search was worthwhile. She spends less time being frustrated by vast choices and less time online overall. I showed her three search engines in particular: Yahoo!, Alta Vista and HotBot, and pointed out their characteristics. I urged her to make narrow searches of Yahoo! categories, and showed her how to edit long URLs to get to a site base.

"I have learned that kids - like adults - are frustrated by long download waits and the ever-present peril of becoming 'lost' in hyperspace."

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Marel E. Rogers, library director/9th-grade General Studies teacher, Kent School, Kent, Conn.
Last year was Kent School's first for being connected to the 'Net - but only partially. Marel said that her building, which includes the library and the math and Classics classrooms, was the only one connected last year; but over the summer the school spent $1 million to wire all buildings, including dorms. Meanwhile, Kent School put up the required funds to participate in the Microsoft-Toshiba laptop program. Last year 60% of students had laptops (though all students were invited to purchase them and all financial-aid students were loaned them, some parents were skeptical), but this year 90% of the students are expected to have laptops. So this will be Marel's second year of incorporating the Internet in her teaching, and here's what she offers parents of students like hers (more on how she teaches next month):

• "The best thing parents can do is use the 'Net themselves as much as possible. Otherwise you won't understand what your children are seeing. It's like rock music: Even if you hate it you better listen to it, because your kids are.
• "I always find a really awful site and say this isn't true." Then she helps them figure out how to find what *is* true. "Anybody with 50 bucks can build a page. I try to warn them that everything they read isn't true. There are no safety checks on anything put on the Web. We go through books in the library in the same way. A book published in 1958 dealing with race relations - what is its focus going to be? Look at date, see when published. Double-check with someone who has to go through some kind of vetting before their information is published.
• "I also point out to them sites that do things well. The one I'm going to start out with this fall is whiteflowerfarm.com. It's beautifully done, gives you good information, but it doesn't overwhelm you with information.
• "I think everybody should try to create a page of their own. If you can make an outline, you can make a Web page. Buy Microsoft Word and get Internet Assistant - or Word for '97 has it built in; it automatically saves documents to html. There are [html] programs for less than a lovely dinner for four."
• Parents can encourage their kids' schools to put up Web pages. "But there certainly should be direction. I'd steer you to the Dalton School's site - their students' pages are fairly impressive. Please don't compare Kent to Dalton. They have been doing this with Macintoshes for many years, so Dalton's is a mature site."

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Judith Lachance-Whitcomb, 8th-grade science teacher, Jordan Community School, Chicago
This will be the third year Judy has incorporated the Internet into her teaching, an outgrowth of CoVis (for Collaborative Visualization) - a program run by Northwestern University and primarily funded by the National Science Foundation to improve science education with the help of technology. The Jordan Community School is a low-income city school for pre-K through 8th grades. We interviewed Judy to find out how she uses the Web in her teaching (for next month's issue) and what parents can do to support the process. She prefaced her tips with: "Primarily, I would like to remind parents that while the technology may be new, the techniques for supporting their children's academic growth are not. I would suggest the following.

• "Share in the experience. Talk with your children about what they are learning/doing. Whether or not you have access to the technology or whether you know anything about it, your children will be eager to share their experiences.
• "Talk with the instructors who are using this technology in their programs. Ask questions like the following: How does this technology enhance your curriculum? How will my child be using this technology? Will you be evaluating my child's use of the technology? If so, how do you assess that use? Will my child be communicating with anyone through e-mail? If so, who?
• "If at all possible, volunteer in the technology-enhanced classroom for one or more days/periods. This will give you a clear view as to how the technology is used and the benefits of it.
• "All schools opening their doors to the world at large through the use of innovative technology and collaboration tools such as the Internet, e-mail, CU-SeeMe, etc., should have a uniform acceptable-use policy. Parents and guardians as well as the students should be required to read and sign this form at the beginning of the school year. Make sure you have received it and if not ask the local school about it.
• "Try to experience the technology yourself. If you don't have the resources in your home, check out local schools, libraries, community centers, higher education institutions, continuing-education facilities, etc. These institutions often offer free or low-cost overview sessions. If these are not available to you, suggest to the administration at your school to have several "Parents Surfing" nights. You do not have to become an expert but a sense of the frustrations and excitement that your child is experiencing will develop.
• "Realize that this technology will not in itself provide an end to all of your child's academic woes. It is, after all, a tool for learning. As with all tools their strength lies in their use
• "While we did not have this technology when we went to school, it is now a very integral part of your child's future. The gateway into the 21st century will be accessed through the new and innovative resources developed in recent years.

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Homework help
We figure you'd prefer quality over quantity in this area, so here are a handful of what we feel are top sites for research and other home and classroom work - a few courtesy of Consumer Reports magazine last May.

"B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper" is an excellent collection of research links tested by the author himself, 10-year-old B.J. (what better source?) of New Brighton, Penn. Unless you need to be highly specialized in your research, you won't find a much better start for researching a paper or report. The page, which in itself is a wonderful example of a powerful parent-child Web project, has won 87 Web awards, B.J. writes.

For original research (direct from the specialists themselves) there's the NJNIE (New Jersey Networking Infrastructure in Education) project's "Ask an Expert Page".

And from nearly everybody's favorite Web directory, there's Yahooligans!' "Homework Answers" page.

Here's a research site that many journalists use and swear by: the Electric Library. You have to pay to use this one ($9.95/mo. or $59.95/year), but journalists we've talked to say it's really worth it - and one total devotee said he had to pay for it himself, because his employer wouldn't let him expense it every month. You can test it out thoroughly before you decide with the e-library.com's one-month free trial.

Many, many sites and studious surfers have recommended Studyweb, a research service provided by American Computer Resources, Inc., a discount technology equipment provider to schools. Studyweb is also recommended by...

...the "Our Picks" page in the youth section of the Christian Science Monitor's Web site, the "e-Monitor" - where you'll find a few other useful homework-help links.

For the sciences, science teacher Judy Whitcomb recommends some sites she's pointed her students to: CoVis's Geosciences Web Server, a very useful resources page on the Georgia Tech server, National Geographic's "Fantastic Forest", and the US Forest Service's lichens page. And we found two other great sciences sites at Apple: The Great Globe Gallery and Geology Field Trips.

For statistics, there are three great sites, recommended by readers of the Wall Street Journal: The US Census's Web site, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, and the White House Briefing Room (with data from a number of government departments).

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FYI: Some links about the technology grants for schools mentioned in this issue...

• The comprehensive AskERIC InfoGuide on Grants for K-12 Educational Technology
• Academic Notebook Systems' links page on the laptops/notebooks-for-schools subject
• Microsoft's page about the Microsoft/Toshiba laptop program for schools

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Do your children work with the Internet in and after school? We'd love to get your thoughts on the impact you feel the 'Net is having on their education. And tell us what you'd like to see in future editions of The Sage Letter. E-mail us anytime!

Next month: a preview of the Families Online Summit in December and an update on the 'Net in school - insights from Marel, Judy, and other teachers.