Online Services
By Jason Rippetoe
Printed in PHS #6, 1994.
Jason Rippetoe is the founder of the Home School Online bulletin board network. You can reach him at HmeSchool@AOL.com, or dial in anytime to his bulletin board, Ecclesia Online, at (510) 526-6584. Set your modem software to 8-N-1 and VT-100 or ANSI, and use the password and user ID of "guest" when first logging on.
For some, the high-pitched squealing of two modems arguing over a connection is comparable to the scraping of fingernails down a blackboard. To me it's like music; a signal that the door to a different world is opening, ripe with promise and awaiting exploration. Those who've been bitten by the online bug know what I'm talking about, as the world of BBSs and on-line services is wide and wonderful, with treasures and mysteries galore.
As in any industry, the world of online services has its big hitters. The "Big Four" of online services are America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and GEnie. Although there are many similarities between what these four services provide, each has its own flavor and unique set of resources.
In this article, we'll take a look at what services the Big Four provide that are of interest to homeschooling families and how they stack up against one another in the quality of information available, value, services, ease of use and various other sundry areas.
In some ways, what the various services offer homeschoolers is similar. For example, all of them offer message areas and, generally, the same sort of subjects are discussed. Most of the services provide a "library" of text files on homeschooling topics that users can download to their computer at home. All offer educational features such as encyclopedias and other reference works. The quality and amount of these resources vary from service to service, but each has attempted to address the education market.
No matter which online service you choose, you'll find some sort of conference area for discussion of homeschooling, though they might go by different names. By any name, however, they still provide a method for homeschooling families from around the country to communicate. Messages typed into your computer at home are transferred to the computer at the online service where they are read and replied to by others. In this way, conversations are maintained and users exchange information and discuss the issues that interest them. Sometimes the information you get is good, sometimes bad. After you've spent awhile on a particular service you learn who to listen to and who not to.
In most cases, people from every point of the homeschooling spectrum are lumped together into one area. You'll find Christians and atheists, Mormons and Muslims, unschoolers and homeschoolers, and everything in between, all rubbing shoulders in a search for information on that new curriculum or discussing the most recent findings on socialization. Participating in these conferences can be very informative, but with such a diverse group of people taking part there is the occasional heated debate and less-than-charitable statement. It is how the participants and the conference moderator handle such clashes that determine the tone of the discussions on each service and how welcome users feel. During my snooping around I didn't see any serious online arguments (or "flame wars"), though there were a few very strongly-opinionated discussions going on.
Christians are generally welcomed on the boards and occasionally have special areas of their own set aside. Christians tend to be fairly high profile about their motivations for homeschooling on the boards and God is not left out of the mix you find there, but if a user gets too gung-ho about their faith there are likely to be feathers ruffled. It is generally assumed that the boards are for discussing homeschooling; faith is welcome only as it touches homeschooling and no more. Anything else is likely to be blasted.
In my travels across the Big Four, I met many different homeschoolers. Invariably the reason they chose one online service over another was because of the people involved on a particular service. The phrase "online support group" came up repeatedly. To a large extent that's the draw for most users. Many reported that they used the homeschool area almost exclusively and seldom used anything else on their service of choice, eschewing the databases, file libraries, and educational services in favor of online messaging and "chats" (the online equivalent of a telephone conversation).
I was also surprised to see the number of people who reported they belonged to more than one service; using another system for some features, but "hanging out" on their favorite because of the support group they found there. I found the people on each of the services friendly and willing to go out of their way to help newcomers.
I can understand the idea of trying to get a "feel" for a particular system to see how you fit in. For instance, I think I clicked more with the CompuServe crowd than with those on the other services. There was a sense of excitement there that I didn't sense on the others, despite the friendly welcomes I received.
GEnie
We'll start with the smallest and work our way up. GEnie is an old-timer in the online services game, but recently they've gotten aggressive in trying to pull users away from the other online services. Full-page ads in the leading computer magazines contain special offers to lure new and experienced users into the GEnie fold. These offers can provide more than enough free time online to evaluate the system before you decide if you want to continue your membership. The offer I used to go online with GEnie waived the $8.95 monthly fee for the first month and provided 10 hours free of connection fees, which is not a bad deal.
On the first connection to GEnie, new users are stuck with a standard command-line interface. That means that everything is presented to you as lines of text that you respond to by typing on the keyboard. Leave your mouse behind; you won't be needing it. After registering, users can download what GEnie calls a "front-end" that provides a graphical access to the system. After spending 45 minutes downloading the Macintosh front-end (a beta version . . . they're still fiddling with it) and loading it into my machine, I was expecting much, but the software delivered little. Even when approaching GEnie from the graphical front-end, it still has a "text" feel to it. Choices are still presented as lines of text; the main difference is that instead of typing a number corresponding to your choice, you click your selection with the mouse.
The front end does make using GEnie easier, but the underlying text-based system limits how flexible the graphical front-end can be. For instance, when I was in the Homeschool and Private School bulletin board area, I decided to send an e-mail message to another user. But when I clicked the button to send the message, the front-end had to exit the bulletin board and go to another area of the system to mail the message. I then had to manually navigate back to the bulletin board to continue reading. In the end, I gave up and went back to the command-line interface . . . it was faster and handier to use.
If GEnie hopes to compete with the other services, it will need a solid graphical front-end. It isn't available as of yet. For this reason, GEnie stands out as the most difficult to use of the services. If newcomers are unfamiliar with the subtleties of navigating a text-based system, they're going to need the free hours that GEnie provides just to find their way around.
GEnie also offers a piece of software called "Aladdin" for several different types of computers. It's basically a glorified text-based communications program. The "glorified" part refers to the integrated off-line features that allow users to participate in the conferences when not connected to the service, a big money-saver. I checked the Aladdin for IBM-PC computers and it's got options galore. Regular GEnie users swear by it. It can be downloaded online for free.
Once you get your bearings, you'll find several areas of interest to homeschoolers on GEnie. In the general educational discussion area there are two conversational bulletin board areas for homeschoolers (go to ERT), one devoted to general topics and the other to curriculum. In addition, there is a private, by-invitation-only discussion area specifically for Christian homeschoolers in the Religion Roundtable area (category 28; to get there type m 390;1, type 1 again for the bulletin-board area, and set category to 28; see how fun the GEnie interface is?) Getting an invitation is as easy as emailing cutting.edge, otherwise known as Tony Silva, and agreeing to a basic statement of faith. This area is full of life and fire, with a much more freewheeling feel to it than the "regular" homeschooling area-probably because Tony and his right-hand henchlady, Liz Knotts, are such great kidders!
Within each area are individual subject areas that contain messages on a common theme. During my explorations, there were about 30 topics in the main homeschool area, though some of them weren't getting much use. The curriculum area offered discussion on everything from phonics to ABeka to Saxon and back.
Users can also create a new topic of their own if the current areas don't provide enough choices.
The topics under discussion had enough variety to provide something of interest for everyone; newcomers would be wise to check into the topics that outline how to get the most out of the GEnie service.
GEnie seems to have less basic educational resources than the other services. When I mentioned this to a GEnie representative, I was told of the wide variety of bulletin boards GEnie offered. That's not exactly what I meant, though. While bulletin boards are a indeed a useful resource, it's a lot of work reading through all those messages for the useful bits. Other features that might be useful have additional (and sometimes expensive) fees tacked on. For example, GEnie offers access to a fascinating array of databases on a great variety of subjects, but most of them cost extra to search. Since I'm looking for value the extra cost is a minus in my book.
Out of 18 menu items in the Education services area, five were extra-cost databases, four were doors to other Roundtables on the system, one is a career question-and-answer area and one is a computer news service. The remaining items are the only directly education-oriented items in sight: The Education Roundtable, an online encyclopedia, three databases of colleges and funding sources and the Computer-Assisted Learning Center (CALC). The Education Roundtable contains the homeschool bulletin board, other educational boards and a library of text files and useful educational software on a variety of subjects.
Don't limit yourself to the homeschool area -- eavesdrop on the other educational bulletin boards as well to see what you can find out. Often there are curriculum and other ideas that you can glean.
In the Religion Roundtable you'll find the CATacombs: Christian Homeschoolers. The private Christian area was developed as a result of the need for a meeting area for conservative/evangelical/pro-life Christians to discuss aspects of homeschooling in which, as host Tony Silva says, "Friction is the BEST result you can hope for." It's a valid point: the religion/non-religion question causes far more online arguments than any other, no matter which system you frequent. Sometimes you just want to speak your mind without having to fear belittling remarks or negative comments. The 25-40 people who currently make up the population of the CATacombs appreciate the safe ground.
The two moderators of the general homeschooling area didn't seem to appreciate the private area. When I asked about it, one denied that it existed, the other denigrated it, saying that the fact that " . . . our group is open and theirs is not speaks for itself." But then, so does the fact that they had to take their positions private in the first place. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the general homeschool moderators, as they provide valuable services to all users regardless of faith or lack thereof, and Anne Wasserman who heads up the homeschool area was very helpful.
The Christian area duplicates many of the topics on the general area: a potpourri of discussions on specific and general subjects, encompassing five areas; homeschooling support; religious discussion; public policy and the homeschool; fun and games; and family issues. About 40 topics in all, all from a Christian perspective.
The Computer Assisted Learning Center is perhaps one of the more interesting features of GEnie. It's an online community college of sorts. Though it's not accredited you can earn a certificate of completion. A wide variety of classes are offered and age is not an issue for participation. These classes are not free, however, and the prices may be restrictive for many.
My overall impression of GEnie is that it's not really directed at families; there's more of a businesslike feel to it. Though there is a lot of information and many interesting things to do online, the other services seem to have a better focus on providing a family atmosphere. When compared to the other services, GEnie's strength seems to lie in the variety found in their bulletin boards (check out the Science and Space BB, for example) and the solid group in the homeschooling area. Regular users also expressed how much they enjoyed the regularly scheduled chat sessions, though when I visited it was a small group. Users who used both GEnie and one or more of the other services all said that if worse came to worse, GEnie is where they'd stay. That's got to count for something.
CompuServe
CompuServe is another old-timer among online services. Like GEnie, CompuServe (also known as CIS) is text-based but provides graphical access via programs similar to GEnie's front-ends. The version I used (for the Macintosh) was top-notch and a proof that a text-based system need not be limited in the use of a graphical front-end. I seldom had any difficulties with the program. It was easy to use, logically laid out, speedy and full-featured.
The Homeschool message board is located in the Educational Forum and it's a pretty exciting place. The moderator of the homeschool area, Tamara Eaton, says that 50 percent of the message activity in the entire Educational Forum on CompuServe takes place in the homeschool area. Tamara and husband Bill decided to revitalize the homeschool area after our own Mary Pride expressed wonder at the lack of activity. They've accomplished a lot in the last few months. The CompuServe homeschool area has the highest enthusiasm level of the four systems I looked at.
My major point of contention with CompuServe is something out of the control of the homeschool moderators; a little feature they call "scroll rate." Messages posted on CompuServe's bulletin boards only stay around for a week or so before they scroll off the system and disappear forever. In one sense, this is good; on the other services messages never seem to expire, sticking around for months and months, and a little bit of housekeeping or a scroll rate would be a good thing. On the other hand, you've got to be diligent if you want to participate in the bulletin boards on CompuServe; if you get lazy and miss a few days, the discussion might move on without you. And if you miss information the first time, it's no use going back to look it up later.
As on GEnie, users can begin their own topics. There were 128 of them when I signed on. However, many of these topics were single messages. Even so, it demonstrates the volume of traffic because they expire after a week. CompuServe also integrates off-line reading features that are very easy to use and make following the message threads a lot easier. Once messages are in your home computer you don't have to worry about the scroll rate-messages stick around until you want them to go away.
CompuServe has perhaps the widest variety of offerings of the Big Four, but most of them are business-related. A greater effort at providing educational resources has been made than on GEnie, but again, many are fee-based. Good educational text files can be found in the Education Forum but information isn't always organized well so it takes some digging to find the good stuff.
One of the things I enjoyed on CompuServe was the online educational quiz features which present multiple-choice questions to answer. Sometimes easy, sometimes hard, but always interesting! There is also a student's forum that welcomes students of all ages. This forum is moderated and concern for younger students is apparent by the strict rules that govern what sort of discussions and information can be posted there. Help with specific academic subjects can be had here, covering math/algebra, history, English and others. Other areas to check out: the Science/Math Education Forum; The Whiz Quiz, and The Multiple Choice, a collection of games and tests.
Christian Interactive Network
Although the brand-new Christian Interactive Network (CIN) is actually a private area on CompuServe, it deserves a description of its own. For one thing, it has a truly attractive pricing structure. For $6 per month above the basic $8.95 CompuServe fee, you get unlimited access to the message boards, libraries, and chats in this area. That's right, folks-no more clock-watching! You could be logged on 12 hours every day all month long for just that extra $6!
The CIN area is growing by leaps and bounds, so it's hard to give you a snapshot of it. Right now it includes major sections for Publishers, World Mission, Ministries, and . . . Christian Homeschooling! Yes, homeschooling accounts for one-fourth of CIN. The message boards are run by the very same William and Tamara Eaton who run the homeschooling board on CIS. Practical Homeschooling should be an official part of the homeschooling area there by the time you read this, with other sections devoted to general chat, books, resources, church and homeschool, homeschool and the law, high school, and more.
If you're like me, you'll enjoy the rest of CIN as much as the homeschooling area. It seems that major ministries and publishers are signing up daily. The conversation is lively and the information is fascinating. A real bargain. To join, if you're a CompuServe member, "GO CIN" at any prompt.
Prodigy
For a long time, Prodigy was very popular among homeschooling families because of the flat-rate billing on all of the services they offered. Unfortunately, those days are gone and Prodigy's pricing has been adjusted to something more in line with the other online services and users pay as they go. A media blitz during the recent Olympic games has helped to make Prodigy one of the most recognized names among online services, and its colorful graphic interface made an appearance on the nightly "after the games" TV program where the host answered questions online.
Prodigy gets a lot of kidding because of its very strict Terms of Service (TOS). Not that any of our readers would try this, but if you use salty language online, even with asterisks or some other symbol substituted for some of the letters, your email will bounce, your posts will be deleted, and you will receive a stern warning. Too much of this funny business gets you thrown off the system. Extremely nasty insults and other forms of online warfare are also verboten. You will find out all about this when you first log on, as Prodigy puts their TOS right up in your face. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this laudable attempt to create a family environment will totally protect your children from unedifying online material, though. PHS publisher Mary Pride tried the "Parents" area and ran into a "Christian" teen complaining because, after she was discovered fornicating, now her parents won't let her date until she is 16 (!). Other unwed teen moms chimed in with their support and words of under-20 wisdom. No parent had a thing to say, which surprised her the most. On AOL or CIS, we can't imagine a message thread like that (it was entitled "To Parents") going unanswered by some fairly feisty parents. The "tolerationism" that Prodigy also fosters (and that some call "censorship") may have something to do with the lack of challenges to this young gal's outrageous complaints.
Prodigy's interface leaves much to be desired. No matter which computer type you use the service with, the interface looks like good old MS-DOS. Menu items can be chosen with the mouse or the keyboard, but features aren't always easy to figure out and, though colorful, the jagged graphics can be distracting.
I tested both the Macintosh and Windows versions of the software. The Mac version had no special features and the software promptly blocked any access to normally available Mac tools. Very frustrating not being able to save messages into my word processor or lookup information for others while I was online. The new Windows version was being highly touted online but it's not much of an improvement. They restore menu commands, for instance, but the menus often only enable you to use a key command instead of having to click the mouse. It's slow, it can be ugly, it doesn't explain itself very well and I hated it out of the gate . . . but the more I used it the more I grew to appreciate the value of the graphical format. I found myself thinking that maybe it wasn't so horrible after all; in need of a serious reworking, perhaps, but not horrible.
If GEnie faces limitations because of its underlying text-based interface, you'd think that Prodigy's bottom-up use of a graphical format would take care of the problem. What it does, however, is make Prodigy SLOW. Each screen of Prodigy's information must be sent individually as a graphic and since graphics take longer to send than text, the user ends up waiting. Once you get past the slowness, however, there are all the standard resources for homeschoolers, including message boards and reference materials like an encyclopedia and news features. Windows users can view news photos online.
Prodigy's graphical nature provides a number of interesting possibilities. You can see this in the online "Sesame Street" pre-school area. The young set can play simple educational games and read interactive stories starring favorite SS characters. This feature is very well implemented and can provide a good deal of exploratory fun/educational time. The graphical nature of Prodigy and this area in particular make Prodigy my top recommendation if you've got a preschooler at home. My three-year-old daughter was delighted with the stories and activities.
There are also a few "quiz" type programs for older kids as well. One that looked particularly interesting was a math quiz program that I couldn't use. The notice said "Square Off won't work on some computers." but didn't indicate which ones, so I spent a good deal of time trying it out before concluding that mine was one of them. Bummer. Finding out that there's a particular part of a service that you can't take advantage of is very annoying.
One very popular feature among the youngsters who helped me evaluate the program was an online version of the "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" computer geography game. It was a very simple implementation, but well done nonetheless.
The homeschool area on Prodigy is very open, but the slowness of the software and kludgy way the bulletin boards are set up makes searching for and reading messages a major chore. Despite the difficulty, however, Prodigy users still have managed to keep some lively discussions going. One user told me that she refused to use the Prodigy boards, since the ones on America Online were much easier to use; she only kept her Prodigy service because her kids liked Sesame Street so much! I'm sure Prodigy users everywhere will rejoice and pay whatever Prodigy asks for the off-line messaging feature they plan to introduce in late summer.
Content and subjects discussed on the boards are similar to the other systems, with a wide variety of user-created topics. Several Prodigy members expressed their frustrations that the religious/non-religious friction popped up so often online. One said that she avoided the homeschool area completely because of it. I didn't notice that many references to that issue except for a few message threads that were devoted to the subject. In fact, as an online veteran, I was surprised how civilly the discussion proceeded; there were few outbursts of anger and everyone seemed to be trying to keep a level head on a difficult issue.
The educational features of Prodigy are more the try-this-out type than the look-this-up sort. While online, I watched step-by-step instructions, with animated illustrations, on how to construct a crystal radio set out of a couple of lengths of wire, an empty toilet paper tube and a few other odds and ends. If that doesn't sound like a homeschooling project, I don't know what does!
Prodigy is more like a toy box than a library, and in that it's unique. Other areas to look into: NOVA, with science features and experiments; National Geographic; Twisted Tales, a Mad-Libs clone; and the GUTS trivia quiz. Prodigy also occasionally features what they call "online field trips." A recent one featured Norman Vaughn, who at age 81 set out to climb an Antarctic mountain named in his honor by Admiral Perry. Users followed his progress and had ample information about Antarctica and trip details to read and learn from.
One thing that Prodigy doesn't offer, however, are libraries as on the other services. There are no shareware libraries or useful text files, and information you read online can't be saved to your home computer.
America Online
The interface for America Online (known as AOL by insiders) is well designed and easy to use. It makes extensive use of icons in navigating through the system and is fairly friendly to newcomers. I tried out both the Windows and Macintosh versions and found them functionally identical; only the keyboard shortcuts were different. The CompuServe and AOL interfaces are the best of those I tried. However, AOL's icons are a definite advantage.
Educational endeavors get the spotlight on AOL and it takes the prize for variety in educational resources. They have the standard encyclopedia and news features, of course, but when you enter the educational areas, that's where the action starts. The Homeschool Forum is in the Parent's Information Network (keyword: PIN) area and helpful features are listed in one place.
Over 4000 messages were in the homeschool message area when I checked in, with over 900 of those being posted in the last 30 days. The software gives you an option to create new topics but only a limited number of topics can exist at once, so trying to create one is difficult-they are usually taken. Even if they are not taken, the forum host has been known to kill your topic before it starts, on the ground that few unused folders remain. This is not the policy in other AOL areas, where the creator of a new topic is given a chance to see if his or her topic generates any interest and where it's usually first come-first served when it comes to starting topics. The forum host also has the ability to kill (delete) your posts, and AOL's Terms of Service are vague enough that this power has been put to some extremely questionable uses in the past. Our own Mary Pride, for example, once had a post killed in which she made some suggestions, in response to another member's post, as to how a folder could get back on-topic. This area has a new forum host now, who seems to be getting back on the right track.
A folder in the homeschool area is set aside for the use of Christians. It gets a fair amount of use. Unlike GEnie's private area or CIN, however, outsiders are welcome to post there and Christians are welcome to post in the areas set aside for Mormons, Pagans, and the non-religious. In practice, this seems to have a watering-down effect on the posts in this area.
AOL has several useful features that homeschoolers can take advantage of. If you do unit studies, you might find the Lesson Plan library useful. If your child is tackling a subject that you're not proficient in, try the Teacher Pager to set up an online tutoring session, or attend one of the regularly scheduled tutoring chats. Or "lurk" in the NEA online area to see what the educrats are up to.
Sometimes it's just a matter of prowling around to discover interesting and useful information. In the Disney Adventures area I stumbled onto simple science experiments to do, while Kids-Net has study guides to TV programs and video tapes. There is also an area called Kids Only OnLine (KOOL for short) that's aimed at the younger crowd. An interesting feature there is something called "Hatrack River," an imaginary town where kids play different roles.
The "s" and "f" words are also forbidden on AOL, but "salty" language is not. Your best bet for protecting your children is to (1) tell them to immediately let you know if any online individual approaches them using untoward language or suggestions and (2) use the Parental Chat Controls. These can be used to "lock" your children out of some areas of the system (the general chat area being notorious for conversations ranging from flirtatious to deviant). Of course, all such nastiness is totally forbidden in the children's own areas, such as KOOL, and AOL will take action against any violators.
One of the things I consider very useful about AOL is the Internet access being developed there. On the other services, users have access to Internet e-mail only, often at an extra charge. AOL has e-mail and encourages you to use it; telling you how to get involved in newsgroups, onto mail lists, do file transfers and a number of other tricks. In addition, they've just added Gopher searches and are working on implementing other Internet features as well. For now, they only offer a sampling of the vastness of the Internet, but they're the first major service to do so.
One AOL feature I do not appreciate is not being able to collect a whole thread of messages at once. You have to click on each message, one at a time. Even GEnie lets you mark and pick up a whole thread at once. AOL should look into adopting this feature.
AOL features an abundance of other educational items, including educational presentations from the Smithsonian (a recent one was about the Dead Sea Scrolls), C-SPAN, and educational software. The Newsstand area offers online versions of many popular newspapers and magazines that can be examined for educational content. Finally, practical homeschooling has been approved for its own AOL forum, which should be up and working by October. (Keyword: PHS.) For sheer weight of educational resources, AOL wins hands down.
It's difficult to determine a "best" service of the four. When I look at AOL, the educational resources and growing Internet access are very desirable. CompuServe's off-line conferencing is great. Prodigy's graphical approach is a big plus. GEnie's Christian homeschooling area -- can't beat it. It's no wonder so many families have more than one service. My suggestion? Take advantage of the current battle for customers. Try out as many of the services as you can under free trial offers and introductory specials to see which one fits you the best in personality, services, and cost. Then cancel the ones that don't fit your sensibilities and budget.
Me? I'm keeping AOL, though running my own BBS doesn't leave me much time to wander around the bulletin boards. I'm looking forward to the day that all the best features of the four services come together in one package at a flat rate fee of ten bucks a month that allows me to connect at 14,400 baud. Then that modem squeal will put an even bigger smile on my face.
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