Theos-Talk Archives (August 1997 Message tl00338)

Here is an interesting article on WWW.

I am posting it here so that you can see where computer/internet technology
is moving to.

The current generation of computer/web literate leaders take over the
leadership of organizations from computer/web *illiterate* leadership, we
will see very innovative changes and programs implemented so that for more
people can be reached and helped. Let us look to the next millenium as the
current one is already coming to an end.

.........mkr

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               August 15, 1997 3:57 pm EDT 

              Everything's Big in Texas-Including the Web

               Ziff Davis Wire Highlights
               14-AUG-97

ZDNet News (August 14, 1997) - While many teachers struggle to
convince administrators they need the Net, the Houston school
district already boasts a multitude of T-1 links--to each of its 290
schools, in fact. The K-12 district received this head start thanks to
a grassroots effort. Back in 1995, its staffers launched an
aggressive initiative to wire each school and to teach the teachers
to use the Internet to its full advantage. 

Now, less than two years later, the high school calculus teacher
who helped spearhead the project, Cynthia Lanius, points out that
it has produced numerous benefits, including some she didn't
expect. "My coolness factor among the students has increased by
an order of magnitude because I have a Web page," says Lanius. 

The Houston schools' teacher training and Internet curriculum
project, run by Lanius and sponsored by the National Science
Foundation-funded Center for Research on Parallel Computation at
Rice University, began as an effort to instruct 20 Houston teachers
to use the Internet in the classroom, and to increase girl students'
interest in math, science and computers. 

The GirlTECH program, which gained additional funding from an
Austin-based nonprofit educational concern, the RGK Foundation,
has now spread through neighboring suburban districts as the
original 20 teachers went on to train others. Some 2,500 Texas
teachers have now completed the program and learned to use the
Internet for research and collaboration and to design and publish
Web pages, write HTML code, and formulate girl-friendly
web-based math and science curricula, Lanius says. 

In the Houston schools, the result has been a math, science and
computer program that gives students hands-on experience with
the Web as a learning and collaboration tool. (See a list of lesson
plans at www.crpc.rice.edu/CRPC/Women/GirlTECH/Lessons/.)
The program also offers ongoing support groups for teachers, and
helps schools establish student technology councils to give kids
input on what they learn in computer science classes. 

The effort is growing exponentially, as teachers who have
completed the training publish their original course ideas on the
Web. "Some teachers then choose to go back and make a Web site
or their school based on what they learned in the program,"
Lanius says. 

As the program continues, Lanius hopes to increase E-mail
collaboration among teachers and to add new Internet training
programs for high school counselors and English teachers. 

The Houston district may be unique in the extent of its Internet
curricula, but a growing number of U.S. schools are moving in the
same direction, says Tammy Cunningham, executive producer of
K-12 Internet content for publisher Simon & Schuster and a new
media executive at education software publisher Computer
Curriculum Corp. 

Last year, some 14 percent of U.S. public schools had Internet
access in the classroom, but the number may be closer to 20
percent this year, Cunningham says. "Teachers tend to think of the
Internet primarily as a research vehicle, and we want them to go
beyond that." 

At teacher conventions across the United States, interest in
Web-based curricula is increasing despite the buzz such programs
generated in their earliest stages. "In 1995 and 1996, there was so
much hype about using the Web in the classroom that we thought
people might get burned out," Cunningham says. "But it's not going
away." 

By Maria Seminerio Copyright (c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing