Features

f you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

LinkAge 2000 is a web site created to provide students (ages 12-18) from around the world with the opportunity to interactively learn about aging and older adults. In addition, LinkAge 2000 serves as a resource for teachers and educators who want to incor porate the study of aging into the curriculum. LinkAge 2000's goals are threefold: to acquaint students with the science of geriatrics; to familiarize students and teachers with the major issues in gerontology; and to convey the social and cultural aspect s of aging and growing old. Geriatrics is the branch of medicine dealing with the problems and diseases of old age and aging. Gerontology is the study of aging and the problems of the aged. Although the content focus of LinkAge 2000 is on aging, the educational goals are much broader. Visitors to this site will learn to think: asking questions and developing hypotheses; examining and comparing diverse ideas and experiences; collecting, orga nizing and interpreting data. One of the main focuses of this site is maintaining an international scope. Keep in mind that while the problems and, more importantly, the opportunities of the rapidly aging population vary from country to country, the issues are very human. Therefore, it is essential that as you experience LinkAge 2000 you keep an open mind and feel free to contribute your ideas. LinkAge 2000 uses the Internet in a unique and exciting way. LinkAge 2000 is a particularly valuable resource for teachers who wish to integrate the study of aging into the classroom, students researching topics in geronotology or geriatrics, and educator s interested in students' knowledge about aging and how aging is taught in the classroom. Teachers may wish to start by exploring the section Teacher Resources for ideas on how to incorporate prominent issues in the aging field into the curriculum. Students may wish to start exploring this site by reading the CyberTour: Frequently Asked Question. For a visual overview of what this site has to offer, or to quickly reference a particular area of the web page, check out the site map. The web development team of LinkAge 2000 is committed to making this web site accessible to persons with disabilities. LinkAge 2000 uses ALT-TEXT for every image, RealAudio accompaniment for those with vision impairment, descriptive links and a high-cont rast color scheme. To access the RealAudio feature, you must either have a browser with built-in support for RealAudio 2.0 or download the RealAudio player. Simply click on the RealAudio balloon to have the page rea d out loud. Most of the static content, that is pages which do not change over time, is located in the Aging CyberTour. Completing the Frequently Asked Questions section of the CyberTour takes about 30 minutes and provides an overview o f the major issues in geriatrics, gerontology, and social policy for the aging. For those interested in a more anecdotal approach to learning about aging, the Treasury section contains interviews, stories, quotes and biographies of older adults who have lived through great changes during their lifetime. T here are stories on a great number of topics ranging from the civil rights movement in the United States to the end of Communism in Poland. Students are invited to interview friends and relatives and add their stories to the database. Please take the time to fill out an important Survey about your contact with and views on the elderly. With the data collected, students can create a graph or statistical analysis comparing up to three different variabl es (responses to questions). All survey responses are completely anonymous. SimAge 2000 is an enjoyable Java-based game which examines the underlying importance of the graying of a population. Students act as the mayor of a fictional town in which policy decisions, the state of the economy and scientific r esearch all contribute to the size and quality of life of a population. Finally, the InfoDesk is a powerful, yet easy-to-use utility for finding the information you need. The InfoDesk is not simply a search engine. Rather, it is a tool that can be used to pinpoint information from finding a suppo rt group to phone numbers for national organizations to aging-related links around the web. The InfoDesk can also be used to browse the contents of this site. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of different sections, try filling out the survey, signing the Guest Book and then taking the CyberTour.