WHY KIDS LOVE COMPUTER NETS Using technology to escape the bounds of the classroom, children are learning to work in ways you never dreamed of when you were their age.

By Elizabeth Corcoran REPORTER ASSOCIATE Jacqueline M. Graves
September 20, 1993
(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE RALPH BUNCHE public school sits squarely in Harlem, surrounded by the splintered glass and concrete trappings of inner-city life. Nearby avenues echo with police sirens, blaring music, and angry shouts. But upstairs in room 409, Hamidou Diori is exploring another world altogether -- by way of electronic networks. On the Macintosh screen before him, the 13-year-old seventh-grader maneuvers his computer mouse across a collection of icons that represent stored files and programs. With a few quick clicks, Hamidou has hooked into Internet, the sprawling electronic highway system that by a recent estimate connects more than 15 million people and thousands of universities, government offices, and businesses in 60 countries. Another click and Hamidou has called up a gopher, a kind of electronic guide. Once programmed to search for information on a given subject, it will burrow through databases and bulletin boards that are connected to Internet but reside on computers scattered around the globe. Hamidou's goal: Find a topic for a science project on recycling. He gives the gopher a few key words; in seconds the program makes a preliminary search and flashes a list of possible sources on his screen. Soon Hamidou is scanning feisty, fact-filled messages posted on the bulletin boards by graduate students, professors, and managers in many countries, debating the merits of recycling. If those exchanges don't provide the inspiration Hamidou needs, he will float a few questions of his own across the network. ''I use a whole bunch of databases,'' he nonchalantly tells a visitor. ''You ask these people for help -- and they give it to you.'' From Harlem to Honolulu, electronic networks are sparking the kind of excitement not seen in America's classrooms since the space race. That contest in the 1960s inspired a generation of students to become scientists and engineers. The advent of computer networks could have even more profound effects. In scores of programs and pilot projects, networks are changing the way teachers teach and students learn. Last spring, for example, instead of merely reading about life in Russia from outdated books, schoolchildren in Minnesota exchanged electronic mail with their peers on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia. Students across America tracked the progress of four men biking 10,000 miles in Africa, via reports filed by the riders on an international teachers' network. In the process, the kids learned the continent's geography. Still others got a taste of scientific collaboration by measuring the oxygen in local lakes and comparing results with peers around the world. By tapping into the nets, kids discover ways of working and communicating that weren't available to their parents -- and that will powerfully enhance their prospects when they join the work force of the 21st century. The networks may also play a key role in helping U.S. schools overcome their notorious weakness in teaching math, science, and geography. That's partly why network projects have grants from influential high-tech donors such as IBM, Boeing, AT&T, and Xerox. Bob Hughes, Boeing's corporate director of education relations, looks to computer networks as a key to turning out students who adapt readily to change and who solve problems by seeking out and applying new ideas.


Owais Amin...