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Add three Ws to reading, writing, and arithmetic

By Deb Reichmann ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Classrooms across America are being wired for the Internet, but educators say computers will be of little use to students unless teachers know how to use the technology.

To help, a coalition of educational organizations, teachers unions and technology companies launched a grassroots initiative last week to recruit 100,000 computer-literate teachers to voluntarily train five of their teaching colleagues. So far, 4,000 teachers have signed up.

They are registering by electronic mail and the 21st Century Teachers Internet home page at http://www.21ct.org The site on the World Wide Web, the graphics-oriented part of the Internet, contains a list of resources for educators, and will connect them with other teachers involved in promoting and using educational technology.

``Today's students still need to know the three R's, the old basics,'' U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley said. ``But they also need to understand how to use the three W's -- the World Wide Web.''

Barbara Blevins, a reading specialist at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Manassas, Va., said computers force students to sharpen their decision-making skills and solve problems to find the best information available.

``What our kids have to do is manage information that is coming in at a rate that's almost unimaginable,'' Blevins said.

Joyce Christman, who directs a gifted education program at Bailey Elementary School in Dublin, Ohio, recently connected with an astrophysicist working at the South Pole. She chats online with him, downloads his writings, screens out adult humor, and shares his work with her students.

``This does not replace our instruction; this is only a tool,'' she said.

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