A study of Internet usage by large, small, and midsized businesses suggests that midsized businesses may be at a competitive disadvantage. Found that small businesses were more likely than midsized or large firms to have home pages and to reveal computer/technology programs as potential Internet services needed to improve current operations. (PEN)

USENET newsgroup topics are created, and they evolve, mutate, and become extinct in ways fundamentally different from spoken dialog. These differences can be explained partially by the asynchronous nature of electronic communication, as well as by other factors unique to such wide-scale multi-user media. (Author)

Describes activities and benefits of a series of summer technology workshops for librarians and teachers offered by the Houston Independent School District. Sidebars list software programs provided to workshop participants, basic steps of the "Big Six" skills, and Web site search tutorial. (AEF)

Advocates the use of online communication as a resource for meaningful research and shared observation by Montessorians. Makes suggestions regarding Web resources, purchasing a computer and hardware, obtaining Internet access, and using the Internet wisely. (KB)

Explores the opportunities offered by the Internet for technology-based instruction in the beginning language classroom. Discusses computer assisted language learning as it is relevant to the purpose and introduces the main aspects of a task-based approach. Presents sample exercises that are based on a combination of these two aspects of teaching…

Discusses educational use of the Internet, concerns regarding acceptable use, and limits to access. Compares differences between German and American school Internet use and offers recommendations from the Bertelsmann Foundation, a European organization, to ensure responsible use of the Internet including media competence, codes of conduct,…

Presents information to help users discern illegal online content from offensive content and tips for reporting both types of material. Highlights include: illegal Internet content and activities; offensive or annoying Internet content and activities; reporting an incident of online crime to the police; who to contact; what and how to report; and…

Presents a teaching unit from the Media Awareness Network Web site that introduces students (grades six through nine) to ways in which commercial Web sites collect personal information from children and issues surrounding children and privacy on the Internet. Highlights: objective; learning outcomes; preparation and materials; the lesson; guided…

Discusses how the rise of the Internet and the lure of lucrative online education programs have suddenly made university courses a hot commodity, raising issues of copyright and ownership conflicts between professors and the universities who employ them. Describes relevant legal rulings and actions by various universities and professors. (EV)

Notes the problem of Net-based plagiarism in student papers. Describes a solution that turns the tables by using the Internet: TurnItIn.com, an Internet scanner that annotates/marks unattributed material in student papers and compiles a report for the teacher overnight. (SR)

Explores the development of the ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) dataset and the relationship between that dataset and the disparate services that have emerged as a result of the Internet and the Web. Discusses the technical infrastructure; database content; services and resources; creating a unified knowledge base; and metadata…

Discusses use of the Internet by teachers for teacher mailing lists on particular academic subjects. Reports the results of email enquiries that investigated the adoption of use of the lists and then the levels of participation, and concludes that participation is very unequal and questions the cooperative character of these lists. (Author/LRW)

The Delphi technique was used to gather information from a panel of seven experts of collaborative educational telecommunications projects about successful elements of these projects as well as obstacles to success. Thirty-one items received high ratings from the panelists and had a high consensus level among the panel. Conclusions provide…

Proposes an alternative real valued representation of color based on the information theoretic concept of entropy. A theoretical presentation of image entropy is accompanied by a practical description of the merits and limitations of image entropy compared to color histograms. Results suggest that image entropy is a promising approach to image…

Reports an approach to interactive information seeking that is grounded in the idea of summarizing query results through automated document clustering. The authors' prototype acted as an intermediate layer between the user and a commercial Internet search engine. Data was processed from 36 users and it was concluded that the prototype improved…