Write a friend in Kenya. Get an answer back the same day, maybe within a couple of minutes. Talk in "real time" with a person on your network. Correspond with thousands of people at once, all over the world. Publish your own book. Publicize your own school. Get students involved in interactive science projects with other students in Germany, or Singapore, or across town. Buy a book. Register for a conference. Reserve an airline ticket and a hotel room at the lowest possible price. Read Shakespeare. Take a course on how to use the Internet.
Intrigued? ASCD can assist you in all of these ventures on the Internet, and help you select the information and resources you need.
If you have Internet access, but all you have is e-mail, don't despair. You can still communicate across the ether, you can participate in discussion groups, and you can subscribe to free online newsletters (called listservs) on virtually any subject. You can find "lists of lists" in any of the works cited in the Resources box.
For example, to subscribe to ASCD's biweekly online newsletter, ASCD Education Bulletin, send an e-mail message to (majordomo@odie.ascd.org) with the words "subscribe bulletin" as the body of the message (don't include quotation marks). You will receive an e-mail message verifying your subscription; then you will receive regular issues, automatically delivered to your e-mail address. Each issue presents short descriptions of current education reports, news items, and guides to the world of the Internet.
Are you saying, "Wait a minute. I think I need to know more, first"? Consider subscribing to an Internet course online. Many online tutorials are available. One is NETCLASS. To subscribe free, send an e-mail message to (listserv@max.cc.uregina.ca). In the body of the message, type "sub NETCLASS your name." You will receive notification of your subscription, then further information by e-mail.
A tutorial that many ASCD staffers have used is ROADMAP. You can obtain all the classes by sending e-mail to (listserv@ua1vm.ua.edu) with the message: "GET MAP PACKAGE F=MAIL." A computer at the University of Alabama will send you further simple e-mail commands to help you retrieve the lessons, which humorously lead you through the maze of e-mail, telnet, ftp, gopher, WAIS, and the World Wide Web (WWW). ROADMAP is also on the Web (along with other tutorials), at (http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/crispen.html).
Other listservs function as discussion groups—your letter (a "posting") is sent to everyone on the list. For example, you can subscribe to EdNet by sending a message to (listproc@lists.umass.edu). In the body of the message, type "subscribe ednet your name." To post messages after you subscribe, send a message to (ednet@lists.umass.edu). (Be prepared for lots of messages!) To participate in the famous (and infamous) Usenet newsgroups, you need a "news reader"—a service supplied by many Internet providers.
Finally, you can obtain information by simple e-mail requests. One amazing service is operated by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) at Syracuse University. A real person will answer your inquiry about resources available on, say, performance-based assessment. Send e-mail to (askeric@ericir.syr.edu). Similarly, you can obtain information from a real ASCD staffer by sending e-mail to (info@ascd.org) or (member@ascd.org).
Gopher and Lynx
These two woodland creatures are smarter than you think. Most Internet providers offer "gopher" software that burrows around the 'Net and lets you obtain ("download") documents from computers around the world. ASCD's gopher site (gopher.ascd.org) offers a world of information, from full texts of selected Educational Leadership articles (see the Technology issues of 1994 and 1995) to descriptions of upcoming conferences, professional development institutes, and recently published books. This information is also available on ASCD's Web site.
Lynx is a different animal, found on many basic Internet services. It uses "hypertext" links (get it?) to jump from computer network to computer network on the Internet. Using the lynx command, you can access the Web through plain text displays—highlighted to show the hypertext links—on your screen. (You can download graphics to your own computer and view them later through various graphic software programs you might have.)
World Wide Web
The Web combines many Internet functions, including gopher, e-mail, hypertext links, and graphics. And video, and sound, and flashing lights, and "clickable" maps, and "chat" rooms, and interactive games, and books, and "zines," and galleries. . . . User-friendly is the word here.
ASCD's "home page" is at the URL (universal resource locator) (http://www.ascd.org). You need "browser" software like Netscape Navigator or Mosaic, a good modem, and an upgraded Internet service to access the Web graphically.
Make this page your home! (Your WWW browser has a place for you to designate your home page.) ASCD constantly updates the information available, from plans for the 1997 ASCD Annual Conference in Baltimore, Md., to descriptions of the latest ASCD books, to useful and fascinating links to educational Web sites around the world. Use your mouse to click on "Publications," and you might decide to investigate what EL articles are available for you to download to your own computer, print, e-mail to someone else, or add to your browser's "bookmark" file of Web addresses you want to save.
Click on "Professional Development" (or on an appealing "kid's drawing" logo) and you will discover that ASCD will hold a new conference on assessment in Dallas, Texas, in October. You can also send e-mail from the page to an ASCD staffer for more information. Click on the "Dallas" links to explore hotels, entertainment, and the arts and culture of the city.
Interested in assessment? Click on "search" at the top of ASCD's home page, enter the term "assessment," and you'll find many items you can click on to explore. Maybe you're intrigued by Assessing Student Outcomes: Performance Assessment Using the Dimensions of Learning. You click on this title, discover that this recent book is $13.95, and remember that you heard one of the authors, Robert Marzano, speak at a conference once. There's even an order form you could fill out.
You have a little time now for "surfing." You go back to the home page and click on "Education Information (Web Links)" and discover Yahoo. You've heard of that, and you decide to do a sort of backward search, just for fun; so you enter "ascd" in the Yahoo search form. Yes! There's a citation of ASCD Education Update, so you click on it and find that someone else has linked to ASCD publications. You go to the home page of that organization and discover that the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at Berkeley, Calif., is impressed by this newsletter.
Vocational education. Another interest of yours. So you "bookmark" this page to come back to later. Another simple click. (A bookmark is the electronic equivalent of turning down the corner of your page. Your Web browser has software that allows you—encourages you—to do this electronically. A bookmark saves the address, or link, to the Web site you just visited, in a file on your own computer. Then, later, you can use the file to retrieve the electronic "page" from the far-off computer where it lives.)
Then you remember that a colleague needs some language arts activities to spark his students' interest. So you go back to the Web Links and click on Language Arts. A couple of links down is a marvelous collection by a teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Conn.—everything from Macbeth to the "Busy Teachers Web Site," ERIC (yes, ERIC is on the Web in a big way), the "Nebraska Center for Writers," Time magazine, and the Edgar Allan Poe page (and you note that ASCD is listed, also!). The home of all this info is the Falcon Education Link at (http://www.falconedlink.com/falcon/quick.html). You not only bookmark this site, you print it out and make copies for your colleagues and e-mail it to a principal you know in Seattle.
By now, you've spent 45 minutes on the Web, and look at all you've accomplished. You have found a way to further your professional development by attending an ASCD conference, you have browsed ASCD's new books, you have helped colleagues find resources for students, you have networked professionally with an old friend, you have felt like a successful "techie," and you have had fun while you were learning.
Resources
Resources
ASCD Education Bulletin. (Archived on the ASCD Web site: http://www.ascd.org)
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (1996). Teaching & Learning on the Internet (2-tape video and Facilitator's Guide). Alexandria, Va.: ASCD. (For ordering or rental information, e-mail ASCD at info@ascd.org or go to the ASCD Web site.)
Giagnocavo, G., et al. (1995). Educator's Internet Companion (with diskette and video). Lancaster, Pa.: Wentworth Worldwide Media.
Harris, J. (1995). The Way of the Ferret: Finding and Using Educational Resources on the Internet. Eugene, Ore.: International Society for Technology in Education.
"How Technology Is Transforming Schools." (October 1995). Educational Leadership 53, 2. Entire issue.
Krol, E. (1994). The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, 2nd ed. Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. (The Whole Internet Catalog is also found on the Web site: http://gnn.com/gnn/wic/index.html)
"Realizing the Promise of Technology." (April 1994). Educational Leadership 51, 7. Entire issue.