WALLINGFORD - A local technology-based classroom has stepped up its use of the Internet, filling an online archive with sites that can be viewed for generations to come.
Students in Paul Bogush's social studies class at Moran Middle School were already pretty Web savvy. The eighth-grade class uses the Internet for homework assignments, videos and conferences with professionals and students the world over.
But for the last six months, it has been one of 10 middle- and high-school classrooms from across the country to participate in a national project coordinated by the Library of Congress; Internet Archive, a digital library of Web sites; and the California Digital Library.
The students are just about done with chronicling their "worlds" online. Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are all pretty important in the lives of many 13- and 14-year-olds, but these are just three of the 50 sites the class has captured.
"This is about the kids and what we're about," said 14-year-old Ashley Rivera.
The online "time capsules" are preserved by a complex database online at www.archive-it.org.
It takes about an hour to upload anywhere from one to four sites, called "seeds" for the project's purpose.
The database then takes images to preserve the chosen sites. Depending on how often a site's content changes, the system can "crawl" or capture it anywhere from one time to every day for a specific period of time.
"Most of the decisions being made about what gets archived have been made by adults," said Cheryl Lederle, educational resources specialist at the Library of Congress. "Student users are arguably one of the largest users of the Internet proportionately, and their voices weren't being heard."
Lederle has held video conferencing sessions with classes to get the ball rolling and instruct them on how to use the database.
"The Web sites that you put in, people can research 20 years from now," said Kevin Ellis, 14.
Some class favorites include the sites for Bath & Body Works, Borders, Hulu and L.L. Bean. They're broken into three categories chosen by the students: entertainment, fashion and trends, and social networking. Altogether, the classroom's archive includes some 17 million images on 14 million different Web pages.
The benefits of their work might not be felt for generations to come, when 21st century adolescent culture and society are being researched. However, the project has served as an informative psychological tool to some degree.
"I was surprised at how much I use YouTube," said 14-year-old C.J. Murray, whereas Kevin was just surprised at how much content was online.
According to Lederle, the variety in the types of sites chosen by the 10 classrooms has more to do with age than geography, meaning students in the same age groups are likely to preserve similar sites.
"We have this image of kids just going on the Internet and cruising all these sites," said Bogush, who applied for the opportunity with only one night's notice. The project has taught him that his students visit a select number of sites frequently, as opposed to browsing everything that's out there.
The student archive is not being widely used yet, "but by the end of this year we'll have a total of 11 partnerships," Lederle said. That's "a pretty robust offering, and then we can step back and see what its value is to researchers."
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