DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 387 149 IR 055 677

TITLE Gopher It! Information On-Line at the U.S. Department

of Education. Consumer Guide Number 13.

INSTITUTION National Inst. on the Education of At-Risk Students

(OERI/ED), Washington, DC.

REPORT NO AR-95-7027

PUB DATE Sep 95

NOTE 4p.

PUB TYPE Guides Non-Classroom Use (055)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS Academic Standards; *Educational Resources; Family

Life Education; Federal Legislation; *Government

Publications; *Information Sources; Statistical

Data

IDENTIFIERS *Department of Education; *Gopher; Internet; National

Center for Educational Statistics

ABSTRACT

The U.S. Department of Education's (ED) National

Library of Education is working to make a wide variety of reports,

news releases, and other documents available through the Internet.

The information available online is varied, and is constantly being

updated. As of May 1995, the gopher site (gopher.ed.gov) included:

full-text versions of key legislation, including the "Goals 2000:

Educate America Act" and the "Improving America's Schools Act of

1994"; a collection of academic standards and documents about the

development of standards, use of standards, and other

standards-related issues; family involvement information, including

full-text versions of the "Helping Your Child" series; "Education

Consumer Guides" that provide brief descriptions of key educational

programs, teaching and learning methods, and assessment techniques;

an ED press releases, selected speeches and testimony by the

Secretary of Education, and guides to ED programs. In addition, the

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has placed full-text

version of many of its report online, including "The Condition of

Education," "The Digest of Education Statistics," "Education in

States and Nations: 1988," and "Youth Indicators." A few tips are given on accessing information through the Internet. (.MAS)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made

from the original document.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educabonai Resection and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION

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Consumer Guide

Gopher It! Information On-Line at the

U.S. Department of Education

Number 13 - September 1995

by National institute on the Education of At-Risk Students

BEST COPY AVAILABLE
U.S. Department of Education

Number 13 September 1995

Gopher It! Information On-Line at the

U.S. Department of Education

The ED Gopher

It's late at night; you've got a briefing to give tomorrow morning; and you don't have the information

you need at hand. Who are you going to call? The

U.S. Department of Education gopher! The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education is working to make a wide variety of reports,

news releases, and other documents available online through the Internet.

Our gopher address is gophened.gov. If you

are unable to access our site directly, you can reach

it from a main gopher tree by selecting North

America ->USA-General-12,U.S. Department of

Education.

What Is Available?

The information available on line is varied, and is

constantly being updated. As of May 1995, the gopher site included

Full-text versions of key legislation, including the

Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994;

A collection of academic standards and documents about the development of standards, use of

standards, and other standards-related issues, including descriptions of ED-funded projects for the

development of state-level curriculum frameworks and content standards;

Family involvement information, including fulltext versions of the Helping Your Child series, a

series of booklets on different education topics designed to help parents support their children's

learning;

Education Consumer Guides that provide brief descriptions of key educational programs, teaching

and learning methods, and assessment techniques such as Success For All, Reading Recovery, Corner Schools, and Performance Assessment; and

ED press rele2ses, selected speeches and testimony by the Secretary of Education, and guides

to ED programs.

In addition, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has placed full-text versions of many of

its reports on line, including:

The Condition of Education. The Condition contains 60 indicators of the condition of education.

Each indicator is presented on two pages, with

findings summarized in textual, tabular, and

graphical formats. The 60 indicators are organized into six sections: Access, Participation, and

Progress; Achievement, Attainment, and Curriculum; Economic and Other Outcomes of Education;

Size, Growth, and Output of Educational Institutions; Climate, Classrooms, and Diversity in Educational Institutions; and Human and Financial

Resources of Educational Institutions.

The Digest of Education Statistics. The Digest

contains a wealth of statistics on elementary/secondary enrollment, higher education, teachers,

student performance, international comparisons

of achievement, graduates and degrees, and educational expenditures.

National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students
. Education in States and Nations: 1988. This volume includes 16 education indicators grouped

into four categories: background, participation,

outcomes, and finance. The presentation of each

indicator includes an explanation of what it measures, why it is important, and key results from a

comparison of countries and states. In addition to

the explanations and key results, the presentation

of each indicator includes separate tables for

states and countries and a graph that displays

states and countries together.

Youth Indicators. Youth Indicators contains statistics that address important aspects of the lives

of youthfamily, work, education, health, behavior, and attitudes. It is intended to be of use to

agency officials and others in public life concerned with integrating human services for youth

and their families. Whenever possible, tables go

as far back as 1950, or even earlier, providing

needed historical context for today's issues. Each

indicator contains a table, chart, and brief descriptive text.

A Few Final Words

The material in our gopher can be downloaded to

your PC for reading or for "cutting and pasting"

into other documents. The exact procedures for

downloading will vary depending on your site

and the software you are using to access the

system.

Some of our on-line files (generally, the big ones)

are compressed ("zipped") and need to be "unzipped" before you can read them. (These files

will have the word "zip" in the title line.) If you

do not have decompression software, you can

download it from our site: gopher to U.S. Department of Education --)About this Gopher -->ED

Utilities for Files in this Gopher. This directory

contains compression/decompression software for

a variety of microcomputer systems.

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

While you're on-line, be sure to check out what

ERIC (the Educational Resources Information Center) has to offer. In addition to ERIC Digests, Access ERIC Brochures, ERIC Bibliographies, and

lesson plans, there's AskERIC, an Internet-based

question answering service for teachers, library

media specialists, administrators, and others interested in education.

Please note:

The U. S. Department of Education does not

offer public access gopher clients. You must

either have an appropriate gopher client at your

site or be able to telnet to a public access client

elsewhere.

You cannot access the ED public servers by

telneting to the site. You will be denied telnet

access.

Be sure to check the dates on all materials you access through the Internet. Some sites leave old information on-line or do not update files frequently. ******** This Consumer Guide is part of a series prepared by the Office

of Educational Research and Improvement. To be added to

the Consumer Guide mailing list, send your name and address

to Consumer Guides, OERI, U.S. Department of Education,

555 New Jersey Avenue NW. Room 610, Washington, DC 20208.

Consumer Guides are also available on the Internet at

gopher.ed.gov. This document is in the public domain and

may be freely reproduced in part or in its entirety without permission. Please credit OERI. If you have questions about this

particular guide, please write to Judith Anderson at the address

above, through the Internet at janderso@vineted.gov, by

telephone at (202) 219-2086, or by FAX at (202) 219-2030.

AR 95-7027

his Gonstoner Guide is produced by the National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students,

Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education

Richard W. Riley, Secretary of Education

Sharon P. Robinson, Assistant Secretary, OERI

Judith I. Anderson, Acting Director, At-Risk Institute