Van Nuys : High School Stakes Its Place on the Web

They set out last spring with a dream, a proposal to drive their campus onto the information superhighway. Six months later, the dream is a reality--a World Wide Web home page featuring the best of Van Nuys High School.

At the click of a mouse, users from around the world can read the student newspaper, browse a history of the community and glimpse satellite photos of Southern California.

“It brings you a lot closer to areas that are geographically far away,” said Jason Novak, 15, one of several students who helped create the ambitious cyberspace project.

The group originally planned to create a computer network based at the school but realized after a few months that they couldn’t raise the thousands of dollars required to operate it. Instead, they turned to the Web, an almost limitless archive of text, pictures and sounds--and the fastest-growing portion of the Internet.

The best part is, it doesn’t cost them a dime.

“We don’t have to pay for the space,” said Vladimir Estrin, 17. Located at https://coke.physics.ucla.edu/laptag/VanNuys.dir/vnhs.html, the site is part of an effort by a group of Southern California physics teachers to make educational resources available online.

Bob Coutts, the students’ informal advisor, is pleased that they’ve taken up the challenge to share their school with the world.

For Coutts, the Internet is already revolutionizing education, offering him an opportunity to present up-to-the-minute data instead of relying on years-old textbooks.

For the students, it’s transforming the way they communicate.

Vladimir, a recent emigre from Minsk, Russia, occasionally chats with an uncle in St. Petersburg via e-mail--correspondence that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

“It makes the impossible possible,” he said.