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Dear Subscribers:

Next week we'll be in San Francisco, serving as your eyes and ears at "Digital Kids," the largest annual conference of people in Web publishing, marketing, gaming, e-tail, and other businesses targeting kids. We'll tell you what they're thinking about and planning for children at home and school, starting with our next issue. It will arrive in your In-Box September 25.

Here's our lineup this first week of September:


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Family Tech

In his column this week in the San Jose Mercury News - "Today's kids are as near as your cell phone" - SafeKids.com's Larry Magid offers a very close-to-home view on why it's a good idea for teenagers to have their own cell phones. For those of us with concerns about costs, Larry has some pretty good news. He also points out some alternatives to cell phones, such as two-way pagers or a family 800-number and how to get the latter. If you have a favorite communications technology that has lowered the parental stress level at your house, do tell us about it - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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Using search engines in school

Subscriber and K-5 computer teacher Anne in California put her years of hands-on experience in teaching with the Net into this email to us this week. It's her response to subscriber Michelle's feedback published last week ("A subscriber writes: Net use in school") about an alternative to letting kids use search engines in school. Here are solutions Anne's been putting into practice:

"I have a couple of comments about using search engines in the schools. First, what degrees of freedom are given and what resources are used depend on the age group. Since I work with K-5 students, I'll comment on them.

"Our students have not yet had formal training on the Internet, although there are plans for a class on ethics, Internet research, etc., this year. We have used the Internet a lot already, however. The County Office of Education has a proxy filtering system that is fed to all schools. So safety elements are in place. There is generally an Internet component to just about any multimedia project that we do. But we always use controlled research environments. Bookmarks are made and batched for class use in advance.

"Aside from safety issues, one of our biggest challenges is time constraints. I can't afford to have my students wandering all over the place in the short time period we have to get work done, so I pre-set bookmarks for them. Usually, I'll give them more choices than they need. We use Yahooligans! a lot. One of the great features of Yahooligans! is that it understands the context of searches, as they relate to school work. And it doesn't bring up 2 trillion hits. It brings up a manageable number. A search on 'Rainforests,' for instance, won't give you Mastercard offers for rainforest activists or cookies made from rainforest ingredients. Instead, it leads you directly to other rainforest research projects done by kids. I also love eLibrary. Sometimes, teachers will offer students extra credit if they come up with photos or articles on some specific classroom topic. One of my students was from Peru. He was so excited when we found info (and photos) on volcanoes in his home country.

"I've discovered a few things about kids using the Net. Everyone thinks they know a lot about maneuvering the Net, but kids tend to go to sites that they've heard about from others - sites where they know the URL. Boys all seem to know about AllTheCheats.com, for instance. They all go there for gaming hints. Or they can find their way to an extreme-sports Web site. Girls love following their favorite recording artists. And both genders go to sites like Nick.com. But when it comes to research, kids encounter a few problems:

  1. "They are atrocious spellers. The Internet is very unforgiving. A spelling error makes it impossible for kids to find what they really want. The first thing they need to learn is, if they come up with nothing on a search, check spelling!
  2. "Kids don't know how to get clues from a URL, to predetermine if a site is really what they want. They can waste a lot of time on worthless sites.
  3. "Even if you lead students to a site, they often cannot isolate important facts or tell you what the site is really about. They need training. They also believe everything they read, so you need to teach them fact vs. opinion.
  4. "Kids are used to entertainment sites. We, as educators, owe it to them to bring a balance to their lives by exposing them to rich educational opportunities on the Internet that offset the emphasis on games. A virtual trip through a museum, a site like CaliforniaMissions.org, a historical site on Native Americans, or a destination like Nine Planets for Kids (where they can find out how much they'd weigh on other planets) provide wonderful experiences.

"My 4th-graders did a 'Millennium Me' project that involved finding out the origin of their names, what famous people shared their birthday, and what significant things happened on the day they were born. You'd hear them telling everybody what they found. They'll remember those facts for a lifetime because it's personal and because THEY looked them up. I am always thrilled when I see my students copying down URLs we've used in class so they can access them at home or show them to their parents."

From the Editor: Thanks so much, Anne! We love receiving - and, with your permission, publishing - accounts like this (with links to favorite sites!) at home and school - do send in yours.

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Web News Briefs

  1. The Web & the Olympics

    Despite the International Olympics Committee's concerns about protecting its revenues from TV coverage by restricting what's on the Web, the Sydney Games are expected to be the biggest event yet on the Internet. According to CNET, officials are predicting "a staggering 6.5 billion hits for the official Games site alone." That's about 10 times the traffic the Nagano Winter Olympics's site got. IBM, host of the official site, cites time differences as the biggest reason - people not wanting to wait for taped TV coverage to find out what happened in their favorite sports events (Sydney's 11 hours ahead of London and 15 ahead of New York).

    Meanwhile, for financial reasons, the IOC has just tightened its Internet restrictions even further, saying Olympic competitors may not post their personal stories on the Web - including in their personal Web sites. That's according to TheStandard.com and CNN. And creating that rule is not enough; the Committee says it will "monitor the Web and shut down unauthorized broadcasts," reports Reuters (via TheStandard.com). The rule comes on the heels of the IOC's decision "not to accreditate reporters from Internet news organizations," according to the USIIA Bulletin.

    Here's TheStandard.com's index page to all its Olympics coverage as it breaks.

    Related site: HealthyCompetition.org. For aspiring Olympic athletes, the Healthy Competition Foundation recently launched an educational Web site - called HealthyCompetition.org about the dangers of performance-enhancing drug use. "Our research shows that 60% of teenagers are aware of athletes using performance-enhancing drugs," says foundation chairman Scott Serot, "but only 29% say their parents have talked to them about the dangers." The foundation is part of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a health insurance group in the US.

  2. Net changing school

    Having the Internet in schools is increasing how much students learn, especially average and shy ones, the Washington Post reports. The Post quotes educational technology experts saying that the reason is the way technology can meet so many different learning styles, for example those of "visual learners," disabled students, children not proficient in English, and students who shrink from joining classroom discussion. Some figures cited in the article include these from the US Education Department: Two-thirds of public school teachers say they now employ computer applications in lessons, and at least 30% use the Internet, and "students at every grade level this school year will exchange emails with 'keypals' in foreign countries, take 'virtual field trips' to museums and historic sites, or research the range of academic subjects on the Internet." If you have any trouble accessing this piece at the Post's site, here it is "reprinted" at MSNBC.

  3. Forgoing college

    One things not negatively affected by last spring's "dot-com correction" in the info-tech industry was jobs for technology workers. Tech-literate students in high schools all over the United States are deciding to forgo college because, as the New York Times puts it, "computer jobs are plentiful, pay is solid, and … the industry is moving so quickly that four years spent in college will be time spent falling behind."

  4. Women, the Web, and developing countries

    After our item last week on "Women's Web?" subscriber Jenny in New York emailed her comment: "I'm not sure … what women want from the Web but of course [the coverage of women's Net use surpassing that of men] made me see red. I'd bet the major use of the Web by women is the same as for men: use at work. And I'd bet the other major use by women, as it is for men, is email and communication. Isn't it time to retire some of these cliche perceptions of women?" We have a feeling Jenny's not alone on this!

    Meanwhile, Nua Internet Surveys published an editorial on gender and the Internet in response to the new numbers. We especially appreciated what the writer had to say about the Internet's impact on women in conservative cultures and developing countries. Not only is it changing gender perceptions and expectations in those cultures, the Net and information technology have "given women the chance to gain their own independence and allowed them to become entrepreneurs - all, ironically, without having to leave their homes."

  5. Lifeline in Kosovo

    Speaking of developing countries (or redeveloping ones), the Internet has become a lifeline in Kosovo, according to CNN. In Pristina, Kosovo, "a battle-scarred city where phone service is spotty, national television is on the air only two hours a day, and a functioning postal service does not exist, the Internet remains a lifeline to the outside world," CNN reports. "E-mail is not a luxury in addition to the regular mail. For many people in the new Kosovo, it is the only mail."

  6. State of the Net

    The US Internet Council has released its "State of the Internet 2000" report, and CNN takes a look. The USIC was formed in 1996 as an independent, nonpartisan resource for US policymakers at the state and federal levels. The report says people's uses for the Net, and the ways they access it, are changing very rapidly now. It used to be almost entirely a computer-to-computer network. Now it's more machines talking to machines, with cellular phones quickly catching up with computers as favorite access devices. The primary recommendation of the report, CNN writes, is that governments keep their regulatory tendencies to a minimum. "Efforts by one governmental unit to ban these activities will only succeed in driving them to more hospitable locations," the report says, which works against a more hands-on government because it also sends economic benefits to other countries. Where governments are needed, the report says, is in cooperating to catch and prosecute cybercriminals such as child pornographers and other sexual predators. The CNN piece includes charts on global Internet use by region, top e-retail categories, and US attitudes toward cybercrime.

    As for the Net's future, here's a special report from Interactive Week magazine about what the Internet will look like four years from now and how we'll be connecting to and with it.

  7. From across 'the pond'

    Speaking of how the Internet's doing these days, here's a refreshingly non-US view of ICANN and Internet governance - the latest developments - from London-based tech news site, TheRegister.com. As they put it, "the issue of who gets to control the Internet affects pretty much everyone who uses it," so TheRegister.com has pulled together an in-depth three-parter on the subject. There are lots of great "for further research" links embedded in the articles for Internet history students. And media students will note British journalists' quite different approach to reporting, especially in "The Triangulations of Esther Dyson" (warning: this is kind of an insider piece for avid followers of Internet evolution).

  8. Email in our lives

    By 2002 Americans will be spending more than four hours a day on reading and answering some 50 emails a day. And that's only at work! Right now we're dealing with about 30 messages a day, up 50% from a year ago. All this is according to a new study by Ferris Research, covered by CNN. In the article, CNN provides Ferris's tips on how to manage the email monster.

  9. Is digital music dead…

    …now that MP3.com has lost the first round of its legal battle with the recording industry and file-sharing Web sites are laying off employees? "Only if you believe the world is fat," editorializes ZDNet. "The interest in digital downloads is growing at a phenomenal pace. The number of people visiting music sites went up by nearly 50% in the first three months of this year alone." The story goes on to explain why the latest developments are only "setbacks." Here's CNET's report on this week's decision against MP3.com (which the company says it will appeal).

  10. Followup on child-porn news

    Two weeks ago, in "The mainstreaming of child pornography," a Wired News article we cited mentioned eGroups - a Yahoo!-owned online community where people run their own discussion boards and publish their own newsletters - as one place where child pornography had gotten more public and accessible. This week TheRegister.com in London ran an item on eGroups's response to the report. Once again we arrive at the tricky legal question of whether a host organization on the Net is responsible for the content published by its customers. It's a question that's come up in the Napster music-file-sharing lawsuit.

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Listen to Leonardo

Just who was the Mona Lisa? In Learning about Leonardo, art students and aficionados everywhere can read one quite amazing, informed theory of who "she" really was (putting "she" in quotes is a very small hint). Here's the Mona Lisa's page. Another question many Leonardo da Vinci fans don't usually think to ask is, What does the artist and inventor's music sound like? Here's an all-too-brief snippet of his Renaissance music.

We appreciated a headsup this week from Bronx high school teacher Steve Feld about two ThinkQuest projects by his students. Steve teaches art history, computer graphics, digital photography, and Web design in New York City. Learning about Leonardo is an earlier project. Steve's 10th- and 11th-grade students' latest work is ArtiFAQ 21OO, representing an interesting challenge to art students. They explored art's past (Prehistoric, Classical, Renaissance, Expressionist, Impressionist, Futurist, and current forms) to predict its future - how it "will influence our lives in the next hundred years."

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Net Family News, Inc.
P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

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