From: Jim Leonhirth

A pioneer of the Internet has brought his school-related resources to the Educational CyberPlayGround, a Philadelphia-based education portal http://www.edu-cyberpg.com.

Karen Ellis, founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround, said Gleason Sackmann, who has developed school resources on the Internet since 1993, now is serving as director of community programs, for ECP http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
Community/index.html.

"Gleason is a trailblazer in regard to helping educators and the education community use the Internet effectively," Ellis said.

Sackmann serves as the moderator for the following e-mail lists:

• Net Happenings, which provides announcements about the latest Internet resources, particularly education-related resources. Sackmann founded this list in 1993 http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
  Community/NetHappenings.html.
• K12 Newsletters, which includes various newsletters about K-12 education http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
  Community/K12Newsletters.html.
• Network Newsletters, which combines in one place various e-zines http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
  Community/NetworkNewsletters.html.
• New-list, which provides the Internet with prompt notification of the creation of any mailing list on any given topic http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
  Community/New-List.html.

Sackmann also developed in 1994 the HotList of K-12 School Sites online http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
Schools/default.asp, which includes a master registry of K-12 schools, organized by state and grade level. The registry also includes sites for school districts, state and regional education organizations, state departments of education, charter schools, virtual schools, state standards and state administrators.

Sackmann has earned several awards for his Web efforts. In 1998, Sackmann received the SIG/Tel Educational Telecomputing Outstanding Service Award, and in 1996, he was rated No. 10 on the Newsweek's list of the "50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet."

A resident of Fargo, N.D., Sackmann holds a B.S. degree in science from Minot State University in North Dakota. He taught high school science for 20 years in Bottineau, N.D.

After Sackmann left teaching, he joined the SENDIT (now EduTech) project, one of the first statewide telecommunication networks dedicated to the K-12 community.

"When we first started, we were one of three statewide K-12 telecommunications networks," Sackmann said. "The other two were BigSky in Montana, and TENET in Texas."

Sackmann said the SENDIT project provided e-mail account for both teachers and students, educational resources, Web browsing using Lynx and early versions of Mosaic and Netscape.

He also worked for six years with the Internet Scout Project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Sackmann said the K-12 network projects have had an impact on all levels of education.

"If nothing else, the involvement of K-12 forces the state universities to get up to speed on the Internet, since the K-12 students were more knowledgeable than the college instructors," he said.