IIGS™ Newsletter - July 1998
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IIGS™ Newsletter - July 1998
The Internet is an event, a happening, a loosely structured and largely unpredictable experience resulting from the on-line encounters of people with people. These encounters range from nearly instantaneous real-time exchanges among many people, to delayed communication either directed at specific individuals or at self-selected interest groups or undirected -- messages left to be found by whoever wants them, whenever they want, like a gigantic library or tens of millions of notes in bottles set afloat in an ocean, yet fully indexed and miraculously findable. The book / magazine / library aspect of this vast phenomenon is just a subset of the overall event.
As you begin to explore the Internet and its possibilities, look for opportunities to interact with others, not just static facts. The real benefit will come from the contacts you make with other people, from what you learn from one another.
Participate in mail lists and newsgroups and Web-based forums and chats. Link up with other schools and other students and teachers to create your own on-line learning environment.
As technology advances, you'll begin to use the latest high-tech capabilities -- all the neat audio and video and multi-media effects. But don't lose sight of the main purpose -- connecting people to people. And remember that the interaction need not be limited to on-line activities -- once you get a good dialogue going, you may well want to set up related face-to-face meetings as well.
From what I remember of Holderness and from what I've seen as my own children have gone through school, much of the learning experience takes place outside the classroom. You learn through the informal contacts you have with other students, with teachers, with other friends and family, from the school-within-the-school that you create from your choices of who to associate with and how and when.
With the Internet, you are no longer limited to what is found within the boundaries of your physical school or your home or your hometown. You can easily form contacts and build relationships with people of all ages, from all walks of life, from all cultures, from all parts of the world. Take advantage of this opportunity. Choose wisely. Act creatively.
Remember that the technology, in and of itself, does nothing. Rather it makes it possible for you to shape your own world-within-the-world. And, if you believe strongly about any issue or wish to pursue in depth any field of study, you can become a player, rather than just a spectator in the world at large.
In such an environment, people feel free to speak up not because they are experts, but rather because they want to understand. They express their suspicions, inklings, instincts, guesses, seeking discussion that will help refine, correct, and validate their thoughts. And they also learn to learn in an environment that has no authority figures and no grades, the same sort of environment they'll be in after they get out of school.
The Internet is your event. The Internet happens and you can make it happen, rather than just have it happen to you.
This item is part of a book in progress entitled The Social Web. Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic copies of this item for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright information and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. All other rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to Richard Seltzer at seltzer@samizdat.com.