The Online World by Odd de Presno (find a book to read txt) 📕

of Internet/Bitnet mailing lists that focus on African, African- American, African-Caribbean or African-Latin issues, and a list of African information sites. In the soc.culture hierarchy on Usenet, you'll find area codes like asian, african, arabic, asean, australian, bangladesh, british, canada, china, celtic, europe, filipino, french, german, greek, hongkong, indian, iranian, italian, jewish, korean, latin- american, lebanon, magyar, nepal, new-zealand, nordic, pakistan, polish, soviet, spain, sri-lanka, taiwan, thai, turkish, vietnamese and yugoslavia. In "argentina," you can read about how to make empanadas while sharpening up your Spanish before visiting Buenos Aires. (Contact: [email protected]). CompuServe's Travel Forum has sections called United States, Canada, Mexico/Central America, Caribbean, South America, Oceania, Asia, Europe, Africa/Middle East and Hawaii. If you're off to London, check out the UK Travel section in CompuServe's UK Computing Forum. Its library contains files with tips about affordable hotels, British road signs, and a list of London theatre shows with ticket-buying tips. If your destination is Germany, practice Deutch in the Deutches Forum (GO GERNET). Search for additional background information using CompuServe's Magazine Database Plus, if you don't mind paying a wee surcharge. Look up places to stay in the ABC Worldwide Hotel Listing. On America Online, you can research National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler Magazines online. You can look up your destination in the electronic Comptons Encyclopedia. GEnie has a Japan RoundTable and a Deutchland RoundTable. Both provide for interaction with users from those respective countries. If you are responsible for your company's business travels, check out the following newsletters on NewsNet: BUSINESS TRAVEL NEWS, and TOUR & TRAVEL NEWS. (You can also search NewsNet's newsletters through CompuServe's IQuest, Dialog, and others). NewsNet has searchable newsletters focusing on the conditions in particular countries or parts of the world (news, travel and political risk analysis, political stability, etc.).

Politics

Many of these conferences and forums are filled to the brim with political discussions. For information about the United Nations, subscribe to UN (on [email protected]).

Chapter 5: Home, education and work

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House, garden and finances

FidoNet has a long list of interesting conferences:

HOME-N-GRDN Home and Garden Questions HOMEAUT Home Automation HOMESCHL Homeschooling support HOME_IMP Improvements around the house. HOME_OFFICE Home Office HOME_REPAIR Home Repair and Remodelling ZYMURGY Beer Homebrewing

The EXEC-PC BBS has "Home Repair." The FUTUREHOME TECHNOLOGY NEWS newsletter is available through NewsNet. On ILINK, you will find the HOMEGARDEN conference. Usenet has misc.consumers.house . Here they discuss anything related to owning and maintaining a house. On the Well, check out "Homeowners."

In Ziff-Davis' Magazine Database Plus you can search and read articles from the Good Housekeeping Magazine. This full-text article database is available from CompuServe and other services. Through UUCP you can get to the conference "Antiques" (Contact: [email protected]). CompuServe also has the Gardening Forum. It is operated by the National Gardening Association, which publishes National Gardening magazine. The various services' software libraries contain many great shareware and public domain programs. You can download software that will help you prepare tax return forms, plan next year's taxes, calculate interests and down-payments on your loans. You'll find double-entry money-managing systems for non-accountants that will help you with personal bookkeeping and checkbook balancing. Other programs will help you plan and maintain your house. There are personal inventory programs (to help you keep track of belongings), and programs that can help you plan allocation of the space in your home. . . Join CompuServe's Investors Forum to learn how to play the stock and money markets, and other moneymaking 'instruments'. Discuss investment techniques with others, read reports about economical trends, and retrieve useful programs for your personal computer. RelayNet offers the international conference INVESTOR. Usenet has misc.invest . If you want to adopt a child, check out ADOPTION on FidoNet, or subscribe to a UUCP conference of the same name. For access, write [email protected] . The National Issues Forum on CompuServe has a message section called "Adoption Today." Addicted TV-viewers may be interested in alt.tv.twin-peaks or alt.tv.muppets on Usenet. "Mystery" on FidoNet and UUCP is for those preferring mystery novels by the fire place in the living room. There are even offerings for "the perfect house wife." I can think of no better pastime than origami, the traditional Japanese art of folding paper. (Contact: [email protected] on UUCP). Oh, I almost forgot: The BONSAI conference is essential (on [email protected]). This is where to discuss the art and craft of Bonsai and related art forms. Bonsai is the Oriental Art of miniaturizing trees and plants into forms that mimic nature.

Education, teaching and the exchange of knowledge

The list of conferences, forums, clubs, and other services focusing on education - in its broadest meaning of the word - is long. You are offered online courses, workshops, and seminars for students of all ages, databases to help you select a school for yourself or your kids, and all kinds of discussion forums for educators.

Usenet, BITNET, Internet, and UUCP have long traditions in education. You'll find offerings for teachers within all subject areas, from finance and accounting, through history, languages and geography to technical subjects on all levels. Two guides listing forums of interest to Educators can be retrieved by anonymous FTP from the pub/ednet directory at nic.umass.edu . Use the following commands (see "FTP by email" at the end of Chapter 12): get educatrs.lst get edusenet.gde

KIDSPHERE (subscribe through [email protected]) is a discussion forum for teachers of students from the age of kindergarten through high school and higher.

This is a selection of other BITNET discussion lists to suggest the span of topics: CHEMED-L (CHEMED-L@UWF) Chemistry Education Discussion CHRONICL (CHRONICL@USCVM) On-Line Chronicle of Higher Ed CIVIL-L (CIVIL-L@UNBVM1) Civil Engineering Research & Ed. COMLAW-L (COMLAW-L@UALTAVM) Computers and Legal Education DRUGABUS (DRUGABUS@UMAB) Drug Abuse Education Information JOURNET (JOURNET@QUCDN) Discussion List for Journalism Ed MEDIA-L (MEDIA-L@BINGVMB) Media in Education MULTI-L (MULTI-L@BARILVM) Language and Education in Multi- Lingual Settings MUSIC-ED (MUSIC-ED@UMINN1) MUSIC-ED Music Education PANET-L (PANET-L@YALEVM) Medical Education and Health Info TAG-L (TAG-L@NDSUVM1) TAG-L Talented and Gifted Ed WORLD-L ([email protected]) Non-Eurocentric World History

Here are some Usenet conferences:

comp.edu Computer science education sci.edu The science of education comp.ai.edu Applications of Artificial Intelligence to Education

There are many similar offerings on the commercial services and free bulletin boards.

K12Net is a decentralized network for schools available on FidoNet and Usenet. Write [email protected] for information. FidoNet also has A_THEIST A_Theism Education and Enlightenment HIGH_ED Education, Post Secondary HISTORY International History MAC_GAMES Macintosh Entertainment & Education

CompuServe has 12 forums focusing on education. Among these you'll find the Disabilities Forum, Computer Training Forum, Education Forum, Education Research forum, Science/Math Educational Forum, Foreign Language Forum, LOGO and Students Forum.

Ken and Carrie Loss-Cutler are coordinating the section for Home/Alternative Education in CompuServe's Education Forum. They educate their two children at home instead of sending them to a public school. The Foreign Language Forum has the sections Potpourri/Polyglot, Spanish/Portuguese, French, German/Germanic, Latin/Greek, Slavic/E. European, English, East Asian, Esperanto, Others, FL Education, Translators, Computers/CAI-CALL, The Directory, Jobs/Careers, New Uploads and Using the Forum. If you're into reading/writing the African language Kiswahili (Swahili), write [email protected] to get onto the SWAHILI-L mailing list. The more occupational oriented forums include Communications Industry Forum, Environmental Forum, Firenet (for volunteer fire brigades), Industrial Hygiene Forum, AAMSI Medical Forum, ASCMD Forum, HealthNet, OP-Net Forum, the MICRO MD Network, Legal SIG, Aviation SIG, CB Society and CEMSIG (computers and electronics). Bergen By Byte has the Norwegian language conference Schools. This conference is for validated users only.

| There are many private conferences in the online world. All |

| conferences referred to in this book are open for anybody to |

| join, unless explicitly told to be private. |

RelayNet has EDUCATION. NewsNet offers the newsletters EDUCATION DAILY, and the HELLER REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY.

Many online services (including schools and universities) offer students accredited courses by modem. Connected Education at the New School for Social Research in the United States is one example, as is the University of Phoenix in Arizona. (Ask in CompuServe's Education Forum for more information.) The EDUPAGE newsletter is a twice-weekly summary of news items on information technology, provided by a consortium of colleges and universities "seeking to transform education through the use of information technology." Compact and informative. I like it. To subscribe, send a note to [email protected] with your name, institution name and email address. (EDUPAGE is also available for Gopher, WAIS and anonymous FTP access on EDUCOM's host machine, educom.edu .) INFOBITS (at [email protected]) is a monthly service reporting from a number of information and instruction technology sources. The Internet Resource Directory for Educators is available by anonymous FTP from tcet.unt.edu in the pub/telecomputing-info/IRD subdirectory. File names include: IRD-telnet-sites.txt (226KB ASCII text) IRD-ftp-archives.txt ( 73KB) IRD-listservs.txt (201KB) IRD-infusion-ideas.txt (202KB)

Example: KIDLINK

Many parents and teachers regard the online world as a learning opportunity for their kids. Some of them turn to KIDLINK, a global service for children between 10 - 15 years of age. The service is operated by a grassroots network of volunteers.

The objective is to get as many children as possible involved in a global dialog. Participation is free. Before joining the discussion, however, each child must respond to the following four questions: 1. Who am I? 2. What do I want to be when I grow up? 3. How do I want the world to be better when I grow up? 4. What can I do Now to make this come true?

The kids can write in any language. Most answers are sent through the Internet to a large online database in North America. Anyone with an email connection to the Internet can search this database at will.

When they have submitted their responses, they are invited to 'meet' the others in several KIDCAFEs. The cafes are split up by language. Here,