new on the net

• Martian chronicles. It's been 20 years since the Viking mission to Mars, and NASA is getting ready to launch two new spacecraft to the Red Planet. Your school can follow the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder missions by participating in Live from Mars, an electronic field trip sponsored by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and public television. Targeted at the middle school level, the field trip incorporates Internet resources, hands-on curriculum materials, and four live telecasts from November 1996 through November 1997. Go to the web site and you'll find the latest mission news, activities for students and teachers, a photo gallery, a student showcase, team biographies, and more. To receive announcements about the project, send an e-mail to listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov with the command subscribe updates-lfm in the body of the message.
  

• Modeling the universe. In real life, it just wouldn't be practical to set up an experiment to see what happens when a galaxy is born. But computer simulations suffer from no such cosmic constraints. At the Shodor Education Foundation site, students can make use of a web-based interface to interactive simulations--including computer models of the formation of a galaxy and the behavior of cooling electrons--that run on a remote supercomputer. These are not static animations but interactive models in which students can tweak the experimental variables and watch the results appear as animated visualizations in the browser window. (You'll need a Netscape-compliant browser for this to work.) The site also allows students to download simulation software to create similar models on personal computers. Instructional resources ready for use in the classroom are provided, too.
  

• The view from out there. Astronauts are real shutterbugs, never missing an opportunity to photograph the Earth from orbit. You and your students can use those images in the classroom to illustrate global and local phenomena with the help of EarthRISE, a searchable online database of more than 20,000 pictures taken during space shuttle missions. Here you can find photos of a particular spot on the globe by clicking on interactive political and topographical maps or by using an interactive search form. You can even search for photos by image features such as deserts or pollution. And if you have a Netscape-compliant browser, you can enjoy spectacular simulated fly-bys by watching a photo series played back in rapid sequence. It's the closest to being in orbit most of us will get.
  

• Where to go, what to do. Need help finding education resources on the net? Point your browser to Pacific Bell's Blue Web'n Applications Library. This site organizes, rates, and links to a multitude of education-specific lessons, activities, projects, resources, references, and tools available on the web. You'll also want to try LiveText, another good educator's roadmap to the Internet. An annotated and structured index to K-12 online resources, LiveText was developed by the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University's Teachers College to provide a conceptual point-of-view roadmap to the net for teachers and administrators.
  

• E-mail for everybody. If your school has some access to the web but no means to provide every student with an individual e-mail account, HoTMaiL might be a solution. This advertising-supported service provides free e-mail accounts through its web site, accessible with any browser and from any location on the net. Setting up an account is quick and easy, and students can send and receive private e-mail in minutes right from the HoTMaiL web site. The service occasionally is slow and burdened by ads, but it's an unbeatable alternative to life without e-mail.
  

• Surfing for fame and fortune. Are your students expert at finding information quickly on the web? Powersurfers have a shot at winning cash, software, hardware, and gift certificates for their schools' technology programs in CyberSurfari '96, a two-week digital treasure hunt sponsored for the second year in a row by the Software Publishers Association. In the contest, which runs from Oct. 22 through Nov. 5, students use clues to seek out specific information on the web. The first three student teams in each age division to locate and register the required number of treasure codes win, and all contest participants are entered in a random drawing for prizes, too. More than $50,000 worth of prizes will be awarded, so start practicing your mouse-clicking skills now.