What price the Internet ?

www.curriculum.edu.au/curriculum/eqaust/eq_00/digby.htm

EQ Australia Schools Online Winter '00

A few clicks of the mouse is all it takes to connect to the Internet. But what does it cost when, in our search for information, we're side-tracked by interesting but irrelevant websites? The Internet, warns Stephen Digby, can blow the budget

What price the Internet?
The Internet has the potential to be a very expensive item in any school's budget. The current Internet bandwidth — bandwidth is the capacity to move information down a given channel — available to most schools in Victoriais 128K baud. As 8 bits are needed to code for a character, this means that, theoretically, 16 K characters can be downloaded from the Internet per second. If the Internet were in use constantly during the school day, this could mean 6912 million bytes (Mb) could be down loaded over four weeks.

At my school, Cheltenham Secondary College, we have seen this figure rise to over 8275 Mb as staff often begin their research after students have left. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) charge download rates of around 15 cents per Mb, leading to very high bills where Internet use is high. Fortunately, schools can often negotiate special rates. This was the case at Cheltenham last year, where we were seeing a growth in Internet costs of approximately $50 per month which could have reached $500 if we had not changed our ISP.

A lot of Internet use is misdirected and wasteful. This is not the result of negligence on the part of teachers and students, but because they are coming to grips with a new technology and source of information and this necessarily involves experimentation.

Teachers are still exploring the possibilities of the Internet for themselves and their students. They have not yet become fully discriminating users. The Internet is often used for educationally trivial purposes such as finding graphics to decorate assignments. Teachers have not yet realised that merely viewing pictures and information on the Internet comes at a cost not dissimilar to that of photocopying, regardless of whether any material is saved for later use.

Internet dependence
Students increasingly consider the Internet the first (and often only) choice for information research, resulting in a focus on self-selected assignment topics that are sensational, current and marginal rather than more general and educationally important topics. This can lead to under-use of the library's book stock as well as online reference CD ROMs.

The educational content on the Internet is not equivalent to that of the texts and other resources carefully selected for inclusion in the school library. Searching the Internet for educational material is closer to searching commercial television — the medium is now as heavily commercialised as television, if not more so. Most teachers would be aghast at the suggestion that students should be allowed to watch commercial television in search of information. Yet, many students are clearly 'watching' the Internet and exercising very little discrimination in favour of educational content.

The cost of the Internet as a source of educational information is not equivalent to that of library resources such as books, journals, magazines, CD ROMs and videos. These resources are selected for their educational value, are purchased once and can then be accessed at no further cost by an unlimited number of students and teachers.

The cost structure of using the Internet is more analogous to that of using a photocopier. We need to be careful that we don't dispense with traditional library resources in favour of Internet access as this amounts to replacing a one-off capital investment with an ongoing service cost.

The added pressure on photocopying and printing that the Internet encourages also has to be considered. Students realise that if they require information from a library resource they have to make notes which is arduous but educationally beneficial; or they can photocopy material, which is not arduous but involves a cost to them; or they can scan the printed material on the library scanner and print it free of charge through the computer system; or they can find their information on the Internet or the networked CD ROMs and print this free of charge through the computer system.

The obvious cost advantages to students of using any of the Internet, the CD ROMs or the scanner combined with a free printout (rather than taking notes or paying for photocopies) can quickly lead to students over-using both the Internet and printers.

Furthermore, students can be wasteful in their use of printers attached to computers. Often, they print the full gamut of material and then search for information, rather than identifying usable information and printing only this. Some print large amounts of material unrelated to their studies. And, increasingly, teachers are setting computer-based research that is heavily dependent on printed output as a record of student work. Printer toner and paper are major costs in the learning technology budget.

Monitoring Internet use
Given the attractions of the Internet, it is not surprising that students don't confine their use of it to school studies — it is hard to resist visiting websites that might tap into strong personal interests.

We need to encourage students and teachers to keep costs in mind as they use the Internet and print. Cheltenham Secondary College, like many other schools, uses software to keep a record of all use of printers and the Internet. Use in excess of our budget prediction is charged directly to the student in the same way as we do for photocopying (and at about the same rate).

We have set a 20 Mb per student limit for each semester which represents about 300–600 pages of viewing (depending on visuals). This is more generous than it might first appear because any pages downloaded by a whole class are stored ('cached') inside the school computer and often pages can be displayed without requesting material from the Internet at all.

When a student reaches the limit, their access is closed until they pay an additional $3. This process is very time consuming and it can inconvenience teachers whose students are temporarily or semi-permanently blocked from sites which form part of a class activity. Nevertheless, it re-alerts students to the fact that the Internet access provided by the school is expensive and is to be shared equally among all students.

More effective use
In addition to 'excess download' and 'excess printing' charges, what else could be done to make the use of the Internet less costly and wasteful, more efficient and more educationally effective?

Teachers need to know about the costs of Internet access. They would also be supported in their use of the Internet by formal and informal professional development on effective ways to use it in class. Simple recommendations would help.

Research assignments should begin with an overview of sources of information — teacher lecture, quality library books and periodicals, CD ROMs — and the key words and ideas that students are looking for and what they mean in the context of the topic. This should make students' search for information more meaningful and less haphazard. If they do not know the terminology or the structure of the topic, they will miss or misinterpret search results. Unsatisfying Internet searches are common even to practised users.

When students begin their research, note taking and not just the collection of materials should be required. Note taking requires comprehension, interpretation and evaluation of material and has more educational benefit than simply copying a resource. Note taking also reduces the need to make a copy of everything that might be used in an assignment before evaluating it properly. It is most appropriately done 'by hand' for its speed and flexibility of format, it can be done while using the computer and it helps maintain writing skills that are appropriate for students still doing written exams.

Networked reference material such as resources on CD ROM should be promoted as an alternative to the Internet. It is possible to purchase perpetual licences to magazine and newspaper collections with full text (and preferably images) on CD ROM. This means students can have digital access to quality resources at the lowest cost.

In terms of guided or judicious access to the Internet, there are a number of things that can be done. Where teachers discover an Internet resource that they think is of enduring relevance to their subject and to a wide number of students, it can be downloaded to the school site and become part of a permanent collection.

Software for downloading websites can copy whole sites (particularly when they are heavily loaded with graphics) and make these available to many students for an indefinite period. It is important to remember that Internet resources, regardless of their quality, are not left online indefinitely. Good sites need to be downloaded as they are likely to 'go out of print' faster than traditional texts. (This does not mean that the information is no longer useful or valid, rather it means that the Web master at the particular site wants the space for something else.)

Where teachers want all students to have particular material from the Internet, they can save a collection of specific pages from a variety of Web locations within a single folder so that students can use these (just like the old photocopied notes we would collect). Such collections have added advantages. They can be stored on the school Intranet, instead of hidden in a personal filing cabinet. They automatically store information on when and where they were obtained so students and teachers can use them as starting points. They cost next to nothing to provide to all students — students can read them, take them home on disk or email, and all without any additional Internet or printing costs. (Where pages have quality educational content but are weighed down with advertising or material that is of low educational value, it requires some effort to 'edit' this out, though it can be done.)

Students can be provided with direct links to relevant search engines, for example links that are particular to a topic or that are within designated websites, so that distracting and low quality sites are more likely to be bypassed. Many of the best information resources on the Internet are never mentioned on any search engines. This information is stored within large databases that use database structures, CGI scripts, or some sort of user identification system. For instance, one of my favourite starting points for almost any topic is the TIME magazine archives. These articles are not mentioned on search engines.

The Internet opens up a world of information and communication to students, but it comes at a price — not only direct funding, but also training, planning and preparation. It's a price that we must be prepared to pay.

Stephen Digby is Manager, Learning Technology at Cheltenham Secondary College.

LINKS
Cheltenham Secondary College website at: http://www.cheltsec.vic.edu.au/
At this website there's a digital copy of this article, links to specific software used and recommended, as well as guide sheets for the use of the software