Parents Guide to the Internet - November 1997

Sites Along the Way

This section offers a sampling of some Internet sites waiting for you and your children. (Addresses are current as of November 1997 but may change at any time. If an address does not work, use the search feature on your Web browser to enter the site name and get the updated link).

Family-Friendly Places

• The Franklin Institute Science Museum http://sln.fi.edu/ offers online exhibits on an array of science and technology topics.

• Find good books to read, including Newbery and Caldecott Award Winners, at the American Library Association site http://www.ala.org/. This site includes information about authors, KidsConnect (for help locating all the information online), and educational games.

• Watch Live from Mars, audio and video transmissions of the Pathfinder's explorations, at NASA's Quest Project site http://quest.arc.nasa.gov. Find more adventures in space, including views from the Hubble Space Telescope, at a different NASA site http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/Redirect_Spacelink.html.

• Climb Mt. Everest, explore inside the Pyramids, and go on other electronic field trips with the Public Broadcasting System at http://www.pbs.org/. Preschool children can enjoy children's programming here, elementary school children can practice story telling, and teenagers and adults can take telecourses.

• Join an interactive exploration of the oceans, on earth and beyond, with the Jason Project http://www.jasonproject.org.

• Puzzle over optical illusions, take memory tests, and conduct experiments, online and off, at the Exploratorium http://www.exploratorium.edu.

• Enjoy materials from the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov, including exhibits on topics ranging from ballet to Jelly Roll Morton, Native American flutes to Thomas Jefferson's pasta machine.

• Read stories with your children, let them add to the stories told around the Global Campfire, and find links to other good family sites at Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication http://reading.indiana.edu/.

• Get educational resources through distance learning from Healthlinks http://www.healthlinks.net/.

• Find information on blocking software from Netparents at http://www.netparents.org.

Megasites (extensive links)

• 50+ Great Sites for Kids & Parents, from the American Library Association (ALA) enables preschool through elementary school children to explore rainbows, black history, castles for kids, award-winning news reported by children for children, the Kids Web Page Hall of Fame, to say nothing of watching dolphins, learning lullabies, and much more http://www.ala.org/.

• Jean Armour Polly's Fifty Extraordinary Experiences for Internet Kids invites viewers to make their own home page, visit the Kremlin, look inside the human heart, take Socks' special VIP tour of the White House, and make a boat trip around the world http://www.netmom.com/.

• Steve Savitzky's Interesting Places for Kids is an award-winning site in its own right with many unusual links http://thestarport.org/Browse/forKids/.

Online Reference Material

• The American Academy of Pediatrics' http://www.aap.org has a wide variety of information for parents concerning their children's health and well-being; covering topics such as immunizations, sleep problems, newborn care, and television.

• The National Urban Leaguehttp://www.nul.org is a useful resource for tracking programs and events related to African-American issues. It is a rich reference area for students, parents, teachers and history buffs.

• AskERIC, a free question-answering service provided by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), invites people to submit their questions about education, parenting, and child development to askeric@askeric.org for an e-mail response within 2 working days.

• B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper is a wonderful guide to encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference works, and other resources on a great variety of subjects http://www.bjpinchbeck.com/. The enthusiasm of its 10-year-old creator adds appeal to everything from the Ultimate White Pages to Bugs in the News.

• My Virtual Reference Desk http://www.refdesk.com offers dozens of links—to dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference/research materials, thesauruses, atlases, sports, entertainment, and much more—as well as a search engine for locating more information.

Sites for Parents and Parent Groups

• The Children's Partnership http://www.childrenspartnership.org offers, for free, the full text of its useful guide, The Parents' Guide to the Information Superhighway: Rules and Tools for Families Online, prepared with the National PTA and the National Urban League. A printed version of the guide, which provides common-sense guidance and encouragement for parents and tips and computer activities for children, is available for $8 from The Children's Partnership, 1351 Third Street Promenade, Suite 206, Santa Monica, CA 90401-1321; 310-260-1220.

• The National Parent Information Network cosponsored by the ERIC Clearinghouses on Elementary and Early Childhood Education and Urban Education, includes extensive articles on parenting, listservs, and links to more than 100 sites on education, health and safety, family issues and interests, and parenting and development of children from infancy to adolescence.

• At the National PTA site http://www.pta.org/ learn about PTA education programs and participate in a discussion group, chat room, or bulletin board. The site also includes links to sites of many organizations concerned with children.

• The Family Education Network http://www.familyeducation.com offers hundreds of brief articles on parenting, links to local sites, and discussion boards that connect parents with online experts.

• The Partnership for Family Involvement in Education http://www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/partnership.html sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, highlights school-community- business partnerships and includes a calendar of events. At the home page for the Department of Education http://www.ed.gov, parents will find information about the President's education initiatives, college financial aid, and parenting publications, along with links to other useful education sites.

• The National Coalition for Parental Involvement in Education http://www.ncpie.org/ provides a catalog of resources available from all its member organizations.

• The National Coalition of Title I/Chapter 1 Parents 202-547-9286 helps economically disadvantaged parents develop skills to enhance the quality of their children's education.

• The ASPIRA Association, Inc. http://www.aspira.org/ highlights its two national parent involvement programs—ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program (APEX) and Teachers, Organizations, and Parents for Students Program (TOPS). Each program provides a Spanish/English curriculum that strives to empower Latino parents and families.

• The White House web site http://www.whitehouse.gov/describes a strategy to involve government, industry, parent, and teachers in putting together a rating system so parents can define material they consider offensive and protect their children effectively.

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