The First of September, Moscow, June 11, 2002, 040, page 1

At the beginning of June, Russian information agency RosBusinessConsulting announced the launch of a noticeable campaign: it provided an opportunity to all schools in Russia to have an Internet site. This implied not only the development of the web site but also the possibility of qualified work with it as well as using the school's e-mail with equipment and technical opportunities from RBC.

This campaign stipulates providing a 50M disk space for a web site to each school, unlimited number of e-mail addresses for teachers and students, support of databases and 24-hour technical support from RBC specialists. The management of school sites is expected to be entrusted to teachers who studied at the courses of the Federation of Internet Education, or schoolchildren. By the way, it is children who developed the majority of currently existing school web sites.

A catalogue with Internet sites of schools that will participate in the project is going to be created. A user of this catalogue will be able to search for a web site of a concrete school by city or keyword. In addition, all sites will be registered in search engines, thus users of this system will be able to search for the school's site by keyword.

The service will be provided within standard regulations, a document with a status of a legal binding agreement that describes provided services and rules of work. It also regulates relations between the provider of services and the user.

Some of you may wonder, "What does a school need an Internet site for?" There are enough problems already! Below is the opinion of RBC General Director Yury Rovensky. "Tell me, how a school can tell thousands of people about itself, its teachers and students? How can a school maintain effective bilateral relations with students, teachers and parents? How will it unite graduates, let alone the fact that more and more parents want to have some information about a school before choosing one for their children? The simplest way to achieve all these goals is the Internet."

Well, you are welcome to submit your applications. If your school needs an Internet site, please visit www.5ballov.ru.

By Vasily Krayukhin