ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080034
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: computer bits
WHETHER YOU WANT to learn more an exotic pet or take a class on parenting your elderly parents, it's all on line.
See Misha explore the toilet seat.
See Misha sit on the seat.
See Misha in the act.
Don't be nervous. This is not sick humor. Misha is the cat star of Lid Up, Seat Down, or How to Toilet Train Your Cat.
This Web site is certainly different, but the information is good. If toilet-training a cat is on your agenda, here are step-by-step instructions on how to do it. The site has had 5,108 visits since July15.
While we're on a pet beat, here, check out World Wide Woof. This site offers an adoption network broken down by breed, so that you can learn things like there's a cairn terrier in Nebraska who needs a one-dog home. Also here are a breeders directory, a list of breed standards and The Mutt Market, which is a place to buy silly dog things like terry cloth blankets or have your pet's picture done in mosaic.
You can get the latest on Kennel Club shows past and present at Woof, too. And if you're looking for ideas for building a Web page, check out the animated letter icon here. It shows a letter being written, then folded and put in an envelope. Very clever.
Courses by computer are nothing new, but they're usually courses about computers. But the types of offerings are expanding as colleges try to make the pursuit of a degree as convenient as possible.
With on-line classes, where students and instructors communicate by e-mail, students lose the face-to-face communication, but they gain the convenience of being able to sit at home or at the office and do school work on their own time schedules.
This fall, students with computers and modems can select from several on-line classes offered by two area colleges, Virginia Western Community College and Virginia Tech.
Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke has first and second semester freshman English composition classes on line. These are standard content, credit courses that require an initial meeting on campus when students have to write a sample essay. After that, students work and communicate electronically.
A bit more information about the classes can be found under the News&Events section of Virginia Western's Web page.
Virginia Tech has plans for three specially designed on-line literature courses, Literature by Black Women, Speculative Fiction and Shakespeare, and a whole bundle of classes in other disciplines in its CyberSchool. Courses to be offered through the Internet this fall include biology, communications, political science, art and health psychology. The courses are briefly outlined on Tech's Web page.
Parenting Parents
Francine Moskowitz and Robert Moskowitz, authors of "Parenting Your Aging Parents," are taking to the Web to teach a course based on their book. Parenting Your Aging Parents by e-mail costs $40 and will include lectures on housing, financing, medical care, emotional issues and death-related issues.
Further information is available on the authors' Web page reached through knowledgetree.com.
Seniors on the Web
National Public Radio listeners already know about "grackers," because this group's been discussed there. For those who don't, grackers are gray hackers. It seems that senior citizens play around with computers about as much as their grandchildren.
A recent Yankelovich Monitor survey discovered that nearly one-third of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 have a personal computer at home and that nearly one-fourth of them subscribe to an on-line service.
The American Association of Retired Persons' site gets 1million hits a month. There's even a group, SeniorNet, that promotes computer use among senior citizens.
People of any age can learn a lot by checking out some sites aimed at the older surfers, however. For example, Senior World, the brainchild of Roanoke Valley resident Don Thorne, has information preventing fraud and personal safety as well as telephone numbers for state agencies involved in services to older citizens.
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