INSIDE THE INTERNET

by Richard Kool

OKAY, you've glanced at this new column. That may mean one of several things. Maybe you're already really into the Internet; or you're thinking about it; or you're feeling guilty that you're the last one on the block who hasn't gone on-line; or maybe you just have an anthropological interest in seeing what the natives are doing.

You can't easily avoid reading about and hearing about the Internet. It's everywhere and everyone's there, or so we are led to believe. It's confusing, we're told, and it's growing rapidly, and you'd better get on-board or you'll be left behind.

Using the Internet won't make you good or virtuous or clever. But it seems to me that everyone needs to investigate it, and there are especially good reasons for educators to consider doing so. In this and coming issues of Green Teacher, I hope to be able to point out some great spots on the net: useful places for teachers to visit and new tools that you might want to get your hands on.

ONE MAJOR reason for using the Internet is for electronic mail. Computers are pretty cold instruments. What warms them up are the human connections that they help to mediate. E-mail is no longer either hard to do or difficult to find. The growing FreeNet movement, the proliferation of commercial Internet providers, and the expansion of educational computing all mean that if you want Internet access, you can find it.

Much of my e-mail is personal, and I expect the friends with whom I correspond to be civil and to entertain me with their writings. However, it is as a member of distributed discussion groups, gangs of people who talk with each other through what are called "listservs" that I am often amazed at the interest and consideration shown between people who have likely never met, and who are in fact likely never to meet face to face.

Listservs are groups of individuals who share a similar interest, be it goldfish, organic gardening, women's spirituality, Greece, or the philosophy of education. You "subscribe" to the list, and any message that anyone sends to the list gets distributed to all of the subscribers (subscriptions cost nothing). A comment back to the list on a previous message is again distributed to all, and the discussion continues in a very public fashion. I've seen wonderful "threads" (that's what an on-line discussion about a particular point is called) run on for months, leading to interesting insights, all based on a simple question by a list member.

If you want to become part of a listserv discussion, you must ask the computer to add your name and electronic address to its list of subscribers. To do this, send a command to the listserver, not to the mailing list. The address of a listserver is almost always the word LISTSERV, followed by the list address.

For example, if I wanted to subscribe to the marine mammal list called MARMAM, I would send an e-mail message to:
LISTSERV@UVVM.UVIC.CA

My message would contain the command:
SUB MARMAM RICHARD KOOL

This command format always stays the same. To subscribe to any listserv, the command is:
sub <<the list name>> <<your name>>

What follows is a sampling of interesting lists for environmental educators. The topic is followed by the list name and the listserver address:

Conservation biology:

consbio
listserv@uwavm.u.washington.edu

Development education:

devel-l
listserv@aumv.bitnet

Ecological economics:

Ecol-Econ
mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk (for this one, send your subscribe command to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk, not to listserv)

Environmental educators:

eenets-request
listserv@um.cc.umich.edu

Green organizations:

greenorg
mailto:listserv@indyvax.bitnet

Indigenous knowledge:

indknow
listserv@uwavm.u.washington.edu

nature literacy:

natlit-l
listserv@envirolink.org

There are a few sites on the World Wide Web where you can search for interesting mailing lists you might want to subscribe to. The following site contains information about lists (here you can discover the difference between listserv, majordomo, and listproc), as well as an engine for searching through a database which contains over 12,000 lists by keyword:
http://www.liszt.com/

Two other searchable indices of listservs and other mailing lists are:
http://www.tile.net/tile/listserv/index.html
http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/listserv.html

We're all busy with our own circles of personal friends and family. The Internet can make you even busier: it will give you a larger circle of friends, and maybe even let you stay in better touch with your family. Many of us work in isolated settings, be they physical or intellectual. Getting on-line connects us to our community. It's worth looking at!