EDUCATION ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB; INTERNET INTERACTS WITH STATE, LOCAL STUDENTS

With the advances in science and technology, students are no longer confined to just a classroom for their education. Now the information superhighway takes them around the world in seconds.

Many schools, including those in Southeast Missouri, are connected to the Internet, which gives students and teachers a direct link to the latest information on education.

Students can view everything from high school newspapers to home pages, like the one offered by Truman High School in Independence.

Science teachers can plan lab activities with home pages that show which volcanoes are erupting or explain how to "dissect a frog -- online," while history teachers can take their students on a field trip to Civil War battle sites or tour the White House.

Chuck Harris, a computer teacher at Truman High School, requires his students to develop their own web pages. During the semester course, students create their own pages and also a group page. The most recent group project was to develop a web page for the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails, which begin in the Kansas City area.

Teaching with the Internet is different from traditional methods, Harris said, "but we present it as a resource. It's a lifelong source of information."

The school has been developing web pages for about a year. Students are in the process of creating a page strictly for sports statistics.

Donna Ellis, who teaches at Cape Girardeau Central High School, hopes to use the Internet in her Spanish classes. From their classroom, students will be able to visit museums, cities, and historic places in Spanish-speaking countries.

Ellis also has several CD-ROM programs she uses in classes. Students just finished planning a trip to either Mexico or Spain with the help of the computer.

"You can see where you're going," she said, adding that one program even computes mileage and lists travel routes.

The students planned a vacation package that included lists of local restaurants, entertainment and tourist sites. CD-ROM encyclopedias also help students learn more about the geography of Mexico or Spain.

Ellis purchased the programs through state incentive grants. Despite the explosion of programs and topics, it wasn't hard for her to choose several for classroom use.

"When I had to narrow it down to the Spanish-speaking countries, it helped," she said. "If it was international, I bought it."

And Ellis' students aren't alone in their travel. About 350,000 students around the country visit the Internet web sites through classroom access.

Scott City Schools use the Internet and some software programs as teaching aids. Teacher Jean Graham just finished a unit on pen pals and her students found most of them through listings on the Internet.

Jeanette Mastin, high school librarian, said students use Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM but are just exploring on the Internet. Other CD-ROM programs available at the library are the "Guiness Book of World Records" and the "World Almanac."

But students aren't the only ones who use computers. CD-ROM programs are becoming more popular for home computers, too.

Some of the more popular programs for children are "Oregon Trail II," "The Way Things Work," based on the books by Richard Scary, "The Interactive Reading Journey" by the Learning Co., and Disney storybook programs with Aladdin, the Lion King and Winnie-the-Pooh characters.

The storybook programs focus on helping children develop better reading skills. Many of the programs let the child practice reading along with the computer or sounding out words and phrases with the program.

"There's a ton of good programs," said Chuck Martin, executive regional director for the Easter Seals Society in Cape Girardeau. "The whole thing has opened up."

CD-ROM technology is fairly new for such a variety of programs to be available, he said. "We take computers for granted but the Macintosh is only 10 years old. It feels like we've had them forever but the CD-ROM is new technology."

Most CD-ROM programs run about $40, but some can cost as much as $70.

Web site e-mail addresses include http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/ for information about volcanoes; http://www.indep.k12.mo.us/ths/ths.html for the Truman High School home page; and www.whitehouse.gov for a tour of the White House.