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DEPT. OF EDUCATION OPENS GATEWAY TO SOME EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

December 9, 1999

The Internet holds within its web thousands of lesson plans and other educational activities, but the U.S. Department of Education is worried teachers will not know where to find what is out there. To make it a little easier, for some, the department launched a new web site this week called the Gateway to Educational Materials. The site enables teachers, parents and students to search the listings of more than 140 different web sites based on topic and grade level -- but it does not direct educators and others to plans and activities that specifically address teaching students with special needs.

The site, designed to make finding information on the Internet easier for time-crunched teachers, searches different sites operated by federal, state, university, non-profit and commercial organizations, with more than 7,000 items combined. Users can either type in specific words or phrases to search by or browse the site by keyword or subject. The site does not have specific categories for learning disabilities and other challenges for students with special needs, and entering specific lesson goals, such as "word recognition" or "sound isolation" may or may not return a list of resources. On the positive side, however, the Gateway site encourages organizations with educational resources to apply to be included in its database.

The Gateway project is part of an overall Clinton Administration effort to make finding educational resources on the Internet easier. President Clinton ordered federal agencies in April 1997 to look for ways to meet this goal. In addition to the Gateway site, the Education Department and 40 other federal agencies put together the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence web site to aggregate materials available from federal agencies. Unlike the FREE search site, Gateway "retrieves fewer resources than most search tools, and with more precision," the Department of Education said. The Gateway site will eventually allow teachers to search based on state academic standards as well.8