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Up one level | To Tom Geller's writings | Home Website reviews for The Net: Education Please note that the writing samples below were written around February 1996, and many of the sites reviewed have disappeared, moved, or changed. -- Tom Geller AcademicNet American Montessori Society Baylor School Canadian Homeschool Resources The Career Explorers Carnegie Mellon University College Board Online Doty's Education Page Educaid Online Elementary Spanish Curriculum Ethnologue Database General Organic and Biochemistry Global Online Adventure Learning Site (GOALS) Harvard University Home-Ed Kids Homespun Web of Home Educational Resources Mass. Institute of Technology Peterson's Education Center Princeton Review Public Teach-In School Is Dead Learn in Freedom Stanford University The Student Guide 1995-96 The University of Michigan Thomas Edison State College UC Berkeley UK Lifelong Learning Urban Education Web USA2100 CyberLearning Center UT Austin Washington University in St Louis Worcester Polytechnic's EE 535 Course Yale University AcademicNet Home Page AcademicNet looks promising: nicely rendered image maps, plenty of places to click, a fancy registration system, and a statement that it is the resource for "educators interested in technology-mediated instruction and learning in higher education." Unfortunately, there's very little to see until you register, and not much after that. Many of the internal links were broken, and the stuff that was present was self-serving and written in a dry, uninformative tone. Some of the collections of external links are worthwhile, though -- if you can find them among the chaff. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top American Montessori Society Most parents and educators have, at one time or another, become disgusted with the state of education in the United States. A small but significant minority has opted for innovative montessori schools, which follow the lead of Italy's Dr. Maria Montessori. This site fulfills three purposes: It promotes (endlessly) the montessori method; acts as conduit to the American Montessori Society; and provides a list of public montessori schools. This last 76K tidbit (probably the most useful for most visitors) is found at the bottom of the home page. But wander about: You'll be surprised at what you'll learn! Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Baylor School Being a public school kid from a moderate-income family myself, I've had little knowledge about prep schools like Baylor, save what I extrapolated from the "preppie" fad of the early 80s. But you know, from this home page, it looks kind of nice. Nestled in the woods and fields of Tennessee, the school's 850-odd students practice their English, music, and skeet shooting in a "Judeo-Christian" atmosphere (huh?). But beyond pretty pictures, a mission statement, and general palaver about excellence, the cupboard is pretty bare. What you won't find out is the cost -- but, as I learned in the early 80s, preppies don't talk about such things. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Canadian Homeschool Resources This site proposes an alternative to public schooling in Canada while offering information and resources parents may need if they intend to teach the kids themselves. Wish to talk with other homeschooling parents? There are local contact addresses for some (though not all) of the provinces. Generally speaking, the site is less thorough than some of its U.S. counterparts (such as http://www.ICtheWeb.com/hs-Web/) and the FAQ is somewhat incomplete. Still, an admirable start. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Career Explorers This site, launched by United Multimedia, a CD-ROM publisher, is designed to let (presumably young) visitors with an eye toward the future learn about various careers. Well.. one career, anyway: right now, there's not much here. But the sole area, I Want to be a Veterinarian, covers quite a bit of territory: what training is needed, typical tasks, helpful skills, and so forth. The long blocks of small type may be daunting to young readers, though, and there are some minor HTML errors throughout. It will probably improve, though, soon enough, as more careers are added. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon has long bragged of its strong computer sciences department, and from this site's depth, it's clear that its pride is deserved. Interested in studying drama at CMU? Check out course descriptions, and even see when classes are meeting, thanks to some clever links to the registrar's office. Some improperly linked image maps marred the site's effectiveness, however. Whatever faults it has, though, Carnegie Mellon gets my praise for its Lycos program, one of the better free Web search tools. You can reach it through these pages or directly at http://lycos.com/. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top College Board Online The College Board oversees tests such as the SAT and AP exams, administers financial aid programs, suggests standards among its 3,000 member schools, and acts as a general intermediary between students and colleges. And now, many of its services are available via the Web, through colorful image maps, clever forms, and genius-level search engines. Separate indices direct students, guidance counselors, faculty, and member schools to the most relevant information. The technical level is high, making this a user-friendly entry to the intimidating world of college admissions. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Doty's Education Page There are two extremes in WWW catalogs: huge lists of links with no commentary (à la Webcrawler) and annotated lists with too few links (à la most personal pages). Educator Robert Doty has found the middle ground in this site, a page dedicated to education links (separated by grade-school subject) with some original content, i.e. articles he's written on education and technology. There are a few minor technical problems: no "back to home page" buttons, for instance. Still, not bad for someone who says he got into public education for the free Internet access! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Educaid Online A lot of places offer general information on college entry requirements and government student loan programs. But where do you go to actually get the money you need? Educaid is one such place. With FAQs, quizzes, application forms, as well as background information on the company and the loans they offer, this site is the epitome of a corporate "advertising" entity. As such, there are no external links, which is disturbing. (Are they afraid you'll get information elsewhere?) Colorful image maps dress up every page, making the site attractive but slow. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Elementary Spanish Curriculum Are you looking for an online source for Spanish language instruction? Well, you won't find it here. Instead, educator Leslie Veen outlines her method of teaching Spanish to elementary- and middle school-age children. The one-page document includes goals for grammar, vocabulary, and cultural understanding, from the point of view of the teacher. It's not that this site is badly done -- the curriculum is as good as anything you'll get from your local high-school teacher. But that's all there is to it, and, as such, it's of limited interest. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Ethnologue Database One of my favorite books is Languages of the World, by the genius lexicographer Kenneth Katzman. It includes information on several hundred of the world's 6,500 languages, with -- and this is the good part -- examples of each. The Ethnologue Database is a similar project, minus the examples. On this Web site, the world's languages are cataloged according to name, linguistic family, and region in which they are spoken. Despite the shallowness of information on individual languages and some inaccuracies, the Ethnologue Database belongs on every linguist's hotlist. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top General Organic and Biochemistry There are lots of Web sites designed to supplement college courses, but most of them fall just short of the mark. Not this site! Designed to supplement the textbook "Chemistry for Today," it includes dozens of concise and illustrative slides the professor used to compliment his lectures -- and his use of frames in presenting the material is inspired. He even includes a summary and form-based test! Visit his other classes via The Virtual Classroom at http://odin.chemistry.uakron.edu/classroom.html. And don't miss his "favorite excuses from students" page at http://odin.chemistry.uakron.edu/excuses/. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Global Online Adventure Learning Site (GOALS) John Oman, a sailing adventurer, left the port of Seattle in November 1995 with the hopes of sailing around the world in 150 days via his 60-foot yacht. He may be alone at sea, but we've been invited to follow along via this Wev site: Read his logs, check the current sailing conditions in his location, see pictures he's taken, and even consult maps indicating his position. As a result, we get a superb background in the nautical sciences. His isn't the only travelogue on the Web, but it's one of the most "realistic," with hard data augmenting his lyrical notes. This site is a must for all would-be seafarers. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Harvard University At first, the Harvard University site looks pretty drab: a few choices linking you to ugly, text-only Gopher sites, phone numbers, historical information, rah rah rah. But underneath some of those links are profound pools. Take a gander at the map of Harvard, for example, which zooms in on any building in the university's expansive campus. Similarly, there's gold under some other links, including admissions and registration information. And Harvard's not too proud to include several links to one of its local competitors, M.I.T., in its Resources section. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Home-Ed Kids So, you think you're going to find treatises on the advantages of home schooling at this site? Not on your noodle. This page is dedicated to the kids themselves. It is an area for home-schooled youths to meet and interact, just as their public school friends interact on physical playgrounds. Much of the site is developed by preteens. The content is uneven, but when it is good, it soars -- and the technical sophistication is astounding (chat rooms, bulletin boards, image maps, and search engines all play a part.). Get bowled over by incredible depths of information by visiting the parent directories as well. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Homespun Web of Home Educational Resources Homeschooling -- do-it-yourself education, if you will -- is how a select few parents gain more control of their kids' education. This site is a clearinghouse on that subject, with special emphasis on archival data like FAQs, newsgroups, and lists of contact people. While a high percentage of homeschooling proponents teach their kids at home for religious reasons, the site is mostly unbiased on such matters. It is heavily Texas-oriented, though, as that state seems to have the most active homeschooling movement. While its content isn't terribly deep, the Homespun Web is a good place for concerned parents to start. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Mass. Institute of Technology To me, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will always be known primarily for the witty pranks of technically minded students, but you'll have to dig hard to find that info here (try http://fishwrap.mit.edu/Hacks/Gallery.html instead). You will find just about everything else about MIT. For a bunch of geeks, though, it's rather pedestrian: no image maps or search engines worth mentioning, cryptic icons, and mostly just text. Be sure to check out the "fun stuff" area, which includes tips for hacking the campus security cards. Cool! But let's get user-friendly, folks! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Peterson's Education Center Wow. It's not often that information resource companies give you full access to their material via the Web: There's still no effective way to make money off of it. Peterson's does, however, providing a huge stock of info about schools, summer programs, and business management. As with most pages, this site is under continual construction; you'll frequently be greeted by a "We're sorry.." message. But the areas that are fully implemented -- such as those with Graduate School information -- are gorgeous, complete, and easy-to-use. Peterson's Education Center is a gem that will only get better -- until you have to pay for it. Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Princeton Review The Princeton Review has gained a dedicated following by helping students exploit weaknesses in badly-designed standardized tests. Their iconoclastic methods translate well in this Web site, where you'll find information about standardized tests, college entry requirements, and potential careers. While the content and technical presentation -- including search engines and alphabetical indices -- is first-rate, the scant graphics aren't, nor will you find all the information that's available in the books. But then, they have to get your money somehow, don't they? Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Public Teach-In Missed New York's International Forum on Globalization last November? Well, you can still take a trip to its Internet audio archives, which has four speeches given at that event. Unfortunately, that's it! There's no information about the teach-in itself or about the one coming up, nor are there links to groups and events with a similar weltanschauung. Make up for some of these lacks by visiting the site's parent directory, at http://www.peacenet.org/. Note: If you don't have the free RealAudio player, this site is completely pointless; download it at http://www.realaudio.com/. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top School Is Dead Learn In Freedom Not only are kids rebelling against formalized schooling, their parents are, as well; and, as sites we've reviewed in the Blue Pages have shown, there are plenty of Web resources out there for those interested in home schooling. But what about "no-schoolers"? For both groups, Karl Bunday's site is a convincing (although ugly) collection of quotes and arguments emphasizing that the one who learns best schools least. The points are presented as one heavily linked screed, making the site great for browsing, but it's hard to find specific information unless you use the index. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Stanford University Stanford University was one of the first sites on the Internet. Though it's no longer a leader in Internet connectivity, its WWW pages show it's kept abreast of the net's dynamic changes. The site's centerpiece is "Portfolio," which links Stanford's extensive but old-fashioned Gopher and FTP sites with a snazzy new Web interface -- pretty clever! (This mixture of sources tends to make the content a bit uneven, however.) As with most university servers, there's a directory of student Web pages. Also find good links to info on getting around the South Bay/Silicon Valley area. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top The Student Guide 1995-96 For most students, the most difficult hurdle of higher education isn't the course work -- it's finding the money to pay for it. A lot of college funding ultimately comes from the federal government in the form of loans and grants. But how can you learn more about financial aid? That's where The Student Guide comes in. Released each year by the Department of Education, it tells you how to qualify, whom to contact, and how you can expect to repay the loans. This web site is really just a more "browsable" form of a 126K document, which is also available for downloading. Regardless of how you view The Student Guide, every prospective college student should check it out. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Thomas Edison State College What home-schooling does for the under-18 crowd, "distance learning" colleges like Thomas Edison State do for those seeking higher educational degrees. According to the college's Web site, "students in any state or nation can earn credit for college-level knowledge acquired outside the classroom." It's a pity the college hasn't done more with its Web pages: considering how far-flung the students must be, the potential for Internet-based instruction is tremendous. Indeed, the site isn't nearly as deep or interesting as many other colleges', and the occasional misdirected link mars the experience. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top UC Berkeley Home Page In a region known for compromise and reason, the University of California at Berkeley's Web pages are elegantly reasoned and make compromises so they're both user-friendly and fast. The contents can be access via nicely arranged text choices rather than by image maps, so the site is as useful to someone on a text-based Unix box as on a Mac. The content is deep and varied, from the Naval Architecture school to the click-to-zoom-in campus map. If you're into general Web search engines, be sure to add Berkeley's Inktomi (http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/) to your list. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top UK Lifelong Learning The Brits seem to have a ministry for everything, with sub-ministries and rooms full of clerks endlessly shuffling papers. Well, some of the clerks have turned in their green eyeshades for PCs at the Department for Education and Employment, Individual Commitment Division. (Yes, that's really its name, bureaucratic lex for "the state wishes you to stay in school and stop being a worthless git.") While the site is extensive, it suffers from a bone-dry officialdom that subverts the intended message: Learning is fun. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The University of Michigan The University of Michigan has long been famous in the Internet community for its vast file archive site (find more info about this by going to http://www.umich.edu/~archive/). But there's more to U. Michigan than free software. Like, a top-ranked university! The site gives the usual information about its academic programs and such, beautifully linked and annotated via search engines, tables of contents, and clickable image maps. One coincidence makes the site aesthetically pleasing: U.M.'s logo blue matches the "unfollowed link" blue in Netscape's browser. Not to mention my eyes. Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Urban Education Web Learning about learning: that's what the Urban Education Web is about. It's part of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), a well-known and highly-respected database of studies on education. It, in turn, is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. All these layers of support point to two attributes of this Web site: it's densely academic, and it's excellently supported. Here, you'll not only find out if the government has published information about gangs in the schools, you'll probably find the monographs themselves, hyperlinked internally and with other documents. I don't know what poor souls are sitting in a windowless office doing all this, but they deserve to be thanked. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top USA2100 CyberLearning Center This core project of the non-profit National Education Foundation sets out to distribute educational software, promote motivational techniques, offer online courses, and spread the word about tennis star Monica Seles. Huh? What's she doing here? Information about Ms. Seles (whom USA2100's President claims to have mentored) is, unfortunately, the most complete part of this site, which seems to be the home page for a computer-equipped private school in the D.C. area. The online courses aren't up, nor is the software area. So what makes this school a "CyberLearning Center"? Beats me. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top UT Austin Austin can be considered the birthplace of the "slacker" archetype: a center for high-tech companies, one of the few progressive cities in Texas.. and, rumor has it, there's a university down there, too. Well blow me down. UT is a gargantuan university, and its WWW presence reflects its size. The site's internal search engine bears this out: A search for the word "racquetball" returned 17 references, mostly on students' personal pages. Altogether, there are more than 25,000 web pages on 170 servers (so they say, anyway), including everything you ever wanted to know about UT. Beware the badly designed image maps. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Washington University in St Louis Washington University's Web pages have a clean, crisp organization and some useful features lacking at some of the larger sites. Want to check your e-mail? Click here. Want to do an Infoseek search without leaving university property? No problem. Add a bit of surreality to your visit by clicking on the "What's This?" button, which leads to a page of basic information about using the Web, site statistics, etc. So, even if they've never been to W.U., first-time users are already getting an education. Still, this handsome site lacks the depth of content found at some other universities. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Worcester Polytechnic's EE 535 Course Most online education fails because it tries to transplant subjects to the screen that are best-suited for the classroom. But Professor Cyganski's class at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has an edge of relevance here, as it's all about telecommunications transmission technologies. Since I'm not an electrical engineer, most of the highly-technical content of this site eluded me, but its basic "learning is as learning does" mission comes through loud and clear: Engineers should not be afraid of their tools. Or, as the prof says, "This course is not for WIMPs (Whining Internet/Multi-media Phobes)." Some of the meatier areas of the site are available only to WPI accounts, alas. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Yale University World Wide Web Front Door The Yale University site is everything the Harvard site isn't. Just kidding! Though, quite honestly, Yale's Web set-up beats its historical nemesis'. At the top level are listings for P.R. information, search engines, maps, academic department pages, student activities.. Lots of stuff here. Thank god it's so well-organized! Running a search shows just how much there is: the word "racquetball" returned 10 pages, including news of the sports team, a description of the athletic facilities, and someone's experiments with the Connectix QuickCam, a video input device "about the size of a racquetball." Pretty good search engine, that! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top This page was last updated on Monday, February 09, 2004 at 3:06pm CST. All contents copyright 2005 by Tom Geller.