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TIPS
Volume 3, No. 2
Grade Level Key |
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Teachers
The Editor's Page
Technology
Applied
 Ten years ago...the Internet was often called the last refuge for liars, flakes, and scoundrels. Of course, during the early years of the World Wide Web (the graphics-based Internet that we know today), more than half of all websites were "adult," and many of the rest were maintained by people who, for one reason or another (often quite good reasons, frankly), couldn't gain the ear or the ink of the so-called "legitimate press." As a result, early on-line surfers gained a certain healthy skepticism when examining sites, and the content contained on them. In its
favor, the early Internet was as close to a truly democratic forum as
there has ever been - small interests and political voices were just
as evident as the big corporate guns and multi-million-dollar PACs.
But since the Dot-Com
revolution of the last three or four years, the number of professionally produced
and maintained sites with long purse strings has mushroomed, and, as
is usually the case in human history, the big guns are dwarfing the
small voices. But... it never hurts to have a little fun on the way! Featured
this month in TIPS is our humor department, The Network
is Down... Usually this section is just a send-up, a simple
distraction from the foibles of technology. But this month, it has
some links to sites that purposefully thumb their nose at the truth!
Many are believable The Internet has matured, and the number of high-quality sources of information and instruction have increased with that maturity. But it's still true that anyone with a few extra bucks a month can post a site claiming almost anything. Some are even serious. But since these are not, their presence in a mix of other sites can help your students learn to separate the biscuit from the flake! --Jeffrey L. Jones, Editor |
But
those small voices are still there, and some are still as
flaky as grandmother's baking powder biscuits. Our job, as
technology-integrating educators, is to make sure that we teach our
charges about the wonderful world of credibility and truthfulness.
enough to make them a good instructional tool
for those young Internet critics in your classroom!