sditorially speaking The Journal, the Internet, and Teaching With this issue, the Journal begins to create an access to the Internet. Our future on the Internet will be achieved systematically, and i t will be designed to c o m p l i m e n t a d d value t e t h e print Journal. Our Internet connection must he useful to our readers in ways not possible with the print Journal, however, economic considerations cannot he ignored. I t would he intellectually and economically unacceptable to produce only a direct copy of the Journal for electronic distribution. The I n t e r n e t t h e information super highway-has been hailed by many as an important information source in the educational process and will hewme increasingly so in the future. Indeed, there are extant descriptions of apparently innovative uses of modem interactive communications technologies in the education of scientists at the undergraduate level. However, anyone who has attempted to obtain information from the Internet knows that you are as likely to find garbage as you are to find quality information. Wehster tells us that garbage is "worthless or nonsensical matter; rubbish; inferior or offensive material; incorrect, meaningless, or unwanted information." An eye for discrimination, which is oRen a reflection of maturity, is essential when using the current Internet. In other words, because a hit of information appears on the Internet does not ensure its quality Only in cases where the information sought has its source in a review-oriented process, e.g., from library holdings, can the information on the Internet he trusted. The Internet is fast becoming a "vanity press,'' where anything can be published with virtually no critique regarding the quality and accuracy of the content. Indeed, i t is not necessarily true that the person to whom a bit of information is attributed is the person who posted it. A hit of information on the Internet lies there until someone comes across i t and uses i t (or links to it), forming a nucleus for further growth. Further growth may center about critiques of the original piece of information, hut, i n general, we have no way of establishing the credentials of the critics. I t may take an enormous amount of time for a n Internet publication to accrue a critique that is equivalent to that received by a equivalent quantum of information in a peer reviewed, paper-oriented journal. It is difficult to decide (unless you already know because of your expertise) when a n Internet publication has "passed the test," in contrast to the paper published in a refereed journal. When the printed paper appears, most of the critics associated with that journal have agreed (through the editorial process) that i t is probably worthwhile publishing. The appearance of an Internet paper does not carry the same implication since anyone can put anything on t h e Internet. Anyone who has a computer and a network connection is empowered to publish on the Internet, and often does. Putting a neophyte--a beginning s t u d e n t i n this kind of environment with little or no guidance would seem to abrogate certain responsibilities that teachers have to guide a student's intellectual growth and ability to make critical judgments. This is not a n argument against the use of the Internet for teaching; rather i t is a plea to use this new tool with care lest our students he harmed intellectually. "As the twig is hent. . ."
The Internet can he likened to a n open library where anyone can come in and put a book or a note on a scrap of paper anywhere on the shelves. Further, anyone can go i n anytime they wish and make a copy of anything to take away. Without the value added by a librarian, who brings a known (if not necessarily perfect) order to the holdings, the open library is virtually worthless to people who have specific tasks to perform, e.g., finding the NMR spectrum of (or anything characteristic of) a specific compound. Unless we learn how to assure the usefulness and reliability of information on the Internet, one of the era's most valushle resources may never reallzc its ncnrhmu putent~al. 'l'hv I n t t m r t has become a useful and vnlu3trh. acndem~c tool where it connects users to an information source of previously established quality, as, for example, in the case of Chemical Abstracts On Line. The processes that establish the quality of the information in the printed version of CA are the same as those for the on-line version; indeed, the printed version i s the same as the on-line version, hut electronic access provides a variety of potential advantages that include on demand access as well a s multiple accesses. All of this, of course, comes a t a cost which some have not figured out how to bear. The point of the CAanalogy is that the quality of the on-line material is assured because there is no difference between the information i n the electronic and the printed version. How can telecommunications technologies be used to enhance, for example, this Journal. We clearly can't afford to "give away" the contents of the Journal on the Internet although this i s technologically feasible. An exact representation of each page of the Journal could he made available in electronic form to he delivered to a local laser printer-but to what end? We could attempt to sell electronic subscriptions, but our estimate is that these would be more expensive than the equivalent print version of the Journal. Moreover, many of our current readers could not access, or possibly would not be interested in, a n exact electronic representation. So we have chosen to augment the print Journal with an electronic addition that will permit us to provide an expanded service to those who have access to the Internet. For example, we can provide supplementary tables of data, student handouts, full-size templates for models, color versions of illustrations that our print budget dictates he printed i n black and white, and eventuallv. video clios of demonstrations and exoeriments. i)ur electronic n u ~ m m t a t i o nbegins wfth this issue-at our new Web site a1 huv: a~ww.utex;i~.(!d~~cons ichemed . The Computer Series article by PospiSil, ZBliS, and Fanelli incorporates several fractal diagrams that are available i n color on our Web site. We expect future issues of this print Journal to have similar electronic components. Look for them if you have access to the Internet. In addition, we begin publication of the abstracts of the papers that appear in the Journal. Abstracts starting with the July 1995 issue are currently available on-line along with the full text of a few articles. We intend to publish the abstracts for a given issue on the date the Journal is released to be printed, providing a preview of the Journal each month and a way of introducing potential subscribers to our wide range of inJJL teresting material for teachers. Volume 72 Number 11 November 1995
957
