Correctly, Stoll criticizes some educators for teaching astronomy without children studying the actual sky; computer programs should only supplement such activities, not replace them. But shouldn’t he apply the same “real thing” logic to Web-distributed source material and applaud students’ easier access to it? Only the brightest children will benefit from a complicated mathematical treatise. But surely even an average student could take advantage of a historian’s paper on a nearby Civil War battle. If anything, teachers could use the Web and other areas of the Net to demand more research from students. Just why must Stoll compare the Net to a fun but dumb educational film? Is a Web version of the Odyssey to be confused with some educational Looney Tunes?

Intriguingly, Web technology makes it possible for students to produce information, not just soak it up. In Fairfax County, Virginia, students at Thomas Jefferson, a high school for the gifted, are posting their “pages” on the World Wide Web. I can remember when college applicants submitted tape recordings of their music. Now they can also give M.I.T. or Caltech the addresses of their Web pages and demonstrate, in the most direct way, their familiarity with networking. They can post their papers and point to other people’s pages that interest them.

Also, at Jefferson and countless other schools, students can electronically send their classmates to knowledge-rich sites on the Web. Clicking on “NASA” in blue letters within Bob’s area, Jill can see what the space program is doing. Then she can return, click on other blue letters, and check out his tip to visit a history-related site discussing the Sputnik and Vanguard days. Via a project called MendelWeb, Ellen can read the famous treatise of Gregor Mendel, the geneticist, and retrieve other scientists’ opinions; then she might write her own paper and post it on the Web for classmates and even for students elsewhere.

Clearly the value of the Net, for students and researchers alike, isn’t just in the information per se—it’s also in the ease of sharing it. Teachers can point to common Web resources (such as MendelWeb) from Web pages where they add their own comment, or even their own study guides. They can also link to other guides.

Some Web sites even offer electronic forms with questions to which students can respond—in either a multiple choice or an essay format. Andy Carvin, a specialist in educational technology with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, praises the World Wide Web as “an excellent tool in which to design online curricula.” Understandably, even elementary schools are getting on the Web with their own areas.

Other good things are happening. By way of a project called Big Sky Telegraph, Native Americans in Montana have been pen pals with children in the former Soviet Union. What better way to stir up an interest in writing, politics, and geography at the same time? Significantly, in Montana and other places, many schools are not on the Net directly. Instead, schools use affordable bulletin board systems—their own or perhaps those operated by hobbyists—which can relay Net-originated material. If need be, such systems can run on ancient computers of the kind found at garage sales; some messages may be delayed for days, but that’s better than no connection at all. Within the BBS world, moreover, nets even exist especially for education. Consider K12Net, which includes at least “three dozen conferences specifically related to K-12 curriculum” and reaches some sixty school-associated systems in New Zealand alone. More and more, however, lucky schools are hooking into the Internet directly or at least arranging for teachers and students to get accounts elsewhere.

As a ninth grader at Poolesville Middle Senior High School, in Poolesville, Maryland, Chris Gazunis used the Net to study catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and oil spills. “We didn’t just look at a textbook diagram of what caused an earthquake and the casualty number associated with it,” he recalled. “We used the networks to learn what happened to the people’s lives and homes. Instead of just being given a set of directions and material that would result in an earthquake resistant building, we designed and tested them ourselves.”[[5.3]]

Randy Hammer, a high schooler at Timberline High School in Lacey, Washington, who is blind “with two glass eyes,” once had to have sighted people read the newspaper to him. No longer. Via network connections, he can enjoy the Washington Post, the Moscow News, and science-oriented publications—thanks to a gadget that reads aloud to him the words on his screen. “It’s hard now,” he wrote, “to remember how I lived without this wealth of materials and information at my fingertips.”[[5.4]] That’s what happens when the hardware is around.

Even in a wealthy place like the United States, however, society so far has been stingy toward high tech in public schools. The ratio between students and computers is something like 16 to 1. Some 75 percent of American schools have computers capable of getting on the Net, but the children can’t all use them at once. What’s more, just 35 percent of public schools have Internet hookups in classrooms, media centers, or computer labs. Only 3 percent of the classrooms themselves are wired in, according to a survey from the U.S. Department of Education.

We’re talking almost Third World here. “It’s amazing to me how people outside of education have no idea how teachers still have to line up outside the teachers’ lounge to use the telephone,” says a senior analyst at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.[[5.5]]