US/ND-3: Internet content?
Internet content?
Sandy Brooks (sbrooks@wesleyan.edu)
Fri, 13 Sep 1996 21:59:16 -0400
I'm afraid I'm finding most of this discussion over my head, but I'm trying
to absorb what I can! The following quote from the homepage summary of "week
two" caught my eye:
>Educational Basis. Many of the participating teachers and librarians
>continued >to emphasize the educational goals of a widespread deployment
>of >telecommunications technology. Several suggested that Universal
>Service >subsidies should cover the evaluation of programs which employ
>this technology. >This is another topic which deserves further discussion,
>even though it would >appear at first glance to be far-removed from
>traditional telecommunications >services.
Many schools and libraries are very gung-ho to get on the Internet.
However, what content are they intent on accessing? There is some
excellent stuff on the Net, and some real garbage. In library collections,
someone with some training has supposedly made well-thought-out decisions
on what to purchase. On the Internet it's a free-for-all. Maybe that's as
it should be, but I don't like the idea of my hard-earned tax dollars
subsidizing just anyone who wants to get on the Internet to "surf the Web"
because it's the hip thing to do, or have students killing study hall time
in chat rooms, or worse yet, have students using the Internet for bona-fide
educational purposes and finding misinformation. I'm not in favor of
subsidies financing a "cleansing" of the Internet of any sort, but I would
expect those receiving subsidies to be giving serious consideration to how
to implement selection criteria for what their subsidized lines have access
to, especially in a school setting. Maybe this is what others have meant
by "evaluating programs which employ this technology." If so, I agree the
programs need to be evaluated - I don't know that I agree this should be
subsidized. I think of a subsidy as kind of a "matching grant" - you get
something good, and you have to be willing to put something into it as
well, like maybe the hardware, or the training, or the on-going support, or
the evaulation of programs, or whatever.
Sandy Brooks
sbrooks@wesleyan.edu