THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 25, 1996 TAG: 9607240124
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 57 lines
Thomas Mathews wants to join the parade of peers who are heavily into computers, so he decided to go to a computer class this summer.
``I didn't want to be left out,'' said the 12-year-old John Yeates Middle School seventh-grader. ``Computers fascinate me. They hold so much information.''
A lot of computer information was dispensed during a recently completed two-week course for local middle school students.
It was held at P.D. Pruden Vocational-Technical Center, directed by Betty Jo English, the school's Business Information Systems instructor.
``We wanted to expose the students to Internet. We did e-mail and communicated with similar classes in Louisiana and California,'' she said. ``Most of the kids knew computers, but they didn't know Internet.''
Wesley Alexander just got Internet access at home. ``I came to class so I could learn more about it,'' he said. ``I learned Internet definitions.''
He and his friends also learned how to make student home pages filled with information about themselves which anyone, anywhere can peruse.
``They used different search engines available to surf the Internet for pages related to their interests,'' English said.
Britton Davis, a 14-year-old Smithfield Middle School student, said his interests are ``motorcycles, football and basketball. I looked at different categories.''
All the students looked at the 1996 Olympic Home Page, found the locations of each day's torch relay and plotted those travels on a wall map.
``The most interesting thing,'' Thomas said, ``was connecting with people across the country.''
That included Charles Chandler, superintendent of schools in Hanover County, Pa.
``There were messages from teachers and students across the United States,'' said English, the instructor. ``We communicated with people who, otherwise, would have been out of reach. It's an e-mail world.''
That includes our nation's capitol. Two youngsters wanted to learn more about what is going on there - not in the world of politics, but in the world of hair.
Rachel Short and Kadi English, 11-year-old John F. Kennedy students, messaged Hillary Clinton after finding something in the computer about her hairstyles.
``We wrote and said they were terrific,'' Rachel said.
``They really weren't,'' the youngster said.
There was no reply from the first lady but Alice Pushker, director of her Office of Correspondence, sent them some White House Internet addresses.
``I didn't know anything about the Internet before I came to class here,'' Rachel said. ``Now, I know everything about it - mostly.''
For the teacher, that means mission accomplished - just about. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by FRANK ROBERTS
Wesley Alexander, left, and Thomas Mathews learned about computers
and the Internet this summer at a two-week course for middle school
students, which was held at P.D. Pruden Vocational-Technical Center. by CNB