Feeling lost in cyberspace? Let Electronic School take you on a brief cruise through the Internet's World Wide Web. We've tailored our ports of call for educators and students. Bon voyage!

Our tour begins at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., where you can find information about the department and its programs, policies, and staff. While you're there, read up on recent legislation and the department's initiatives in areas including technology and school-to-work transition.

Next, let's visit AskERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center service, housed at Syracuse University. You can search ERIC databases (including abstracts of education magazine articles), retrieve lesson plans, and browse AskERIC's collections.

Don't forget to stop by the Library of Congress to search online catalogs and databases, view Library of Congress Exhibits (such as "Scrolls from the Dead Sea" and "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture"), and get up-to-date legislative information from the U.S. Congress.

Why not take a virtual tour of the White House, where you can say Hi to the First Family and Socks the Cat. After you've signed the guest book and exchanged the proper pleasantries, you can use this site as a jumping-off point to get information from Executive Branch agencies.

The Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court are made available on the Internet the same day they are handed down, even before you can read about them in the newspaper. Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute helps you navigate through them. You may also wish to try FindLaw's searchable archive of Supreme Court opinions.

If your school is in the market for federal grant money, you won't want to miss the Federal Register. This searchable site will help you catch the latest grant announcements from the federal government. A winning proposal could be all that is standing between your school and a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Outer space is a sure bet for sparking students' imaginations and interest in science, and thanks to NASA, the Internet is full of space information you can use in the classroom. NASA Quest offers exciting interactive curriculum projects that draw on data and images from current space exploration missions such as Mars Pathfinder. NASA Spacelink is also specifically tailored for classroom instructional use and provides information, news, images, lesson plans, and software. Similarly, NASA's Liftoff to Space Exploration site offers an impressive collection of space-related material for students. And for the latest in astronomical images -- direct from orbit -- don't miss the Hubble Space Telescope site. The official Comet Hale-Bopp web site is well worth a visit, too.

What's the weather like? How about the latest forecast? On the web, you can get weather information when you need it and put it to use in your classroom, too. The Weather Underground provides an easy way to access current conditions and forecasts. For high school students, the University of Illinois' Weather Visualizer and Weather World 2010 sites provide customizable weather imagery and real-time weather data integrated with instructional resources for use in the earth science curriculum, respectively.

Need to catch up on the news? Why not pick up a virtual copy of The New York Times or The Washington Post. For a quick news fix, stop by CNN Interactive or ABC News online. If you're in the mood for a weekly perspective, try browsing the current edition of TIME Magazine.

When it's time to visit an art museum, the National Gallery of Art is a good place to begin. The gallery's collections illustrate major achievements in painting, sculpture, and graphic arts from the Middle Ages to the present, and students can tour the collection online by medium or school. The web site for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is also well worth a virtual field trip.

How far does the Internet reach? Let's do some traveling and see for ourselves. We'll start with a virtual safari to Nairobi, Kenya. Next we'll make a stop in Kobe, Japan to see how the city is rebuilding after the 1994 earthquake. Then we'll travel to St. Petersburg, Russia, where the excellent English-language daily newspaper can tell us who's playing in the local jazz bars tonight. Afterwards, it's off to see what's up in Beijing, China. And how about a look at the snow and ice as seen from Antarctica? Finally, let's drop in on Jerusalem, Israel to learn a little about that city's 4,000-year history.

These days it's become commonplace for schools to have their own web sites. If you're looking for a particular school or school district's web site, two good places to start your search are the Web66 International School Web Site Registry and the HotList of K-12 Internet School Sites. Many U.S. state school boards associations are online, too.

Thanks for traveling with us!