Introduction
One sure indication that a technological innovation is becoming "mainstream" is its debut in editorial cartoons. Yet although satirical glimpses into the impact of the Information Superhighway have arrived, even savvy political pundits are demonstrating little foresight into what new services will hurtle down the electronic pike into our homes once this infrastructure is in place. The prospects of a 12,000 player Mario Brothers and interactive Oprah in the living room may produce laughs (and anxiety), but the ultimate uses of this technology are still, to a large extent, based upon imagination and speculation.
Nonetheless, access to the activities and services already available on the Internet (and some of those which are currently under development) propel today's schools into an information age environment which, when compared to the resource drought in the average classroom, seems almost futuristic in its abundance.
While this section discusses Internet services, the local area network in a school can provide specific services to the school community as well. For example, commonly used software can be stored on a file server so that users can have access to the most current version. Common documents or school bulletins can be stored on a local server for general access. Printers can be shared by connecting them to the network or to a file server on the network. These types of services will be specific to the network software chosen for your school and should be considered when evaluating the benefits versus the costs of implementing a network.
The focus of this chapter is on the tools which facilitate access to information beyond the school's domain-- on the Internet. The network services we will discuss fall into two general categories: communication and messaging tools and resource location tools. Communication tools include electronic mail (email), USENET News, and Chat and Talk. These tools allow users to communicate with one another over great and small distances with varying degrees of direct interactivity. Resource location and retrieval tools, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet, Gopher, Wide Area Information Services (WAIS), and World Wide Web (WWW), allow users to access and utilize information and resources which reside on distant computers.
Communication and Messaging Tools
Communications made available through the Internet vary in scope and functionality. Electronic mail is a powerful tool for one-to-one communications and for joining into discussion groups where several people at a time share and respond to messages. USENET News is a similar tool for group discussions which involve experts and non-experts alike on many topics. Finally, Chat and Talk are tools that allow interactive one-on-one and one-to-many communications.
Electronic Mail
Electronic Mail (email) is essentially electronic correspondence. Email is initiated from a single user and allows the author to communicate with any of the other ten million users on the Internet - and for that matter many other networks. Email can be addressed to an individual or to groups of any size.
Use of email is exponentially increasing as more and more individuals and organizations acquire access to networks. In addition to offering a time and cost efficient means of communication, email is a catalyst for encouraging exploration of ideas and interests between people who are not, and may not be able to be, personally aquatinted. Countless informal and formal dialogues are taking place between individuals who share professional and personal interests but who are separated by location, profession, age, and other characteristics which are easily overcome in the information age. The ease of connecting people who have been isolated in the past is literally transforming the way in which many people approach their daily work. For example, teachers whose students have access to email are able to facilitate conversations between their students and working professionals around the globe, encouraging design of inquiry-based, collaborative, problem-solving curriculum.
Listservs and Mail Lists
An important aspect of communications through email occurs through group conversations, called listservs or mail lists (and USENET News, which is discussed below.) Learning and teaching communities are springing forth as more and more people participate in these flexible and convenient forums. Listservs and mail lists are email conferences which allow users to join interactive discussions with groups of people, both small and large. Listserv and mail list conversations focus on an extremely broad array of topics and range from relatively formal, quality controlled or `moderated' discussions, to highly informal meeting grounds.
USENET News
USENET News offers the same basic service on the network as do listservs and mail lists. The primary difference is its delivery mechanism. Mail lists and listservs are initiated through email. News group conversations, as they are often referred to in USENET News, are delivered via a separate mechanism (not your email account) and are accessed by using a different set of commands. The benefit of USENET News is that your personal email account remains uncluttered even though you may be involved with several different discussions. If you do not have time to read the information that has arrived via your news group, the information will eventually be removed from the system; news groups free you from the responsibility of managing each and every message as you do with your email.
Currently, there are between 3,000 and 4,000 news groups (the number of groups is increasing). News groups range from highly technical discussions (e.g., space physics) to informal conversations (e.g., bonsai care, recipes). The degree to which the discussions are formal is often determined by whether or not the group is moderated. In the case of a moderated news group, all correspondence to the group is passed through the moderator, the same is true of listservs and mail lists. This person ensures the integrity of the contribution. If the message is deemed of value to the whole group it is posted. Otherwise, the sender may be directed to send an email to a specific reader or to try posting to a different news group. USENET News offers a unique vehicle through which participants can ask specific questions, gain insight on specific topics, and obtain detailed information from others about where to look for more information on topics of interest.
Chat and Talk
Chat and Talk are the Internet services which most resemble using the telephone to communicate. Unlike email, listservs and mail lists, users of Chat and Talk must all agree to be on line at the same time. Once the initial communication is established, they can all participate in a truly interactive conversation. As each member of the discussion types in communication, all other members view the words on the screen along with a tag identifying from whom the communication is coming. The difference between Talk and Chat is that the Talk utility allows only one-to-one communication, while Chat allows a group of users to simultaneously participate in the conversation.
Like other communication services mentioned, the formality and purpose of this type of communications can vary a great deal. The conversations can be loosely defined by a very broad subject heading or limited to the consideration of a narrowly defined topic. This type of communication takes planning and coordination but can be a very effective tool allowing teachers and students to participate in highly interactive conversations across great distances.
Resource Locator and Retrieval Tools
As recently as two years ago the Internet was referred to as a library with no card catalogue, a gourmet restaurant with no menu. The user had to know the site where a file or document resided (usually learned through conversation with someone in a newsgroup or on a mail list) in order to find it. This is still true of the first two tools we will discuss, Telnet and File Transfer Protocol (FTP); but as you will see, it is no longer true of all retrieval and access applications. Thanks to the efforts of Internet users around the world, easier-to-use search tools are now available which save you both time and energy. The search tools in this category which have been widely used to date are Gopher, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), and World Wide Web (WWW).
Telnet
Telnet (may sometimes be referred to as login) offers users the ability to log onto a distant computer and have a real-time interactive session on it. A user engaged in a telnet session can access databases and search for relevant records, have real-time conversations with other users, and select menu items leading them to information "trees" which provide more in-depth information at each level.
The manner in which information on a telnet site is presented can vary a great deal:
A telnet site can be configured to operate like a data base. The user enters a topic and the system responds by presenting the user a relevant set of records which contain information pertaining to that topic. For example, Education Research Information Center (ERIC) is a telnet site which provides information on educational research conducted worldwide. ERICusers can enter a topic (e.g., choice and vouchers) and will be directed to a list of papers which contain information on that topic.
Archie
Another popular use of telnet in the database format is referred to as Archie (the name comes from the word archives). The user telnets to an Archie server and enters a key word (as opposed to a topic). In response, the Archie server provides the user a list of FTP sites and file names containing that key word. (More will be said about FTP in the following section.)
A telnet site can also present information much like a bulletin board. Available topics are listed menu-style and the user chooses from among them. For example, NASA Spacelink is a telnet site which offers a variety of information for teachers on topics such as shuttle launches, Mars explorations, and other space related research and activities. The user of a telnet site configured in this way need not know the specific topic to be researched ahead of time. This can be particularly useful for students who are asked to choose a narrow topic of research in a broad field of study.
MUDS
Finally, telnet sites can be configured as Multiple User Devices (MUDS). This configuration allows for chats to occur and grants simultaneous access to multiple users so that those users can participate in real-time, interactive sessions on a single system. Most often with these telnet sites, users are engaged in a predefined or preconfigured environment. Uses for these systems vary from text-based, virtual reality systems (e.g., MIT's MicroMuse) to online gaming systems.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A very common way to retrieve documents, images (photos, graphics or animation), and applications via the network is through a service (actually an application protocol) called File Transfer Protocol (FTP). In essence, FTP offers the individual user the ability to use his/her computer to access and retrieve publicly available files from another computer on the network. In other words, the individual can access a directory, or list of file names, on a distant computer, select one or many of the files and have them transferred to his/her own computer. These files can then be read and manipulated as if they were his/her own files (barring any copyright restrictions).
Ed Krol describes FTP: "Often, you will find information on the Internet which you don't want to examine on a remote system: you want to have a copy for yourself. You've found, for example, the text of a recent Supreme Court opinion, and you want include pieces of it in a brief you are writing. Or you found a recipe that looks good, and you want to print a copy to take to the kitchen. Or you found some free software that just might solve all your problems, and you want to try it. In each case, you need to move a copy of the file to your local system so you can manipulate it there . The tool for doing this is FTP. FTP is a complex program because there are many different ways to manipulate files and file structures. Different ways of storing files (binary or ASCII, compressed or uncompressed, etc.) introduce some complications, and may require some additional thought to get things right." [1]
Gopher
Gopher is an Internet application made up of many network servers which "burrow" through the Internet on your behalf in search of pertinent resources. The resources accessible via Gopher are vast. For example, Gopher servers will locate images, applications, files, news group archives, and, if your search leads you to it, Gopher will even establish a telnet session for you. The value of Gopher is that once you have selected menu items representing information that interests you, Gopher establishes the necessary network connections to get you to the resource. Another feature of Gopher is that unlike FTP, Gopher allows you to actually read a file before deciding whether or not to save it to your computer. (Wide Area Information Services and World Wide Web below also include this feature.)
For example, imagine your students are studying weather patterns and are using Gopher as a tool to help find resources. By using a tool within Gopher called Veronica, students are able to perform a word search and locate resources on any Gopher server. Such resources might include European weather satellite images updated hourly, meteorological documents, or NASA satellite photos of hurricanes. Should your students decide they want to copy some of these resources to the classroom computer, Gopher will also manage the transfer of those resources.
These resources may be located on many different servers, but thanks to Gopher your students will be seamlessly escorted from one computer to another so that they can concentrate on the resources themselves rather than the logistics of data location and transfer.
Wide Area Information Services (WAIS)
Similar to the Gopher tool Veronica, WAIS allows the user to perform word searches of documents residing on over 450 network servers nationwide (in fact, some information is available through both Gopher and WAIS). WAIS servers, referred to as sources, are topic-specific systems containing indexed information. Many of the sources store archives of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) resulting from USENET News group discussions. Other sources contain information that would otherwise be found in a typical data base or card catalog.
WAIS, like Gopher, is an excellent way to find information on specific topics. Unlike Gopher, WAIS allows you to keep your search limited to specific servers. Over time, a WAIS user can become very familiar with the sources that produce the most pertinent results and can save time by limiting his/her search to those sources.
World Wide Web (WWW)
This is yet another information locator tool on the Internet. The innovation with WWW is that information is presented in a hyper-text format. What this means is that key words in the document are linked to background and supporting information which can enhance the user's understanding of the topic. Hypertext links lead the user to other text documents, images, sound files, and even movies. The user only need select the key word and WWW leads him/her automatically to these related resources.
Mosaic
It is common to hear WWW referred to as Mosaic. However, Mosaic is really the interface which is becoming the standard for using the WWW tool. Mosaic provides a user-friendly, graphical interface into the hypertext format in which the information in WWW is presented. The value of Mosaic is that it makes using WWW even easier and is therefore contributing to the growth and popularity of the tool.
In The Whole Internet Ed Krol states, "Hypertext is a method of presenting information where selected words in the text can be `expanded' at any time to provide other information about the word. That is, these words are links to other documents which may be text, files, pictures, anything." [2]
Cello
A recent newcomer to the Internet is a WWW client called Cello. Cello is a multipurpose Internet search tool which permits users to access information from many different sources existing in varying formats. This means that Cello can be used to access data from WWW, Gopher, FTP, WAIS servers and many others. The Cello client will also attempt to decode the file or information being retrieved as long as it recognizes the compression scheme or application used to modify or create the file. As you can see, Cello is a highly flexible tool, and as the Internet matures as an information and communications resource, it is expected that many more such tools will be developed and adopted.
Conclusions
It is important to remember that the Internet is not managed by a single source, nor is its future determined by one special interest group.
Therefore, use of the network and the tools which facilitate that use are being developed on an ongoing basis by groups and individuals worldwide. We have discussed several of today's most prominent communication and search tools. These tools are continually evolving; and though they are the most well used today, tomorrow's innovation may bring completely new methods for locating information. The Internet is a tool for lifelong learning, and users of the Internet should be prepared to discover and utilize new tools as they become available.
[1] Ed Krol, The Whole Internet, O'Reilly
& Associate, Inc., July 1993.
[2] ibid
