In March 1997 Marshal Applewhite and his band of 40 "web site building multidimensional New Agers" committed ritual suicide to pass through where physical bodies cannot go. A folklorist who belongs to an Internet current events newsgroup had been reading Applewhite's posted comments since 1995. On his web page, Applewhite noted how…

Considers how the Internet offers new opportunities for both audience research and content analyses, but notes that old problems researchers have encountered over the years remain. Notes that mass communication research will be better off or worse off depending on the skill of researchers in using the Internet. (SC)

Despite accompanying drawbacks, the Internet information system known as Gopher presents a rich variety of potential benefits to writing pedagogies and to educational administrators. Writing teachers need to overcome tendencies to think of exploration of the Internet information resources as something to be uncritically adopted and as something to…

A recent article in the "Assemby for Computers in English (ACE) Newsletter" explains what most instructors of English already know--that students in most writing classes produce papers for which the primary purpose is the teacher. As the Internet becomes more widely available, students will have more access to what Howard Rheingold calls…

This paper presents a writing exercise that the author uses in his technical writing courses. The purpose of the exercise is to: (1) convince students that their ideas have value; and (2) teach higher order thinking skills--specifically, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The author relates his own college experience, noting the fact that only…

Suggests the authentic audience found on the Internet has a profound effect on the quality of student writing in all grades, and that the key to successful technology projects is integrating them into the curriculum so that computers are a means, not an end. Offers ideas for classroom activities and projects using stand-alone computers, and using…