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• Teach with computers rather than teaching about computers. Focus on using the computer for a curriculum purpose. Emphasize why they there and what they are supposed to do at the site rather than how to get there. The Technology Interim Program Of Studies does not require that elementary students are able to use search techniques.
  
• Double up kids on computers. This makes half the demand on the bandwidth. Students also have an opportunity to discuss and collaborate as they work.
  
• Use a variety of instructional grouping strategies. It is not necessary for every student in the class to visit the same site simultaneously, with the same specific learning objectives. Have several groups with different objectives visiting different sites. 
   
• Use a proxy server and remember to preview sites before class. Sites not previewed are not stored in the cache and will always take much longer to download.
   
• Avoid high bandwidth sites. "Funschool.com" is full of enjoyable activities. However, it is only useful for use on a few computers at one time. This site downloads its own viewer every time you try to access a different activity and this is really slow when many people are trying to do it simultaneously.
   
• Make sure nobody in the building is using real audio or real video. Streaming applications that run in real time are great bandwidth hogs. They will steal the bandwidth from all other users on the network. So use the regular radio not the Internet for listening to radio programs. 
   
• Don't download large files from your site. Large downloads will also hog the bandwidth during the download period. Remember downloading very large files can take hours to complete, and may slow down all other Internet uses at your site.
   
• Schedule classes that want to use the Internet in the morning. Afternoons and evenings are always slower. This is true all over the Internet, not just for schools.
   
• Visit the site  you want your class to see ahead of class (or use shared folders)  this puts the web site into the computer's cache and makes it available during class even when the lines are busy. This avoids having students surfing around and wasting time.
   
• Don't surf around with young children - go directly to the required site. Leading students through the process of clicking on a number of links on subsequent pages is a very time consuming process even if the students do not click on the wrong links and get lost. (And there is a high likelihood of that happening too.)

There are several ways to take students directly to a required site:

• Locate the required site. Drag the link icon to the desktop to create a shortcut. Have students surf from the shortcut.

• Put URLs into an HTML document and access from a shared server. Jr. High schools all have a server.   You can learn about creating your own HTML documents using the Web-development Inservice Manual Level 1. It is available at:  http://128.37.3.27/tech/inservice/manuals/webpg1.pdf
  (Note: only available within District buildings)
   
• FTP links to the school's home page (also in the Web-development Level 1 manual).
   
• Put links in a shared folder on a peer-to-peer network (Peer-to-peer Networking – Inservice can be provided at the school upon request)
   
• Open an html document containing the links in Netscape and browse from there. 
• type Links into a word document 
• save as an HTML document on to a disk 
• distribute the disks to the students 
• have children open the file using Netscape 
• browse from there.
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• It is not required that Elementary students either learn to search nor type in a given URL. If they type a URL  incorrectly it is possible for them to land in an inappropriate site by mistake. Use shared folders instead!
   
10. Turn off graphics. This is the last suggestion because although it will speed up the process of loading Internet pages it also eliminates most of the graphic functions of the WWW. Use this one as a last resort.