Homework? The Internet Is An Important Tool

by Sara Klein

Most students know that using many different sources of information for their homework is a good way to impress teachers, but few know how to use the Internet for help with homework or reports.

A lot of the information is very current and sometimes information is published on the Internet before it is sent to the magazine or newspaper subscribers. Plus it always looks good (at least for the student) if the student knows things about the topics being discussed in class before the teacher does. The Internet has so much information that it is sometimes hard to find exactly what you want. That is why there are many search engines which look through the title of the document for certain words. Some of the best are Alta Vista (http://altavista.digital.com), Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), Infoseek (http://guide.infoseek.com), Lycos (http://a2z.lycos.com), and Excite (http://www.excite.com). Yahoo! is also good if the topic is very broad because you can select many more specific topics under the many different broad topics.

The Internet is also good for things other then reports. One site that can help with math homework is a place called "Eric's Treasure Trove of Mathematics" (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~eww/math/math.html ) which includes an alphabetical listing of topics. This site has many good definitions for many math concepts but it does not have a listing of symbols and what they mean. If information about science is what you want, try the Exploratorium (http://www.exploratoriurn.edu). The
Exploratorium is a hands-on science and art museum in San Francisco. It has 650 interactive permanent exhibits and many traveling ones. Some experiments you can do on your computer, and there is information on other experiments.

If you still need more information, The Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov) has information on many subjects and can help you to find bibliographical information on books (which is very helpful when the report complete with bibliography is due the next day and all you remember about the book is the title). The Library of Congress has a listing of many exhibits at the library but there are also many exhibits on the Internet.

If you just want to see what students are doing all around the country, there is a list of K to 12 school sites (http://www.sendit. nodak.edu/kl2). At any of the schools you can find out about the school and what the students are doing. Many schools also include a copy of their newspaper and letters written by students about their school.

For information and links to many colleges around the world, try University and College Education (http://www.cs.fsu. edu/projects/group1/combined.hotlist.html). The colleges will tell you about themselves, but most of them still seem to be saying the same thing. The sites do not help with making a decision about where to go to college, but it is sometimes interesting to see what all the colleges say.

One difficulty though with using the Internet for information for large reports is how to list it in the bibliography. I found that some teachers just want the location (but you can tell where the information is coming from by the address, edu for education, org for organization, gov for government, and com for commercial, if it is in the United States; there is a country code if it is from outside the United States). Some teachers want the location and a short description of what is there, but others (like some science teachers) want to see a printed copy of the information at the site (you can't blame them for wanting to be informed). So it is best to write down the site in case you do need it later. It is more fun to find information on the Internet because while the computer is searching for what you need for school, you can play games and you can't do that in most libraries. Then when the school work is done (or sometimes before) you can find all the cheat codes for the newest games.

Sara Klein is sixteen years old and she often uses the computer for work and play and has used the Internet for many school reports. Reprint from I/O, the Newsletter of the KIPCUG User Group, Louisville, KY.

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