At no time in history have teachers-to-be been so challenged in their preparation to prepare quality lessons. The good ( and not-so-good ) of the Internet will demand that teachers spend hundreds --- that's right -- hundreds and hundreds of hours on the keyboard in a futile attempt to access, evaluate and retrieve the bulging volumes of electronic learning resources. I don't believe any "teachers college" in the country begins to alert students to the overwhelming amount of work the profession requires. Many first year teachers never make it through their first year . . . as the 'culture shock' of the 'work world' is such a drastic difference from the 'campus world' that they are unable to cope. This course will help you prepare for 'reality.'

One of the concepts you must learn is to "think 2000+." The assignments and other items you extract from the Net do not need to be printed on paper. They only need to be preserved on a disk. The neatest feature of Net documents is their neutral / text language, so once loaded on a disk, can be taken away in your pocket and "played" on a Mac or IBM, etc.

When an assignment calls for you to read eight articles - copy all of them on a disk at one sitting and you won't have to worry about "busy signals" with the modem and crowded computer labs.

1) find the item you want
2) go to FILE: and select SAVE AS.
3) give it a name and SAVE it to the disk icon (which you just put in and named) that shows as one of the places it can be saved.
4) this article will now be "playable" on many "modern" computers -- apple or PC -- because it is a text file.
5) bad news: all the fancy bold face print and fancy 'mark up' that dr. leyden spend HUNDREDS OF HOURS putting on the Netscape document, won't be there. BUT --- the words will be.

To REALLY develop a teckkie mindset --- MAKE A COPY OF EVERY ARTICLE. Once you have the article on the desktop or your disk, put the cursor on the item and click the Mouse one time to darken the icon. Then go to FILE -- and find DUPLICATE. That will make a copy.

This is the copy you will read ( and keep the other one forever undistrubed on the disk ). As you read the article -- delete things you think are not important -- highlight others --- so when you are finished -- you have the gist of the article in front of you. This 'summary' of each article will help you write your paper combining the thoughts of all the authors.

You can download all kinds of text files from the Net. Get floppy disks for math; science; history; language arts; art; music; etc. AND then -- index them in your Disk Library.

Video Library

It is time in your career to make a systematic video library.

Buy some VCR tapes and label them: math; science; history; language arts; art; music; etc. Keep them by the tvee and ready to record educational shows.

Will you get 'extra credit' for stuff like this ? Absolutely not. But you will be professional.