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Dear Subscribers:

Can it be mid-July already?! Here's our lineup for this second week of July:

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The Internet: Tool for critical thinking?!

We all know that looking for credible information on the Internet is a risky business. So here's a concept: actually use the Internet as a tool to teach kids critical thinking. In "Kids Need to Learn How to Sift Out Net Junk" (second in a series on online safety), Larry Magid talks about his own kids' struggles to find accurate information for school reports. He makes the point that "the key to getting the most out of the Internet is having the skills and judgment to decide for yourself what is and isn't worth using."

Parents can help kids develop that judgment, Larry says, which is how the Internet becomes a teaching tool. We can take time occasionally to work side by side with our kids as they conduct Web searches, Larry suggests, helping them figure out the source and credibility of the information they encounter in Web sites. Another idea - from Marel Rogers, a high school teacher we interviewed last year - is to surf with kids to sites about their favorite subjects. If they go first to Web material about Pokemon, Tarzan, or their favorite sports team or music group - material they know very well - they'll quickly be able to tell how credible the information is. Working from the familiar to the less familiar, they can develop critical discernment with a little practice.

Larry provides a useful link to the London-based Health Education Authority site, which suggests "eight ways of checking information on Web sites" - another tool for this important learning process. "It's designed mostly to help youngsters evaluate sites with health information, but the checklist can also apply to other types of sites," Larry writes.

If your family has come up with another wonderful way to practice critical thinking on the Web, do share your solution.

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Tales of Internet insiders and detractors

There are two interesting items in this month's issue of First Monday, which - as "a peer-reviewed [academic] journal on the Internet" - is interesting in its own right. (See why we think so in our writeup on the journal last year.)

  1. Reality check on universal access

    In this case, by "universal" we mean not just rural, urban, all races and education levels, etc. (what "universal access" has come to mean in the US). We mean all countries. In "Letter from San Jose: The Internet Global Summit June 1999" Steve Cisler gives us a snapshot of just how accessible the Internet is to regular people like us in other countries. He also gives us a feel for the "nerve center" of a couple of things: Internet policymaking and the US's high-tech industry (Silicon Valley).

    The article's not for everyone. It's for people interested in how Internet governance works, who the players are, and how it's coming along. Steve has been attending these international conferences since the Internet Society got started way back in 1992 :-) He rambles a bit. After all, he's not a professional writer; he's a tech consultant and Renaissance man with a background in libraries, the Peace Corps, Apple Computers, winemaking, and search and rescue for the Coast Guard.

    But articles in the first person with healthy sprinklings of informed opinion and cyber-local color can make even descriptions of the Internet Society a fairly good read. What is the Internet Society? In a nutshell it's a "professional membership society" (with individual and organizational members in more than 100 countries) that helps guide the future of the Internet. It's the home organization for groups, like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which hammer out policy about the technological, not to mention ideological, "guts" of the 'Net. They work on Internet "infrastructure standards," to use a bit of techie language. Since the Internet is a sprawling, decentralized, global, grassroots sort of medium, the Internet Society and its subgroups are about as close as it gets to control or authority on the 'Net. This little nugget is actually good for parents to know - because it helps us understand things like why a single country's legislature (say, the US Congress!) can't really control what our children can access on the Web.

  2. A prof's view on Internet learning

    In academic circles where people debate whether there really should be university degree programs on the Internet, one professor - David Noble at York University in Toronto - has made himself pretty famous as a real curmudgeon about distance learning. To our mind, he's a bit of a conspiracy theorist. He "contends that university administrators, in collusion with high-tech corporations and emerging educational industries, are plotting the top-down, profit-driven commercialization of higher education as 'courseware'," to quote the writer of this First Monday piece, "Digital Diploma Mills: A Dissenting Voice", by Frank White. Mr. White, library director at Marygrove College in Detroit, agrees with some of Noble's arguments, but not all. As he spells out his view anyone interested can learn a lot about the "Netification of higher learning" that's happening right under our noses. If any of you feel strongly that earning college credits or even degrees wholly on the Internet is a bad or good thing, do email us your comments.

    For more on the subject, see an item we ran last April, "The full scoop on distance learning".

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Web News Briefs

  1. The bill got emailed to Bill

    This just in!! Internet history was made in Washington this week: Congress emailed a bill to President Clinton for signing. No, it won't get signed with the President's digital signature (maybe next year?), but - according to the Associated Press via CompuServe - the Y2K legal reform bill was the first bill ever to get emailed for passage into law. The AP says that the bill, which passed the House of Representatives July 1, could save US businesses billions of dollars in legal costs from law suits involving the so-called "millennium bug" in computer software.

  2. From free PC to free ISP

    The portals (formerly known as search engines) are scrambling to keep our eyeballs on their home pages! Taking a cue from the free-PC wars (see our report last week), Alta Vista will soon be offering free Internet access. According to News.com, the service will be advertising supported. There will be "a small box on users' screens, containing advertisements and links back to the AltaVista Web site." News.com says the box will stay active as long as we're online. Also, to get the service we'll have to register some personal information, giving AltaVista the ability to track our surfing habits. The other possible catch (not mentioned in the piece)? The service is only for dialup connections, so any families considering higher-speed DSL or cable-modem connections will have to pay!

  3. Schools clamor for more tech

    The good news is: Elections loom, and politicians of both parties are eager to spend money on education technology. At least, that's what Wired News says educators want - see their story about an ed tech conference held this week, sponsored by the US Education Department. In its report on the conference, the New York Times says the focus was on whether the investment in ed tech is paying off "by helping children to learn better."

    And speaking of critical judgment (see our first item), a great way to get kids thinking about how information is presented is to take a story like this one (or one they're really interested in) and look at how different reporters handle it. What did the reporter focus on? How did s/he start the article (what the reporter wants to emphasize is at the top)? What's the tone? Is the reporting pretty straightforward, or does there seem to be some opinion in there (more like an editorial)? You and the child will be able to think of more questions as you compare the coverage. Teachers among us, have you done something like this in your classroom? If so, do email us about it (via feedback@netfamilynews.org).

  4. Tech haves/have nots

    The "racial ravine" in 'Net use is widening. But the picture is a little more complicated than a simple racial divide. According to the Associated Press via CompuServe, a US Commerce Department survey release this week shows that income, education, and where a person lives are also key factors. For example, low-income blacks and Hispanics who live in rural areas are the people with the least access to technology, the survey showed. And of families earning $15,000-30,000, 33% of whites and 19% of blacks own computers. Above $75,000 there is almost no difference between blacks and whites, the Commerce Department found.

    US public libraries are trying to help. In a press release this week, the American Library Association said the Commerce report corroborates the ALA's position that "Internet connectivity in libraries is crucial." Lynne Bradley, an official at the ALA in Washington, said, "Our nation's libraries are one of the strong, critical partners to build and maintain a sense of community and close the gap between the information 'haves' and 'have nots.' " The release added that about 70% of rural libraries provide Internet access, and nearly 80% of libraries serving low-income areas provide Internet access. Those numbers are growing fast, the ALA says, with credit going to the E-rate program of discounts for telecommunications services to schools and libraries.

    And while we're on the subject: No one really disputes the "digital divide" figures, but there is an ongoing debate about the impact of the divide. For perspective, here's an AP piece that looks at both sides of the debate. The debaters are B. Keith Fulton of the National Urban League and E. David Ellington, a founder and president of one of the Web's most popular black-directed sites. Their arguments make good fodder for a classroom or dinner-table debate on the "digital divide" or "universal access" to the Net.

  5. Latest Net population numbers

    We remember well when the number of Internet users for the whole world was 35 million! Now a market research group called eMarketer says that's how many people will have come online just in 1999! And the global total will be 130 million by year's end - exceeding the population of Japan. A couple other little factoids: The number of people online in South America will rise from 4.1 million in 1999 to 26.6 million in 2002, a 55% increase, and more than 75% of the world's Web sites are in English.

  6. What virus writers are like

    A fun Wired News piece asks the question, "What kind of person would unleash a data-damaging virus onto the computers of complete strangers?" An expert at a computer security conference in Las Vegas started her answer with a trick question, the predictable profile: evil, unethical, maladjusted teenagers with no social lives, absent parents, and too many Danzig CDs? Nope. Read the article to find out what a diverse group virus writers are (and the few common characteristics they share).

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Pols on the 'Net

The subtitle could be "Republicans on the offensive"! As the presidential election approaches all issues Internet continue to heat up. According to the Association of Online Professionals, which closely follows Net-related issues through Congress, "The Republicans are anxious to counter the perception that the Democrats - led by Vice President Al Gore - have an inner track of support from technology companies."

Have you heard about the "e-Contract?" Here's the AOP Bulletin's report on it (with permission from the AOP):

"US House of Representatives majority leader Dick Armey unveiled a Republican initiative to support the US tech industry: a 10-point "e-Contract" intended to mirror the success of the Republican "Contract with America." The e-Contract pledges that Congress will work on an agenda that includes:

"Democrats in Congress were quick to point out that the contract is vague, that many of the points are legislative initiatives that haven't had support in the past."

Then there was the Republican-Democrat wrestling match in Silicon Valley this week, as described by Wired News. All those paper billionaires and technology startups are getting a lot of visits from politicians these days. Maybe that's why we're hearing about all these IPOs - the companies know they won't have any time to go public after this year until the election is over!

And in Washington, too, Internet issues are on the "front burner" as Congress came back from the July 4th recess this week. According to the New York Times, consumer privacy on the Net, high-speed Internet access, encryption technology are all center stage on Capitol Hill.

As for political fundraising, another Times piece reports that email is the latest mechanism for solicitation. And the first test of candidates being able to raise money this way had mixed results.

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An Internet milestone

This week there's a new lobby knocking on lawmakers' doors: NetCoalition.com. Mentioned in the same New York Times piece, it's made up of Internet industry players such as America Online, Amazon.com, eBay, Lycos, Excite@Home, and other giant "portals," who claim that 90% of the world's Internet traffic visit at least one of the coalition members' sites each month. It's virtually the same group that's funding the "One Click Away" online-safety initiative announced by Al Gore in April (see our report on that). Actually, we're surprised it took the lobby this long to launch.

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

Sincerely,

Net Family News


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