Students Get a Hands-On Lessons About the Internet

Best friends Eric Munoz and Luis Salas, third-graders at Bell Gardens’ Suva Elementary School, walked away from their first Internet experience Tuesday with some heavy questions: How are stars born? How do rockets work?

But just ask them what was the first thing they tried to look up upon entering the touring computer classroom parked in their school playground.

“We were trying to look for the Chicago Bulls,” Eric said. But they could not find the professional basketball team’s Web site.

It wasn’t a total loss. About 400 Suva students filed through GTE Directories’ “Amazing Yellow Adventure,” a 36-foot bus designed to teach students Internet and telephone safety.

Ronald McDonald, Bell Gardens police officers and a former Harlem Globetrotter joined the event to warn kids against giving out information about themselves or their whereabouts when they converse with strangers either online or over the phone.

“As kids are getting more and more acclimated to the Internet, there’s danger out there,” said Montebello Unified school board President Thomas Calderon.

Although many students had only enough time aboard the bus to solve a computerized picture puzzle, the vehicle’s six computers linked to the Internet via satellite are intended to introduce students to computer-aided research, said Danna Bissing, regional marketing manager for GTE Directories.

The Dallas/Ft. Worth-based company specializing in telephone directories launched two buses last month on a 10-month tour across 14 cities on the East and West coasts, Bissing said. The West Coast bus will conclude its Los Angeles County stops this month before going to Seattle. It will return to Southern California in the fall.

Maggie Mejia-Carrillo, assistant superintendent of the Montebello school district, said that the introduction to the Internet will serve students well.

“The factor that’s going to distinguish the haves and have-nots in the future is going to be technology,” she said.