Jan Weeks

Jan Weeks, a librarian at North Knox High School in Bicknell, Indiana, explains how the use of the Internet helps students learn communication and research skills and allows them to connect with sources of information across the globe. Excerpted from a videotaped interview for the video series Learning With Technology, program #1, Merging Onto the Information Highway (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1994).

"In talking to the students about their use of the internet, they think that it's so marvelous to be able to talk to somebody even in Omaha, Nebraska, even as close as Omaha, but when we look at the databases across the world, and they realize they're getting their information out of the University of Cologne, for example, or the University of Pisa, to our students who some of them who have never even been to Indianapolis, our state capital, this is really a miracle, so this is training them how to convert back and forth, how to communicate, how to research, how to look for things by themselves and for themselves. I just think it's preparing them for the future."

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Rosemary Bell, former policy analyst with the Evaluation and Policy Information Center at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, and Rafael Ramirez, senior research associate with the Center for Technology Projects at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Development and production of this Critical Issue were supported in part by the North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium.

Date posted: 1997