FAQ #1
Q- How does the community gain access to the information our students publish?
Ans- In stage one, information generated by students in your community will be emailed
to the Singer Foundation. The Foundation will display the information online in a forum
dedicated to your community. The URL will be a direct connection and easily accessible.
When you are ready you will proceed to stage two.
Q- I know about email but I get confused when you talk about URL connections.
Ans- A url is an internet address. In this case when a person in your community wants
to view the database constructed by your students, a click will take them to a page on the
Singer Foundation web site dedicated to your community. You will be using the Singer
Foundation's address, or url, temporarily.
Q- How will community members know what url to enter?
Ans- They won't have to know anything about internet addresses. They will simply click
on the name of your community database.
Q- In order to access the information, won't members of our community have to pay
for long distance connection?
Ans- Members of your community will have access through a local internet service
provider. The connection will be treated like a local phone call.
Q- What about those average citizens without a home computer? How will they gain
access to the information?
Ans- Many communities have computers connected to the internet in their public
libraries. Public buildings and offices of nonprofit organizations may also be willing to
provide access. Check at City Hall. "More community access" could be
"wishes" described in your community Exchange Proposals. The Singer Foundation
may be able to help.
Q- What is stage one?
Ans- During stage one your information is hosted on the Singer Foundation server and
students send updates to the Foundation via email. Foundation volunteers in Carmel prepare
the information for the internet.
Q- What is stage two?
Ans- During stage two your students assume more responsibility and control. If necessary,
the Foundation will train at least two students and give them Front Page software
to install on a computer at your school. In return, students will be responsible for
updating your database. The work can be a classroom learning experience offline or
directly on the internet. In the second instance, students would use a
toll-free-local-dial-up number to connect to the Foundation server. They would have
special passwords and work directly on the Foundation's web site from their remote
location. In either case they would transfer internet ready information.
Q- You mentioned training students. How and where would this training take place?
Ans- It is likely that someone at your school or a teacher or parent is already
familiar with Front Page software. If not we would bring two of your students to
Carmel or have someone connected with the Foundation go to your location.
Q-What is Front Page?
Ans- Front Page is the name of commercial software manufactured by Microsoft. It
makes it extremely easy for anyone to publish material on the internet without learning
the codes used by manual programmers. Text is changed automatically to html.
Q-OK. So Front Page is the name of a software program. Now tell me about
html, please.
Ans- HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark-up Language; the original universal language of the
internet. Ordinary text documents cannot be viewed over the internet so must be translated
and html is one of the most common translations. Using Front Page anyone can save
text to html automatically.
Q-We use Macintosh computers at our school. Could we substitute Page Mill for
Front Page?
Ans- Although Page Mill, software sold by Adobe and a
competitor of Microsoft's Front Page, does a good job, you must use Front Page
so Foundation volunteers can make adjustments to your web pages if necessary. Front Page
is available for Macs and PCs. In every community Another Way participants must adhere to
the same format for gathering and displaying information.
Q- Is there a stage three?
Ans- Once the community becomes involved, your community database would be
transferred to a local server and the Foundation would link to it.
Q- "Link to it." What does that mean?
Ans- In the earlier stages members of your community would view your
database via a link to our web site. In stage three the tables would be turned. Visitors
to our site could, with a click, link to yours. In stage three your school district would
have agreed to adopt the maintenance of a community database as part of the normal school
curriculum. That's when a local server begins hosting your community database and the
Harry Singer Foundation's role would be down-graded at that time.
Q- What is all this going to cost?
Ans- The first two stages will involve no cash outlays by your community. If for
some reason the program fails to catch on, the students and other participants would have
had a powerful learning experience. When your community is ready for the third stage we
will help you find ways to minimize or eliminate any expenses you might encounter in
hosting your own web site locally.
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