Internet Access Weaves a Tangled Web for Schools

At Hylton High School in Woodbridge, astronomy students comein at 6 a.m. to link up by computer with a telescope in Pasadena,Calif. They order the telescope to take pictures of stars andgalaxies that they then post on the World Wide Web, where they canbe seen by students and scientists all over the world.

"Two or three years ago, we would have just sat down in class,the teacher would have passed out a lab {exercise}, we'd do it,review our notes and then take a test," said Dennie Boice, a seniorat Hylton.

"The Web makes astronomy more tangible. We can actually seethe things we're studying. We can get on the Web and get the mostup-to-date information," said Boice, who designed his class's Webpage.

The explosive growth of the World Wide Web -- where manythousands of computer sites offer lesson plans, projects and otherinformation that can be used in schools -- is changing the classroomexperience for computer-savvy teachers and their students.

But that shift is far from universal. Educators and technicalspecialists say the big problem schools now face is figuring out howto make use of the overwhelming amount of information available bycomputer. And few teachers have the time, skills or training to takeadvantage of the technology, educators say.

Washington area school systems are spending millions ofdollars to wire classrooms and get their districts on-line, butofficials acknowledge that a relatively small amount of money isbeing invested in training teachers. Schools say their priority isto get the equipment, which doesn't leave much money for training intight budgetary times.

Complicating the issue is the uneven distribution of hardwareand equipment. Some schools have computers in every classroom whileothers have only a handful used mostly as word processors.

"Education is still in the industrial age, while the rest ofthe world is in the information age. We have all this technology andnobody knows what to do with it," said John Wilkinson, aninstructional psychologist with JDL Technologies, a Minnesota-basedcompany working to help teachers use the Web and other computertechnology.

Every Washington area school district is providing somecomputer training for teachers, but it varies greatly and oftendepends on teachers taking the initiative.

In classes with Internet access, Web use often is limited toteachers directing students to search for information on a topic --using the Web as a kind of encyclopedia.

That can be a frustrating and tedious exercise. Say, forexample, that a student is looking for information about dolphinsfor a report. A search for all Web sites that include the word"dolphins" brings up everything from recipes for mahi-mahi toinformation about the National Football League's Miami Dolphins.

But teachers who have gone beyond such basics say the Web hasmade a tremendous difference, both in the way their students learnand in their enthusiasm for school.

"It really expands the walls of our classroom," said AndreaCobb, who teaches advanced biology and honors chemistry at ChantillyHigh School in Fairfax County. Her students have visited a "JurassicPark" site to study evolution, used periodic tables at theUniversity of California at Berkeley to study chemical reactions,and studied samples from Northern Virginia's deciduous forests --all via the Web.

Students such as Hylton senior Lora Stevenson echo Cobb'senthusiasm.

"It makes things more real," Stevenson said. "We're not juststudying what the sun is made of or how things interact with eachother; we can actually see how these things work."

Teachers say the Web can be used to teach students at alllevels. Fourth-graders at Aldie Elementary School in Loudoun Countycollected water samples and typed in information for analysis byscientists in the Florida Keys as part of a Web project sponsored bythe National Science Foundation.

Although science seems to be the most popular Internetsubject, mainly because of the wealth of government and universityinformation available, there are many Web sites for other subjects.

Government classes, for example, followed news of theRepublican presidential primaries and caucuses on the Internet.Geography students can find the most up-to-date maps of places suchas the former Soviet Union and the former Czechoslovakia. A PrinceWilliam County English class studying Beowulf found pictures of theoriginal parchment manuscript on a museum Web site.

"It breaks down barriers; it totally empowers students," saidNancy Carey, a technology specialist for Montgomery County schools."We now have students coming in before school, coming in over theirlunch hour, staying after school, to work on the computer --students you wouldn't expect to put so much extra time into theirschoolwork."

One obstacle to more teachers integrating the Web into theircurriculums is the sheer volume of information available -- all withlittle or no quality control. Anyone with a computer and a modem canpost information on the Web.

"If you asked teachers with Internet access a year ago aboutwhat's out there, they would have said there isn't enough. There'sbeen a mass proliferation since then. . . . Unfortunately, therereally is a glut of mediocre content on-line," said Andy Carvin,new-project officer at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting andmoderator of an on-line education discussion group.

Some Web sites offer teachers guidance. Professional magazinesand organizations such as the National Education Association alsoare trying to screen and catalogue Web information for teachers. Forthe most part, however, teachers are learning through word of mouthand trial and error.

"It's getting to a point where there is so much out therethat teachers are coming on-line and getting overwhelmed," Carvinsaid. "Until it becomes more focused, until we have things likeannotated Web directories, it's still going to be a very anarchicaland confusing environment. The 80 percent of teachers who don't havethe time, interest or know-how are not going to bother."