From South Africa to Finland, from Venezuela to Japan, The TES’s newly-launched Internet edition is already being read by a remarkably cosmopolitan audience, writes Sean Coughlan.
Within two working days of last week’s launch, more than 1,500 people had registered to use The TES Internet site. Although the majority were from Britain, the registrations included readers from 46 other countries, covering five continents and including such Times Ed bastions as Peru, South Korea, Hungary and Egypt.
The largest numbers of international readers for the on-line version of The TES have so far been from English-speaking countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. But there have also been a number of registrations from “tiger economy” countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, which have invested heavily in information technology in education.
The interactive nature of the site has also been thoroughly road-tested by these first-week users. The site includes a discussion area, the Internet Staffroom, and this was receiving contributions from teachers and lecturers within hours of the first Internet edition being published.
As The TES Internet service will be free for the first few months of this year, the number of users looks set to rise. As well as reading stories from the current edition of the paper, the first visitors to The TES site have been making use of the extra features which will be subject to a subscription fee in the spring, such as links for subject teachers, directories of education information, curriculum documents and an archive of news and reviews from back issues of The TES.
If you are already connected to the Internet and want to explore The TES Internet service, you can register and collect a free password (you’ll only have to do this once) at the site’s Internet address - http:www. tes.co.uk - where you will find more information.
