veral subjects through distance education programs offered by numerous universities. While a degree is not a guarantee of teacher competence or caring, it is reasonable to expect that advanced training will enhance the skills needed by teachers, ultimately to the benefit of the students.
All totaled, teachers will find much to benefit their students online. The ERIC Clearinghouses, consisting of more than a dozen different "libraries" located at various universities across the U.S. contain articles on every topic related to the physical school site and its maintenance, the physical classroom, boards of education, management, developing teachers' skills, subject-specific teaching strategies, and more. Additionally, teachers can access hundreds of lesson plans in the ERIC system and download them for free.
Online searches via net browsers and search engines can provide an enormous number of sources for subject, skills, and life-skills curricula from universities and commercial outfits. Teachers can obtain classroom materials from websites operated by PBS and the Discovery Channel, which support and supplement programs aired on those stations. Many are free and can be downloaded in mere minutes. All can be effectively used to the obvious benefit of students and teachers.
Technology at the school site can be an exciting bonus for students: a LAN (Local Area Network) allows "computing equipment to share information from any device on a network with other devices on the same network" (Lederman, 1995, p. 1). Therefore, a LAN is ideal for school bulletin boards, which can be created and maintained by students; for centralizing data and subject-specific files, which can be used by students and teachers for instructional purposes; for accessing virtual libraries at universities and card catalogs from more than one school site; and for providing a "school information system for administrators, teachers, students, parents and the...