Usenet

Quite a bit of the schoolwork that students do these days is expected to be done using online resources. In fact, teachers have, by and large, lost their aversion to people using the Internet as a research tool. This makes sense, given that the Internet is the largest collection of information ever constructed. USENET can also play a very useful role in helping students with schoolwork. One of the things you'll want to keep in mind about the USENET system is that its very nature makes it quite conducive to academic pursuits.

Text and Just Text

You can read USENET newsgroups in completely text format. This means that you don't have to worry about the distractions that come along with most of the Internet when you're trying to do research.

In addition to the fact that USENET is based in a text format, it's also full of experts. If you are using Internet forums as a way to reach out and ask people questions for a research project, you're probably going to have a very difficult time of it.

First, there are so many different Internet forums that it's difficult to choose one that's actually worthwhile. Second, many of the people posting on these forums will not actually be experts and, in many cases, there won't be any experts around to correct them when they give bad information. USENET is much different.

USENET has groups that are very easy to find on the system and that are participated in by the vast majority of USENET users. You will not, for example, have to choose between a whole slew of different newsgroups about astronomy if you have a simple astronomy question. In fact, the only choice you will have will be which newsgroup is most specific to your question.

References and Resources

You will very likely find that many of the people on USENET will be happy to point you to good resources that you can use for your research. This means that you don't have to search around the Internet trying to find good pages or other resources to get information from. Consider, for example, that you can ask a working biologist what book they would recommend you look at for a project on cell biology. Having people who can point you toward reliable and academically sound resources is much more useful than having people who will give you their own opinion on matters, even if they don't know what they're talking about.

USENET can be a great resource for students. If you are getting it for a young person, remember that the usual rules about adult supervision while using the Internet do apply. For older students and college students, getting on the USENET system can be one of the best ways to get information. If you know you have a big paper or research project coming up and you need to know where to start, asking on a newsgroup that is specific to the topic of your research can be tremendously helpful.

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