About the Book

The Wired Professor: A Guide to Incorporating the World Wide Web in College Instruction Anne B. Keating with Joseph Hargitai ISBN: 0814747256 $20.00 paper 256 pages, 114 b/w illustrations

The Wired Professor is a book about the World Wide Web and specifically about incorporating Web-based course materials into college curriculums and instruction. Written for professors with limited experience on the Internet, The Wired Professor is a collegial, hands-on guide to building and managing instruction-based Web pages and sites. This book also explores a variety of topics, from the history of networks, publishing and computers to such hotly debated subjects as the pedagogical challenges posed by computer-aided instruction and distance learning. As with the hands-on sections of this book, these discussions are geared to the non-computer-savvy reader and written with an eye to extracting the intellectual patterns and drawing comparisons to noncomputer media. These concepts are critical in order to comprehend fully the power and potential of the Internet: as a creative medium, unparalleled research resource, community-building medium and vehicle for the delivery of content-rich materials. This book provides a timely and solid foundation for using this technology thoughtfully and effectively.

Rationale
The rationale for using the World Wide Web to deliver course material, as well as to promote classroom interaction, rests in the potential that this technology has for providing twenty-four-hour access to information from any computer connected to the Internet. The Internet is rapidly becoming a necessary and natural part of the way we access information. However, while students are increasingly Internet literate, many professors have found themselves lacking either the necessary skills or the intellectual framework for effectively working with and understanding this new tool and medium. This has been further compounded by a lack of time to learn new skills and the lack of critical resources such as computers and Internet connections.

By the time you read these words, the Web and related online technologies will have been further enriched by capabilities that we can only guess at now. This is the challenge of the Internet--the moment you take it on you become a participant in its development. Writing for the Web is not a static enterprise. As you incorporate the Web into your classroom teaching or departmental agendas, you will be contributing to a growing base of knowledge among educators about how to use this medium effectively. Although there is no one "correct" way to use the Web in teaching, we hope that we can provide a series of critical steppingstones and some practical advice on how to get on the Web quickly and how to design effective class Web pages.

This book is a hybrid: part hands-on guide, part history, part design manual and part discussion of the implications of using the Web in college instruction.