Internet news you can use
Geek week. Igniting young people's interest in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology is the idea behind National Science & Technology Week, slated for April 20-26. To help teachers make the most of this opportunity, the National Science Foundation has prepared hands-on activities for classroom use and made them available on the web. "Webs, Wires, Waves: The Science & Technology of Communication" explores communications in various forms through activities -- including one in which students build a ping-pong ball communications network and send messages in binary code.
The road to dot EDU. Choosing and applying to a college is never an easy task, but U.S. News & World Report's new online college and career center may help smooth out some of the bumps along the way. This web site -- which goes by the name ".edu" -- includes rankings of 1,400 colleges, online applications, information on how to pay for college, and reports from campus life. Students can even apply for a college loan online. There's a career guide and information about graduate school, too, because it's never too early to plan ahead.
Rating their own. The web isn't lacking for sites that link to and review online educational resources, but how many of those are run by students for students? Well, now there's one: the K.I.D.S. (Kids Identifying and Discovering Sites) online newsletter. A cooperative effort by students in Madison, Wisc., and Boulder, Colo., this service proves that even third and fourth-graders can do a bang-up job assembling links and rating the content of web sites for classroom use (with a little adult guidance, of course). Recent issues of the biweekly publication have focused on sites specific to American Indians, ancient civilizations, and the presidential election.
Webmasters of the future. Peek into the nearest classroom, and you'll see the next generation of web site developers. That much is obvious from the results of the ThinkQuest contest, in which teams of students competed by building educational web sites. The 1996 winners have been announced, and judging by the quality of the entries, the future of the web is in good hands. Winning entries include a stock market site that not only explains the mechanics of Wall Street, it also provides a real-time stock market simulation so you can try your hand at investing -- using fake money, but real data. Another winning site teaches the programming language C++ in an interactive textbook format, incorporating a Java applet for writing and testing your programs online, as well as message boards for asking questions. These amazing sites rightly deserve kudos.
Virtual Kofi. You won't find any black helicopters at the United Nations' CyberSchoolBus site, but learning opportunities abound. Curriculum units cover global issues such as health and urban life, and an events calendar includes classroom activities and projects for days such as International Women's Day and World Environment Day. Here students can find information on global trends, search databases of information about U.N. member states, and try their hand at animated quiz games. There's also a "model UN" discussion board, and a photo gallery of images from around the world.
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