Just a page in a report from Human Resources Director Ann Feldmann at a recent school board meeting. Unremarkable, except for a notation at the top: http://nces.ed.gov/NCES/pubs98/MiniDigest97/98020-3.htm.
Experienced Web surfers recognize it as the “address” of one of the Internet’s billions of pages.
If computers already give you cold sweats, you’re thinking the notation is just further evidence you’ve been right all along. Read on anyway.
It’s hard to describe “the Web.”
It’s the world’s largest library, telephone network, and photo album.
It’s global, and local.
The fastest growing enterprise on Earth – but nobody’s in charge.
A great potential force for democracy -- or authoritarianism.
For money business or monkey business.
In today’s information economy the impact of the Internet will continue to be bigger than was the 2300-year-old library in Alexandria, 15th Century printing in Europe, or today’s Library of Congress in Washington. Bigger than railroads, interstate highways, and jet planes. Telephones, television, and communication satellites. Unquestionably greater than sliced bread.
Some of the Internet’s offerings are available in “hard copy.” But where?
In a government employee’s desk drawer? A library in Kuala Lumpur? A videocassette at CNN? Who knows? Even if you knew a document existed, and where it was, you probably couldn’t buy it. Inter-library loan is a possibility, but can take weeks.
All that’s true for Ms. Feldmann’s “Table 13.” She could have obtained a copy from the National Center for Educational Statistics – if she knew such an agency, and report, existed. But the order would have used district budget, taken administrative time to process, and weeks to receive.
Get a little experience with the free “browsers” (like Netscape), “search engines” (like Alta Vista) that scan billions of pages in seconds, and “bookmarks” (to save, and return to, those long addresses). You, too, can find useful information you didn’t know existed, from sources you’ve never heard of, in winks instead of weeks, for free instead of a fortune.
This is more than the U.S. Library of Congress on your desk. It’s 180 countries’ libraries – with translations. It’s information from most corporations, non-profits, media organizations and government agencies – plus millions of individuals’ Web sites. And the librarian remembers where she put billions of documents and gets them in seconds!
Must you evaluate the sources? Sure. Just like print. But the Internet can help do that, too.
I’ve been using the Internet for 20 years, and “publishing” on it since 1993. It’s a wonderful resource for our community: students, teachers, parents, administrators, business, government. Homework, or working from home. Travel or training. Research or recreation. Jobs or jokes.
It has a special utility for the School Board. In fact, anyone interested in schools.
That’s why I created http://soli.inav.net/~njohnson/schoolboard. It contains “links” to hundreds of Web sites (as well as my school board writing). I’ve personally prepared and uploaded all of our Board’s policies. One site, “ERIC” contains 1 million education-related articles (with a search engine). Most sites link to dozens more. They include:
There are 15,000 school districts. It’s a rare challenge (or opportunity) confronting our district that hasn’t already been experienced by one of them -- and reported online. A little research can save our re-inventing a lot of wheels.
Our school board’s decisions need to reflect research. Not as much as we’d require for a high school student’s report, perhaps, but at least what we’d expect of our more resourceful fifth-graders. Today’s Internet just may be the cheapest, fastest and most thorough way to do that. At least that’s what a fifth grader told me. And we’ve begun to take her advice.
Nicholas Johnson is a member of the Iowa City school
board.