Why MN's children need the Internet

[Doug Johnson <palsdaj@VAX1.MANKATO.MSUS.EDU>]

Hi folks,

A recent school board meeting alerted me to the fact that I have not been
doing a good enough job educating the public about why our district is
working toward getting universal access to the Internet for students.  As a
result, I wrote an editorial for the local paper outlining the three
reasons kids need access to the Internet.

If you would like a copy to read, line the bird cage with, or use as a
revising exercise in a remedial writing class, send me an e-mail message
and I will e-mail a copy back. It's around 1000 words.

Here's the first couple of paragraphs to help you decide:

        In its current incarnation, the "Information Superhighway" is hard
to use and expensive to bring into classrooms. It contains materials which
no teacher or parent in their right mind wants children to read - a
condition which is pretty much fine with the current propeller-heads,
researchers, and business folk who use the Internet and are not overjoyed
at the prospect of children traipsing over what had been their private
cyberspace.
        Yet over the past two years, several public school districts around
the state, Mankato among them, have invested a great deal of scarce human
and financial resources in computer networks and Internet access. As both
an educator and parent of a third-grader, I am offering 3 reasons why it is
imperative to overcome the obstacles just mentioned, and give our children
Internet access - now.

For what it is worth,

Doug


Doug Johnson, District Media Supervisor |  What gets measured
Mankato Public Schools, ISD77           |  gets done.
Box 8713, Mankato MN 56001-8713         |           Tom Peters
507-387-7698                            |
palsdaj@vax1.mankato.msus.edu           |
                                        |