Mediacy Articles - Volume 18, No. 1
The 1996 Canadian Internet Handbook
By Jim Carroll and Rick Broadhead
Prentice Hall Canada, 1995, $24.95
ISBN 0-13-505017-0
We reviewed the 1995 version of this book in last year’s Mediacy issue devoted mostly to the Internet. Weighing in at close to 900 pages and about the size of a metropolitan telephone directory, this is hardly a handbook but, it’s a phenomenal Canadian best-seller so why mess with success and change the title now?
It’s becoming increasingly clear to media literacy teachers that the Internet is an important new medium and that the same attention needs to be paid to it that we do to television, film and advertising. The pages of Mediacy increasingly reflect this fact. Not only do we highlight the Internet in our content but the medium has become an important tool in the physical assembly of each issue of this newsletter. Media teachers have been as adept at taking advantage of the Internet as any professional group with an on-line presence. Much of the day-to-day business of the AML is conducted over the Net through e-mail and web pages.
The Canadian Internet Handbook is an indispensable tool for teachers attempting to come to terms with the Internet. Not only does it provide a valuable Canadian perspective missing from the plethora of US books on the topic, but the authors have also included mention, if not resolution, of many of the important social problems that teachers need to deal with when confronting Internet issues in the classroom.
The Handbook is not a technical manual. What instructions and screen shots there are reflect a Windows bias but readers who are looking for step-by-step instructions are better off obtaining a platform-specific manual such as the Engst books reviewed here last year.
Considering that U.S. Internet tomes of this heft routinely sell for more than $50, the Canadian Internet Handbook is a relative bargain at $24.95. An Educational Edition with a variety of teacher support material has also been published though we can’t imagine who would want to have class sets of a book that dates so quickly.