February 1995 New On The Net

Internet news you can use

Look it up with E-mail. If your students are reluctant to look up definitions and synonyms in books, try suggesting they do it on-line instead. A system called Wordsmith, devised by Anu Garg at Case Western Reserve University, allows anyone who can send Internet E-mail to look up words in a dictionary and thesaurus. The service also unscrambles acronyms and anagrams. Send a blank E-mail message to wordsmith@viper.elp.cwru.edu to find out how to use the service.

AP teachers' lounge. Is someone on your faculty feeling isolated as an Advanced Placement teacher? As a way to help that teacher find some relief, suggest a chat session with other teachers of Advanced Placement courses on AP-L, an open, unmoderated Internet discussion list. You can use the discussion list to post questions, swap lesson ideas, and provide help to others interested in AP. Students taking AP courses are also welcome to join in. To subscribe, send an Internet E-mail to listserv@gitvm1.gatech.edu with the command subscribe AP-L firstname lastname on the first line of the message, substituting your own name.

Internet use in the classroom. You've found a neat resource on the Net -- now how do you integrate it into your teaching? Try asking other Internet-using educators on INCLASS, a new moderated Internet discussion list about using the Internet in the classroom, sponsored by Canada's SchoolNet. To subscribe to INCLASS, send an E-mail to listproc@schoolnet.carleton.ca with the command subscribe INCLASS firstname lastname on the first line of the message, substituting your own name.

News from Italy -- en italiano. Reading the news is a great way for students to practice foreign language skills. But where can you find the day's news in Italian? Answer: the University of Bologna's Gopher server, which provides daily transcripts of Italian television news broadcasts. To access, select Virtual Italy, and then look under Notiziari Televideo RAI.

Keeping abreast of the Net. If you don't have time to surf the Net in search of new projects and resources for use in the classroom and in your own professional development, try subscribing to the Novae Group, an Internet mailing list for educators. The list aims to keep you up to date on the Internet, funding opportunities, and school projects at all levels. To subscribe to the list, send your name and Internet E-mail address to Bob Melchert or Art Galus.

Talk about vocational education. Educators interested in trading information about vocational education can join VOCNET, an E-mail discussion list managed by the Dissemination Program of the National Center for Research in Vocational Education. To join the list, send an Internet E-mail to listserv@cmsa.berkeley.edu with the command subscribe vocnet firstname lastname on the first line of the message, substituting your own name.

Your own education statistics database. Need to do some research? Try "EDsearch: Education Statistics on Disk," a database and computer program for IBM PCs available on the Internet from the U.S. Department of Education. Developed by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), EDsearch contains over 1,800 tables, charts, and text files from sources such as the 1993 Digest of Education Statistics and the 1993 Condition of Education. A thesaurus of more than 400 terms and 50 cross-references is included, and a user-friendly interface has been designed to help novice searchers without handicapping more advanced users. The software, which totals 6.4 MB, is available from the U.S. Department of Education's Gopher, World Wide Web, and FTP servers on the Internet. Look under OERI and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).