The time for hanging back has gone: we all need to click our way into the Net, if only because our children are already there.This section of Friday magazine, announcing learnfree.co.uk - our own Internet provider - is specially for Web novices. We know that 92 per cent of TES readers have access to a computer, and nearly two-thirds have an Internet connection, either at work or at home. But that suggests that at least one in three teachers hasn’t yet dipped even a toe into this great ocean of information.

Now you can get connected through The TES. We already have our own website which carries stories from our current issue, all our job vacancies and an archive of all the news, reviews and research findings we have published since 1994.

This week we are taking a further step by launching our own free gateway to the Web. Call us with your details and we’ll mail you a disc - you’ll be online in a few easy moves.

The advantage of going in through our gateway is that we understand education and the needs of teachers. You will get exclusive access to all sorts of goodies: an independent guide to the best educational software, training materials for governors, maths quizzes and brain teasers for primary pupils.

The Government-funded INSET on how to use new technology in the classroom will be much more effective and fun for teachers who have already explored the Web. We can guide you step by step. And as you gain confidence you can branch out and visit more distant websites which are linked to ours: you can read the school next door’s OFSTED report, see what your town is doing for the National Year of Reading or visit museums, art galleries and libraries.

If you teach modern languages, you can print out French newspaper articles; if you teach science, you can access material from the Nasa site; poetry, paintings, earthquakes, recipes,football, music, ancient buildings, wildlife - it’s all there.

Once you’ve entered this extraordinary and informative world, you’ll wonder why it took you so long. See you there.