Among the several uses to which Washington Wide Web was put, one was particularly
notable. A curriculum unit required the students to access any of a large
number of documents.
The usual problem with the paper-based document solution was the expense
of making multiple copies of the documents, the contention for the same
document at the same time by different students and the hassle of keeping
track of who had, and who needed, which document.
Instead, we used Washington Wide Web, our local offline web site. The LRC
Director scanned the documents into html using an existing scanner and and
ocr software. Scanning accuracy–sometimes a worry–turned
out to be reasonable. The documents were put up on the "web site"
which really was just a directory on the LRC file server. Students used
a standard web browser on any of the thirty LRC computers to access
the documents onine.
The browser's default home page had been set at the time
the browser was installed to a local file (index.html) residing
in the directory to which the documents were copied. This "index.html"
file was created as Washington Wide Web's "home page" with links to the
scanned documents.
From the students' perspective, it was the web. They read the documents
via the browser, printed those that interested them, and in some cases directly
"cut and pasted" material from them into the report they were
writing.
From the teacher and staff perspective,we eliminated the duplicating
need, the document contention, and gave the students an up-to-date
experience in electronic information access.
Finally, from the administrator perspective, we did this at no out-of-pocket
cost (thanks to the browser educational institution license policies) and
with complete safety due to no actual network access–while
efforts were underway to get the network and the student access policies
and procedures in place.
Note: The above is hardly a new and earth-shaking approach to those
who have lived in cyberspace for some time. I have described it in detail
for the benefit of those "newbies" without internet access who still
would like to give their students some very relevant experiences
in this area. It has been my experience that there is often a lot of
"magic" and "techno-smoke" (as I like to call it) associated with putting
one's school online. While putting one's school online is very valuable and
should go forward, it is nevertheless good to know it is very easy to
do something for free that provides some of the experiences of the fully
wired.
I hasten to add that doing a "simulated" web can be turned around
and used as a reason not to move forward on the real thing.
This is to be avoided. A "simulated" web puts the entire burden
of content development on the local people. It is definitely not the
way to go long term. The "simulated" web should mainly be viewed as
buying some time or adapting to some very special circumstances–not
as an end point.