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A Teacher's
Guide To USENET
What's
All the Hype?
USENET is a world wide distributed discussion system that is organized
like the classified ads found at the back of newspapers. Within USENET
you will read articles that are organized under categories. Each article
is created by an individual or company that has something to say. While
USENET is a world wide discussion forum, it was not created to
be an advertisement medium.
USENET is a lot like the Internet: It is not exclusively owned
by one person or group. Rather, it is a collection of computers all over
the world sharing information electronically. When you post an article
on USENET, it circulates around the world. After a time it 'expires'
and is then removed from circulation. While it is circulating, anyone
can read your article and respond to it. Responses may take the form of
a follow-up article or an e-mail sent to you. Articles usually contain
only text but may also contain programs, pictures, documents, or any other
type of computer file.
The people in USENET are able to exchange articles when they are
with one or more universally recognized labels called "newsgroups"
(or "groups") for short. As of September 1998, USENET is made up
of about 40,000 different categories of articles. They range over every
imaginable topic - sports, employment opportunities, computer software,
TV shows, hobbies, international news, trade information, politics, personals,
and much more. As diverse as the topics are, USENET also encompasses
government agencies, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers
and a lot more.
To be able to participate in USENET newsgroups, you should have
a screen-oriented news interface called a newsreader. A newsreader is
somewhat similar to an e-mail client. There are a number of newsreaders
available such as FreeAgent and Microsoft News. You should
also ask your ISP for the details of your specific setup. Although newsreaders
may differ, there are still some standard features are common to most
newsreaders that provide the capability to read, reply to, discard, post
and process articles based on user-definable patterns.
Some newsreaders also provide the capability of blocking (or killing)
the newsgroup postings by topic or poster (the person doing the posting).
This feature is very helpful when dealing with undesirable article topics
or certain individuals that the reader finds offensive in some way.
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