Education and Libraries

--UNESCO Libraries Portal. Some 10,000 library-related links to sites throughout the world, including a just-added link for the TeleRead Web Log. Also check out UNESCO's preservation and access initiatives--including a program to encourage digitization of books, as well as archives.

--Austin Learning Academy Project. The philosophy in many ways is like TeleRead's. The project is family-oriented, rather than keeping learning just in the schoolhouse, and it promotes traditional literacy--not just the computer kind.

--Texas Schools May Go to Laptops--C|Net. The plan is for computers to replace textbooks. But will Texas schools address copyright issues adequately, and will children have the right books to read--real books, not just Web sites and CD-ROMs? Questions abound. If nothing else, what about the limitations of present-day hardware for reading books? Hooray for the Web, good CDs and the many-to-many model. But if plans like the Texas one aren't implemented well, educators may accidentally wean children off books. The same issues may arise, of course, when libraries accept software donations.

--Microsoft's Page on the Use of Laptops in Schools. Within "Anytime Anywhere Learning," check out the Schools in Action page for actual examples from Texas, California, Australia, South Carolina, Washington State and elsewhere.

--Books vs. Bytes--the Online NewHour. A fascinating discussion with a misleading title--given the promise of the Net for transmitting books to people at home.

--Can Too Much Technology Hurt Kids and the Schools?, a debate on the Wired site between Linda Roberts of the U.S. Department of Education and Todd Oppenheimer, author of an Atlantic Monthly article called The Computer Delusion. The debate is in RealAudio. 

--Two in Five Teachers Say Kids Don't Have Enough Textbooks: Many Say They Can't Assign Homework and also California Voters Rank Textbook Funding as #1 Education Priority. U.S. publishers warn of a serious textbook shortage.

--Microsoft Is No Carnegie, Says Salon's Jan. 27, 1997, issue. The company boasts of huge gifts of software to schools and libraries. But a "$300" program may cost all of $30 or less to donate on a disk. Besides, shouldn't Microsoft and Gates give the Net some real books?

--K-12 Web Guru Andy Carvin Meets Bill Gates

--Schoolhouse Tech--Feed

--Cyber English--The Well-Connected Educator

--NetDay, 1997 Revisited

--NetDayWire

--Donated PCs for Schools (LINCT Coalition)

--Clinton's $3-Billion Net Ed Plan

--Laptop Computers vs. Desktops in Class

--Town Buys Laptops for Entire 7th Grade--N.Y. Times

--When Parents Instead Pay for Students' Laptops--Times

--From Now On, a K-12 journal whose editor knows that today's Net is not a true library.

--EdWeb and the related mailing list for Webbed educators and others

--U.S. Department of Education. Includes page on technological initiatives.

--Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory, working in standards-based education. By making good books ubiquitous, TeleRead would help the cause.

--Education Week's Report on Technology and the Schools

--The Benton Foundation's report on Schools in the Information Age--which, among other things, warns of the need to add better content to the Net.

--Benton's report on libraries and communities in the digital era

--Libraries for the Future

--American Library Association

--The Gates Library Foundation

--DigitalLibrary.net. A first-rate collection of links to digital library efforts.

--D-lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research

--National Digital Library Periodic Reports, from the Library of Congress. LOC's electronic program is a wonderful start, but focuses less on books than on research materials and multimedia in such efforts as the laudable American Memory Project. This NDL is not a cost-justified, TeleRead-style library with an accompanying hardware program to encourage the mass use of optimal hardware for both e-books and e-forms. Nor does the present NDL include an extensive collection of contemporary, copyrighted books--an effort that would be managed by many libraries in many cities. It also does not offer a pay-to-play feature, which would let big commercial publishers gamble money up front and along the way in order to qualify for larger payments later on. A TeleRead agency could work inside or alongside LOC.

--Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). This progressive educational group fights the proverbial "savage inequalities." A well-stocked national digital library, of course, could let students in poor communities enjoy the same copyrighted books as those in rich ones, without harming the latter; in fact TeleRead would increase the range of materials available to Beverly Hills, not just Watts.

--ALAWON, the newsletter out of the Washington office of the American Library Association. It's one of the best ways of keeping up with library-related issues in Congress. For a subscription, email listserv@uicvm.uic.edu. In the body of your message write: subscribe ala-wo firstname lastname.

--Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). Members promote better-wired schools. CoSN includes a mix of teachers, independent consultants, and people in industry. Some of the top innovators in K-12 networking belong to CoSN

--Ednet. Our schools are so unwired that most classrooms lack telephones; forget about modems and e-books. So how are teachers faring in their efforts to get students into cyberspace--when even Americans schools have a 15-to-1 ratio between students and computers? Write listproc@nic.umass.edu. In the body write: subscribe ednet firstname lastname.

--The Edupage digest on computers and schools. Well-written summary of news from sources ranging from academic journals to daily newspapers. Email listserv@bitnic.educom.edu. Say: subscribe edupage firstname lastname.

--School- and library-related links on the Web. This is a handy list out of the University of Washington. I'd also recommend Gleason Sackman's HotList of K-12 Internet School Sites, a quick way to find a school near you that's already on the Net.

--MendelWeb, which help readers explore Gregor Mendel's seminal work in the area of genetics. MendelWeb itself is a ground-breaker of sorts. Readers can contribute their own hyperlinked annotations to Mendel's writing, complete with links to other attractions of MendelWeb or those of the Web in general.