020.06 Education by Susan Calcari The past year has seen a huge increase in the number of people asking for information on applications and resources on the Internet. This trend was seen this Fall at such conferences as Interop and Educom where information services presenatations had overflowing attendance. In addition, the profile of Internet users is changing. What in the past was mostly a tool for engineers and computer scientists is being used more and more by librarians, social scientists, and educators at all levels of academia. The chart below reflects the increasing number of academic institutions attached to NSFNET in the U.S. This growth accounts in part for the increased interest in how to use the Internet more easily and effectively. Number of U.S. Higher Education Institutions attached to NSFNET, listed by their Carnegie Institute classification: February, 1990 April, 1991 Research I 66 of 70 70 of 70 Research II 33 of 33 34 of 34 Doctoral I 32 of 51 45 of 51 Doctoral II 33 of 59 47 of 57 Comprehensive I 66 of 427 172 of 427 Comprehensive II 9 of 174 14 of 174 Liberal Arts I 16 of 125 56 of 125 Liberal Arts II 9 of 439 23 of 439 A great amount of work is currently being done to include the Kindergarden through 12th grade (K-12) community (children ages five through eighteen) in the Internet and the NREN. The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) has formed with individuals from all types of organizations, including K-12 educators, to tackle issues such as the development of networking applications for the classroom; the need for simple and standard user interfaces; directories for locating resources, projects, and project collaborators; and achieving widespread connectivity. An important development for educators has been the emergence of several tools which make it easier for educators and others to search for resources on the Internet . These tools present a simpler user interface than the standard FTP and telnet application layer protocols by implementing a client/server model. There has been a great amount of activity and collaborative projects springing up around two such tools, Archie and WAIS. In fact, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF ) Working Group has been formed to define a set of recommended standard procedures for the access and administration of anonymous ftp archive sites on the Internet. This working group is called Internet Anonymous FTP Archives (IAFA). To subscribe to the mailing list, send mail to: iafa-request@cc.mcgill.ca ----------------------------------------------------------------- To receive information on these tools send mail to the addresses below. Archie: WAIS: