SUSAN GRAY
As more and more schools and libraries gain access to the Internet, a growing number of non-profit groups are using the medium to get their messages across to schoolchildren around the world.
Environmental groups and museums have been among the leaders in the effort to develop educational materials for the Internet. Partly that’s because those groups have historically had a strong educational component in their work.
“They jumped on the bandwagon quicker than other non-profits,” says Jillain Smith, an official at the Benton Foundation, a Washington fund that supports high-technology projects and research.
The National Wildlife Federation in Washington, for instance, offers schoolteachers free lesson plans they can use to teach environmental science. The federation’s curriculum, called “Animal Tracks,” is available through the Internet (http://www.nwf.org./nwf/atracks) and includes 55 lesson plans for elementary- or middle-school teachers to use to teach environmental science.
But other groups, particularly arts organizations, as well as human-rights and youth groups, are beginning to devote resources to developing Internet sites that educate youngsters.
Amnesty International has posted lessons on teaching human rights to elementary- and secondary-school students on its World-Wide Web site (http://www.mightymedia.com/EduNet/ogframe.cfm?CID=6).
Sample lesson topics include: “Teaching About Conscience Through Literature,” “Children’s Rights Here and Now,” and “What Must Be Done to Achieve Equality.”
With the introduction this month of federal subsidies that make it cheaper for schools, libraries, and hospitals to obtain access to the Internet, charities have the potential to reach larger audiences than ever by developing on-line material.
“This is an area that I think non-profits could be pivotal in,” says Ms. Smith. “Non-profits generate a great deal of content. It should be put to educational use where appropriate.”
The National Wildlife Federation says its Animal Tracks programs has significantly expanded its ability to reach out to schoolteachers.
The federation estimates that Animal Tracks pages are viewed an average of 700 times a day and that about 500 teachers are using the material.
Each Animal Tracks lesson deals with a single topic, such as water pollution or endangered species, and suggests a classroom activity to enhance students’ understanding of the topic. The lessons are designed to be used in one class period, or can stretch over several days.
Animal Tracks also features a current-events “hotline” where educators can learn about the latest environmental problems and incorporate them into their lessons.
The federation has also used the hotline to plug environmental causes -- and to advance its own point of view about potential solutions.
The December current-events topic, for example, focused on pfiesteria, a micro-organism that has been found in the Chesapeake Bay and in North Carolina waters and that is thought to be the reason why countless fish have died in those places.
Working with schoolteachers is not new for the federation. It has long published environmental magazines for classroom use and put out supplements for science textbooks. But the Internet, says Stewart Hudson, vice-president for education programs, “allows us to broaden our horizons, both over time and over space.”
“We are able to reach more widely in a geographic sense to schools in Alaska, schools in Puerto Rico,” he says. “We’re also able to have material available to people 24 hours a day.”
Using the Internet is also relatively inexpensive. Mr. Hudson says the federation has saved an estimated $75,000 a year, so far, from publishing on the Internet rather than printing and mailing educational materials.
Similarly, the Franklin Institute, a leading science museum in Philadelphia, has found that the Internet has been a low-cost way to deepen the public’s understanding of science -- and to introduce schoolchildren and others to the museum.
“This is a way to build an ongo ing relationship with an audience -- a new audience -- that we never had the ability to do before,” says Steve Baumann, director of educational technology programs.
The institute designed a science curriculum for the Levering School, a public middle school in Philadelphia. But it has posted the science lessons (http://www.fi.edu), which range from how the weather is forecast to a step-by-step illustrated guide to dissecting a cow’s eyeball, on the Internet so that educators worldwide can also see it.
The institute has not yet tried to monitor how many teachers use the lesson plans, but it says that the site is viewed on average 75,000 times a day.
“They come to our Web site, not because we have maps of where the bathrooms are or for a virtual tour of the museum,” says Mr. Baumann. “They’re looking for an educational resource.”
However, the World-Wide Web material has done more than just educate youngsters. It has drawn more people to the museum too. A discount coupon for museum entry posted only on its site was used by 3,450 people who visited the museum last year.
While many non-profit groups have developed their Web sites with good intentions for educating students, some organizations simply put up research results that are not rigorous and are often biased, experts say.
What’s more, too many organizations do not take academic requirements or other needs of educators into account.
“It’s one thing to put up the information,” says Ms. Smith of the Benton Foundation, “but are they actively doing outreach with the schools to see that they are benefiting from it?”
Both National Wildlife Federation and the Franklin Institute say they hired schoolteachers and other education experts to oversee their work and make sure that it meets academic requirements.
“To develop educational materials,” says Ms. Smith, “they have to have that information integrated into a curriculum.”
For those that can do that, she says, the Internet presents an “extraordinary opportunity.”