Linda Joseph.
Net Curriculum : An Educator's Guide to Using the Internet.
Medford, N.J.: CyberAge Books, 1999.
paper, 193 p., ISBN 0-910-96530-7, US$29.95.
Information Today: http://www.infotoday.com/

This guide is ostensibly designed "for K-12 teachers, librarians, and computer/media specialists" (back cover), but is pitched at a very elementary level and is unlikely to be of much value for those already familiar with the subject area. Furthermore, critical guidance is lacking, particularly in the Web site listings, so the book is equally unlikely to be very useful to the Internet novice.

At 193 pages, it is rather a short book, and uses a large typeface, large illustrations and lots of white space to pad out the brief text. It often goes into unnecessary detail, wasting space on information that is likely to be irrelevant to most people; ten pages are devoted to a step-by-step guide to setting up a PPP connection for Windows 95 and Macintosh. These instructions are neither necessary nor sufficient, just generalizations on the obvious and easy points, lacking in detailed information on the potential difficulties.

An example of this absurdity is the section on attachments, the complete text of which states:

"You can share documents and photographs via e-mail by sending them as attached files. Since each e-mail program differs in the way it handles the attachments (some have no provision for them at all), you should read the instructions."

The recognition that users are best advised to read the instructions for the specific programs they use renders redundant much of the material in the book's seventy pages of appendices.

Typically, a whole page (p. 150) is taken up with simple instructions for using a proprietary program available for download on the Net, though anyone interested would simply go to the download site to find the instructions. However, the book fails to provide any critical evaluation of the program.

Chapter 2 consists of a list of Internet resources, which makes no claim to be comprehensive, but rather to provide a few starting points in various curriculum areas. However, it is largely uncritical, and the descriptions of the content are quite inadequate. For example, one listing (p. 29) reads in its entirety:

"Animation Grove (http://www.dgill.simplenet.com/timagemap.html). You will find really cute animal cartoons here."

This directory also fails to distinguish between sites belonging to educational institutions and those belonging to commercial organizations, so www.colgate.com/Kids-world/index.html and kidshealth.org are listed next to each other with no indication of the perspective or agenda of each site.

A list of URLs of some schools' homepages is provided (p. 156) so that aspiring Web designers can use them as examples, but Joseph provides no comments on them, so there is no indication of what design elements these sites are chosen to exemplify.

The book does have some good features. There is a fourteen-page HTML tutorial, which lists, explains and illustrates a few tags that are sufficient for the creation of a simple page, with a template available at www.cyberbee.com/schoolpage/school.html. And the CyberBee Web site has additional tie-ins and up-to-date hyperlinks to all of the sites listed in the book. However, these initiatives are not enough to redeem a book which, in its attempt to cover a lot of ground for a broad readership, fails to provide much of value to anyone.