Title: World Wide Web Resources for Counseling Children and Adolescents with Disabilities.
Abstract: The World Wide Web (Web) is the multimedia part of the Internet. Once accessed, a counselor can view information in the form of text, graphics, sounds, video, and animated icons. A distinctive feature is the breadth and depth of culturally rich information, which one can instantaneously access from anywhere around the globe. Also, rapidly changing data can be updated within minutes thus allowing counselors to retrieve information that is highly current. Until recently, the Web was mostly useful among academicians, scientists, and business people as a way to share and coordinate information, communicate, and conduct transactions. However, the current proliferation of Web content in the areas of human resources, psychology, counseling, and mental health (for example, see Grohol, 1997), has now rendered the Web a valuable resource for counselors. School counselors can be better informed, with practical knowledge and techniques via the repertoire of such materials as scholarly journals, resource information, program descriptions, and articles. And, as the cost of getting on-line becomes more affordable, counselors may find that gaining Web access is steadily more realistic. This article offers a brief overview for finding relevant and useful resources for school counselors concerning working with children and adolescents with disabilities. Then, the results of a systematic WWWsearch for this topic are presented. How Does the web Work? Web sites are dynamic documents that usually contain links to other related documents in the form of selected words or symbols (called hypertext links). For example, when a new word or concept is introduced in a document, hypertext makes it possible for a user to point to that word or symbol and retrieve another related document that gives more details about the original reference. The second document may also contain links to other documents providing further details, and so on. The user need not know where the referenced document is, and there is no need to type a command to display it, browse it, or to find the right paragraph (Guide to Network Resource Tools, 1993). Hypertext links may also lead a user to graphics, photos, data, maps, movie clips, sound clips, or any kind of information that can be digitized. Viewing this rich array of information can occur from any computer in the world that has the requisite hardware, software, and Internet connection. How Do I Gain Access to the Meb? To view a Web resource, a computer user must have at least four things: A computer with a modem A telephone connection The proper software An Internet service provider (ISP) Computers can be either IBM or Macintosh compatible and must include a modem-a device that allows one's computer to communicate with other computers over telephone lines. The software needed to properly view the Web is known as a browser. The most popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer, which are both free to educators and available for both IBM- and Macintosh-compatible computers. Finally, to view the Web, a user must have Internet access, which is a service available either nationally (e.g., America Online or Compuserv) or locally. Often, an Internet service provider will provide a user with software tailored to gaining access to the Web once the user subscribes to the service. In this case, a separate browser would not be necessary (for a more detailed, yet counselor-friendly, tutorial about the Web, see (http: / / www.lib.berkeley.edu / TeachingLib / Guides / Internet / FindInfo.html). Which Web Sites Were Included in the Results? The number of pages available on the Web has been estimated to be between 30 million and 80 million. So, how then, might a school counselor seek and find sites that are relevant and useful for a given topic in a reasonable amount of time? There are typically three ways to find useful information on the Web, each having advantages and disadvantages. …
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 7
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