This is a tour of Internet resources, focusing on those of particular interest to teachers in primary and secondary schools and moving out to some resources for academe and interested explorers generally. It was compiled at the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System (IHETS) in conjunction with IHETS' participation in technology demonstrations accompanying the NTIA Universal Service and Open Access Hearing in Indianapolis, Indiana, on July 12, 1994. Information about other resources has been added since then. We hope you enjoy it.
Not surprisingly, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois (home of Mosaic) offers many interesting Web resources on their servers. Their "Internet Resources for the K12 Classroom" has lots of links worth following.
NCSA's Resources for K12 The heading "Krannert Art Museum" leads you to a generous sampling of images from this University of Illinois campus art collection, each with an accompanying text file about the image and the artist.
Krannert Art Museum Or try this - a link to Berkeley's Hall of Dinosaurs.
OK, Take Me to the Dinosaurs
As Internet connections proliferate, schools aren't waiting for the "pro's" to create or compile interesting resources. Teachers and students in a growing number of public schools, have experimented with their own Web servers. Take a look at an innovative experiment in hypermedia and collaboration at the elementary level:
Hillside Elementary School At the Hillside Elementary School in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, which bills itself as "the second elementary school in the World on the Web." With support from Distributed Computing Services at the University of Minnesota, Hillside sixth graders have not only created individual home pages but also have placed their group Internet research projects on the server in hypermedia format. Most are the usual "this is our report" with a graphic or two added, but take a look at the one on the Shoemaker-Levy comet, due to crash into Jupiter between the 16th and 21st of July. The first two links aren't operational: the third links you to an Arizona server featuring detailed information about the comet, including images from the Hubble Space Telescope and ground telescopes. (Be sure to check out the first graphic on the Shoemaker-Levy server!)
Collaborative Research Project on the Shoemaker-Levy Comet
The Global Schoolhouse Technology Demonstration Project, funded by the National Science Foundation and other sponsors, began publicizing its Web server in June. Materials you can reach from there focus on "examples of students and teachers publishing information on the Internet, as well as hints, resources and tools." Their home page includes a link to the Global Schoolhouse gopher server and also to a resource cutely labeled "Janice's K12 Cyberspace Outpost."
Global Schoolhouse From the Outpost, you can proceed to "Janice's BIG K12 Gopher" and its link to a lengthy collection of "Schools Online." Most, in this case, are secondary schools.
Schools Online All Over
From Donald Perkins, who is involved with the project:"The Houston Independent School District and Rice University have collaborated in the development of Armadillo's World Wide Web Server, which presents resources and instructional material to support an interdisciplinary course of study with a Texas theme (along with other resources pertinent to the K-12 educational community)."
Armadillo's WWW Server Linking to "Armadillo's K12 Internet Resources" will give you access to various resources, in Texas and around the net. "Super Projects!" is a link to COSN (Consortium for School Networking) projects including links to listservs and newsgroups with an educational focus.
Educators' Guide to ListServs (COSN)
Educators' Guide to Newsgroups (COSN)
The Midwest's regional network organization, CICNet, has on its Gopher server an interesting collection of resources, including a file of information about various World Wide Web projects. The documents you'll find here provide an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the Internet's offerings in primary and secondary education. From your Web browser, use this URL:
CICNet's Gopher Server The directory "Other CICNet Projects and Gopher Servers" listing includes "K-12 on the Internet," which offers gateways to World Wide Web sites, an extensive file of ideas Ð many written by teachers who've tried them out Ð called "Internet in the Classroom," library catalogs, listservs, and education-related publications.
CICNet's Internet in the Classroom
Regular updating is a feature of a gopher "run by the Office of Telecommunications Policy Analysis and Development, at the New York State Education Department in Albany NY..... The gopher administrator ... (is) a member of the Office of Elementary, Middle and Secondary Education." Among their goals: "to provide a gathering and organizing place for resources which may be of use to the classroom teacher." Items are updated at least monthly, according to their "About This Gopher" document, and browsers are welcome to send them information about other resources to add. Of particular interest: the directories "Education News," within which most items include the publication date in their titles; "Internet Resources;" and "K-12 Resources" categorized by subject area.
New York State Education Department Gopher Server
Staff from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's Division for Libraries and Community Learning have put together a home page with "special emphasis ... on locating resources of interest to the K-12 and public library communities." Their Web page, a combination of narrative and lists, includes nearly a hundred hypertext links to other net resources. Bob Bocher of the Wisconsin State Library notes, "In deference to these two groups who often have slower SLIP or PPP access (if they have any access at all!) all inline graphics in the WisDPI page total less than 5k. All clickable graphics include the file size in parentheses."
Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction Home Page
"RFC 1578" is not a catchy title, but its information's invaluable for those looking to effect Internet access in primary and secondary schools. The goal of this February 1994 IETF report: "to document the questions most commonly asked about the Internet by those in the primary and secondary school community, and to provide pointers to sources which answer those questions." Its 70-odd pages contain tips about where to find funding for school networking and a list of relevant reading.
Answers to Frequent Questions about the Internet in Schools
David Riggin of the Gopher Jewels Project pointed the way to "a VERY nice resource on education at Arizona State University."
Resources including "The Best of the Internet for Educators"
An admiring Web-crawler named Chris Beaumont described this site as "a very large listing of K12 and teacher resources." It's offered by the government's High Performance Computing and Communications Program, which has a mission to support accelerated learning programs through the use of technology.
Extensive Listing of Internet Resrouces for K12 Teachers
Rice's renowned campus-wide information system, developed on Gopher and now also on the Web, offers comprehensive information about subject-specific Internet resources at the college level.
Rice University's Links to Subject-Specific Internet Resources
Kathryn Propst of Indiana University posted this note on another Lone Star connection to resources for higher education:"The University of Texas at Austin has a very nice page on the instructional uses of WWW. It offers links to a number of projects in a variety of disciplines."
UTexas's Links to Instructional Uses of the Web From "Language Lab" and then "Traveler's Japanese" at this site, this explorer found her way to a server with interactive maps of Japan.
An Interactive Map of Japan
The University of Michigan offers another popular collection of resources organized by academic subject area.
Michigan's Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Resource Guides
This site offers a tutorial on developing documents for the Web with NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh, including a demonstration of hypertext markup language (html):
Mosaic for the Macintosh Tutorial
If you're interested in a comprehensive collection of up-to- date materials on Internet access and issues in general, try this address. John December of Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute maintains it to "list pointers to information describing the Internet, computer networks, and issues related to computer-mediated communication."
More than You Can Possibly Read about the Internet
This URL gets you to information about the administration's technology initiatives:
National Information Infrastructure Information
As their online documentation makes clear, this project isn't really based at, or on, the Louvre Ð but the server is in Paris. It offers a number of art images, many French (Impressionist painting is the strong suit) as well as tours of the City of Light.
The Louvre - and Paris
Want to see how much coffee is left in the pot at the Cambridge (England) Computer Laboratory right this minute? Try this.
I'll Bite, Show Me the Coffeepot