Companies that want to learn personal information about children
via the Internet may seek permission from their parents through
e-mail -- but only if that information is not shared with other
companies, the Federal Trade Commission
has ruled.
The regulations, which take effect in April, were approved unanimously
on Oct. 20, 1999. They are designed to tell companies how to comply
with a 1998 federal privacy law that bans them from collecting
personal information from children without a parent's consent.
The rules are expected to have a dramatic effect on the hundreds
of popular Internet sites aimed at children, which typically offer
online games and entertainment in exchange for personal information
that is valuable to marketers.
One of the most contentious provisions of the new regulations
was the compromise allowing businesses for the next two years
to send e-mail to parents. E-mail is the most convenient and immediate
method for granting permission, but it is also easy to impersonate
another person online -- especially for children, who often know
more about technology than their parents do.
"E-mail is completely useless," said Stephen Savitzky, a Silicon
Valley software scientist and father of two young girls who runs
a web site that has links to safe
areas for children. "What's to keep the kids from giving their
own e-mail address, or one of their many e-mail addresses? It's
trivial."
The provisions also allow companies to obtain parental permission
through faxed paperwork, calls to a toll-free number, or the use
of a credit-card number.
The direct marketing industry and other business groups, which
generally supported the privacy law, had warned regulators that
imposing onerous barriers between children and their favorite
web sites might discourage them from spending time online.
But Catherine Benjamin, a mother of two young children in Rolling
Meadows, Ill., spoke for many parents when she called the FTC's
regulations "long overdue" and bristled at how easily children
online can be persuaded to disclose even the most personal details.
"It scares us," Benjamin said. "Children just give out information
on the Internet. There's a lot of wonderful opportunities on the
Internet ... [but] it can be a dangerous tool."
AOL and Gateway to 'power up' poor kids
 Internet
giant America Online
and computer maker Gateway
have announced plans to give away millions of dollars in free
computers and software to help narrow the "digital divide" between
rich and poor families.
The program, PowerUp,
will provide $10 million in seed grants, free computers, and Internet
connections, plus volunteers for more than 5,000 after-school
programs for poor children. The nonprofit organization will be
based in California's Silicon Valley.
"Technology has changed people's lives in ways in which we didn't
envision," said Ted Waitt, chief executive officer of Gateway,
which is donating 50,000 units. "It's created an era of unprecedented
prosperity, but not everyone shares that prosperity."
Offered in schools and community centers nationwide, PowerUp's
activities will include computer training and tutoring. There
will also be afternoon snacks and adult mentoring, organizers
said.
AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, will give
100,000 free Internet accounts to PowerUp centers. Hundreds of
adult volunteers, including many from the national service program
AmeriCorps, will work with children in the centers -- many of
which will be affiliated with the Boys
and Girls Clubs and the YMCA,
organizations that already provide after-school activities for
poor children.
AOL Founder Steve Case deflected speculation that the project
was an attempt to lock up the educational market against competitors,
saying the PowerUp sites could be reached through browsers other
than its own Netscape. Last fall, AOL and Gateway, a leading seller
of made-to-order computers, closed a deal to market and distribute
each other's products.
The Case Foundation -- a charitable organization created by
Case and his wife, Jean -- will give $10 million in grants to
communities to set up centers or hire staff for existing centers.
According to a recent U.S. Department of Commerce report, households
with incomes of $75,000 or more are 20 times more likely to have
Internet access, and nine times more likely to have a computer,
than families at the lowest income levels.
Yes, we have no computers
California, home of Silicon Valley, provides fewer than average
computer terminals for its students. Washington, D.C., in a region
though which 65 percent of all global Internet traffic flows,
offers its students the worst access to the Internet.
These are just a few of the statistics to be gleaned from an
annual report on school technology released in October. While
the number of school computers has doubled since 1993 to 8 million
nationwide, many states lag in the access they provide students,
said the report, Technology
in Education 1999. And if classroom computers are going to
make a difference, teachers will need to do more with them than
surfing web sites and sending e-mail.
New teachers are no more likely than veteran peers to know how
to teach with computers, and less than one-fifth of the money
schools spend on technology goes for teacher training, said the
report, issued by Market Data Retrieval of Shelton, Conn.
"The public is beginning to ask for proof that their investment
in technology has paid off," according to the report. "It's no
longer sufficient to point to inventory lists, as important as
they are, as the only proof of progress."
The Dun & Bradstreet research subsidiary's sixth annual
report on technology and education highlights state-by-state comparisons
of student-to-computer ratios. Despite a national low ratio of
5.7 pupils per computer, down from 10.8 in 1993, this year's results
continue to show varying degrees of computer access nationwide.
Students have above-average computer access in Midwestern states
such as Iowa, Ohio, and Minnesota, areas with relatively little
computer-related industry. Washington state, home of software
giant Microsoft and many Internet companies, also provides above-average
computer access to its students.
But California falls behind at 8.1 students per computer. The
District of Columbia makes the poorest national showing at 34.1
students per computer. Southern states have the next highest ratios:
Alabama has 30.2 students per computer; Louisiana, 25.0; North
Carolina, 24.9; and Mississippi, 20.1.
A two-hour special on computers in education, Digital
Divide: Technology and Our Future, will air nationally at
9 p.m., Friday, Jan. 28, on PBS. Narrated by singer Queen Latifah,
the program looks at how computers are being used in the classroom
and examines the disparity in access among rich and poor children,
blacks and whites, boys and girls, and families living in rural
versus urban and suburban areas.
The first episode, "Computer Classes," explores the vast differences
in the ways schools use computers. Among the schools featured
are a Silicon Valley elementary school that makes extensive use
of drill-and-practice arithmetic programs and an elementary school
in rural Washington state that integrates use of the Internet
and other computer assignments throughout its curriculum.
The filmmakers interview students, parents, teachers, administrators,
and a variety of technology experts, some of whom are skeptical
of the ways in which some elementary schools are using the technology.
"A video game that teaches you to add and subtract is still
a video game," one elementary school teacher says in a four-hour
version of the special that was released for review last fall.
The second episode, "Virtual Diversity," looks at computer access
in homes and in community centers that serve disadvantaged children.
The filmmakers also showcase successful local initiatives that
are helping to bridge the technology gap.
Kentucky district is tops in Y2K
 The
largest school district in Kentucky has done a better job than
any other major school system in the country in preparing for
potential Year 2000 computer problems, according to a federal
report issued
in November.
The General Accounting Office
report said the Jefferson
County Public Schools are considered fully Y2K compliant.
In late October, the U.S. Department
of Education said that more than a third of the nation's schools
and colleges were unprepared to handle the so-called millennium
bug. The result could be that heating systems fail, computers
crash, and security systems refuse to lock doors, forcing some
districts to delay reopening after winter vacation.
Jefferson County has been working on the Y2K bug since 1993,
when school officials found out that a computer that tracks graduation
dates thought "00" meant 1900, rather than 2000. The school board
set aside $7 million to ensure that everything from elevators
to computers continues to function after Dec. 31, 1999. So far,
the district has spent $5.6 million.
The GAO report examined the nation's 25 largest school districts
and evaluated each in five areas, from classroom laboratories
to administrative offices to cafeterias and buses, which have
computer chips embedded in them.
Copies of Reported
Year 2000 (Y2K) Readiness Status of 25 Large School Districts
are available online.
If all goes well, students and teachers from small rural schools
in New York's Adirondack Mountains to large urban schools in the
Big Apple will benefit from a plan to create a free, virtual library
for all New Yorkers.
Following in the path of California, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan,
and North Carolina -- which have created virtual libraries --
New York Education Commissioner Richard Mills and the state's
Board of Regents are seeking $12 million in state funding to launch
an online library that would be accessible through an electronic
library card.
"It means that wherever you live -- the big city, a small rural
area -- you will have access to everything for free," said Mills.
Many New Yorkers already have access to information through
the Internet, but Mills said the so-called New York Online Virtual
Electronic Library (NOVEL) would be different. NOVEL would include
research databases that are now available only for a fee. What's
more, NOVEL would include only credible and useful sources of
information, filtering out the reams of dubious information available
on the World Wide Web.
Under the plan, "e-library cards" with password-protected accounts
would be issued from community and school libraries. A forerunner
of the virtual library already exists through a federally funded
New York State Library pilot project called EmpireLink. Mills
said it was important for New York to launch a virtual library
to stay competitive with other states that already have such systems.
More evidence of a gender gap
Boys receive a great deal of encouragement from their parents
to go into technical fields, while girls aren't encouraged quite
as much, according to a survey by Georgia Tech researchers.
"We can see that in general, males are more influenced and encouraged
to enter technical fields by their teachers, counselors, and even
parents," said the report, Women
in Computer Science. The percentage of males saying that teachers
have talked to them about computer science as a major is higher
than the percentage of females who say the same thing.
The researchers said they were spurred to do the report by the
small number of women majoring in computer science as compared
to the number of women in other career fields such as business,
medicine, and engineering.
"The level of influence, encouragement, and education about
females in computer sciences needs to be improved," the researchers
concluded in the report. "In an attempt to increase the number
of females in technical fields, we suggest starting with increasing
the students' knowledge about this major and the perception they
have of those working in this field."
The report is based on a survey of high school juniors and seniors
and students in a freshman-level programming class.
A blueprint for curriculum integration
Computers and other forms of technology are becoming common
sights in more and more classrooms across the country. But confusion
still exits on exactly what students should be able to do with
this new technology and how technology can be integrated in all
curriculum areas.
In November, the International Society for Technology in Education
(ISTE) released a publication
that might clear up some of the confusion. Connecting Curriculum
and Technology, a 373-page book, was developed by the teachers
and curriculum specialists involved in ISTE's National Education
Technology Standards for Students (NETS)
project. The book outlines technology standards, performance indicators,
curriculum examples, and scenarios for students from preschool
though 12th grade.
The publication incorporates ISTE's previously published overall
standards for students. Students should be capable information
technology users, the standards say. They should be information
seekers, analyzers, and evaluators; problem solvers and decision
makers; creative and effective users of productivity tools; communicators,
collaborators, publishers, and producers; and informed, responsible,
and contributing citizens.
NETS has plans to develop educational technology support standards
for professional development, as well as standards for student
assessment and evaluation of technology.
Copies of "National Education Technology Standards for
Students: Connecting Curriculum and Technology" are $26.95
for ISTE members and $29.95 for nonmembers. Order forms are available
by calling (800) 336-5191 or by sending a request by e-mail.
Need a college scholarship for a student from a poor family?
Or maybe the child of a veteran? Go online.
In the past, finding information on college scholarships usually
required spending a few hours in the high school counselor's office
or a school's college and career center. Now, such information
is just a click away.
From the College Board
to the U.S.
Department of Education to the
Mach 25 database, scores of sources for college scholarships
are now on the Internet.
Paula Cox, for one, is grateful. A guidance counselor at Hightower
High School in Missouri City, Texas, Cox said online services
give students greater opportunities for researching schools at
home on their own time. And that gives counselors more time to
advise students once the kids have done the research.
Other counselors, however, caution students and parents to be
careful about what web sites they use. Some web sites are scams
to get personal financial information from students and parents
looking for scholarships, said Stephen D. Singer, director of
college counseling at the Horace Mann School in New York City.
"Web sites' information can be very, very unreliable," he said.
(To avoid falling victim to such scams, call the National Fraud
Information Center at 800-876-7060.)
 MS.
JOHNSON GOES TO WASHINGTON
She might not be old enough to get a driver's license, but Rachel
Johnson has already racked up a political coup: The Alexandria,
Va., sophomore is credited with rebuilding a New York congressman's
web page so effectively it has virtually revitalized his online
image. "Our web site was in need of a desperate overhaul," said
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., who turned to his friend Don Johnson,
who had bragged about his daughter's computer skills. The result
is an inviting site with garlands of green leaves that reflect
Boehlert's work with the environment.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BOOKS TO CHAPTER 4 There was no rustle
of pages when the fourth-grade teacher at Resurrection Catholic
School in Dayton, Ohio, told her students where to begin reading
last fall. The class was replacing its traditional textbooks with
hand-held digital books in an 11-week "paperless learning" project.
The kids used the Franklin Rocket
eBook, an electronic reading device that stores up to 4,000
pages of text and graphics. One advantage of the electronic devices
is that material can be updated easily. "There's a lot of incentive
to convert to digital material," Eric Walusis, a consultant on
the project, told Wired News. "The class we're working with is
using textbooks from 1991 that still mention the Soviet Union."
 HERE
COMES THE SUN Solar power is bringing the Internet to the
remote village of Robap, Cambodia. Solar panels on the schoolhouse
roof provide the energy to run a Macintosh, and a satellite dish
provides a link to a communications satellite. The school is a
project of American philanthropist Bernard Krisher who fled Nazi
Germany with his family in 1937. "We escaped a genocide,"
Krisher said, "so I have some sympathy for the Cambodia situation."
Cambodia is still recovering from the murder of an estimated 1.7
million people under the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Electrical engineer Kris Pister has
seen the future, and it's really, really small. Pister, an associate
professor at the University of California-Berkeley, is working
on what he calls "smart dust" -- computers so tiny they could
go virtually anywhere. The devices, called motes, consist of microelectromechanical
systems wired up with a simple computer. Possible uses include
clipping motes to infants' pajamas to check their vital signs,
sticking them on boxes of cereal to monitor humidity and crispness,
and gluing them to fingernails to bring keyboards into the third
dimension.
MILLENNIUM PICKS Shakespeare? Beethoven? "Citizen Kane"?
No, when Amazon.com asked its customers to choose the best books,
CDs, and videos of the millennium, the top picks of the more than
250,000 respondents were The Lord of the Rings, a fantasy trilogy
by the English author J.R.R. Tolkien; "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band," an album by the Beatles; and "Star Wars," the sci-fi
megahit directed by George Lucas. "The results are a bracing mix
of street populism and highbrow literature," said Nicholas Allison,
Amazon.com's books editor in chief. "How many top 10 lists feature
Stephen King's The Stand at No. 6 and James Joyce's Ulysses at
No. 7?"
E-Wire is prepared with Associated Press (AP) reports.
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