Education on the Internet
Number 124: 9th June, 2004
Introduction
Introduction
Education on the Internet is published by Spartacus Educational every week. The newsletter includes news, reviews of websites and articles on using ICT in the classroom. Members of the mailing list are invited to submit information for inclusion in future newsletters. In this way we hope to create a community of people involved in using the Internet in education. Currently there are 52,210 subscribers to the newsletter.
All reviews are added to our web directory. There are sections on Internet Services, Online Seminars, Primary Education, English, Mathematics, Science, Modern Languages, History, Geography, Design & Technology, Business Studies, Special Needs, Media Studies, ICT, Sociology, Music, Politics, Economics, Photography, Art & Design, Theatre Studies, Physical Education and Religious Studies.
John Simkin
Online Seminars
The Student as Teacher: Research carried out by the US National Learning Lab that suggests that the most effective learning strategy is when students teach other students. The author supports this view and provides evidence from his own teaching. Most contributors to the seminar have so far agreed with this proposition and have provided further examples of how this can be achieved. If you have views on this subject, register with the History Forum and join the debate.
News and Articles
AusTeachers: Donna Eaves has created an online staffroom for teachers. At AusTeachers you will find a plethora of information relating to a wide range of educational issues divided between the following easy to understand categories. The School (general educational issues); The Classroom (advice, tips and information about general classroom issues); The Planning Folder (practical ideas for your teaching); The Library (a catalogue educational resources); The Newsletter (details about competitions, school events Australia-wide and the AusTeachers site); The Staffroom (a Discussion Forum for teachers to discuss a huge range of educational issues). The AusTeachers website is a great opportunity to meet other teachers and to get involved in the sharing of experiences and knowledge with teachers at all levels of education.
E-University: In February 2000, David Blunkett, announced the establishment of UKeU, Britain's first e-university. The government spent £62m on the project. However, it was a commercial venture as the plan was to run and deliver e-learning to students around the world. A £20m contract was given to Sun Microsystems to build an e-learning platform for UKeU. This decision was questioned by experts in this field who pointed out that you could buy off-the-shelf technology at a fraction of the price. The Sun Microsystems platform was so bad that only 215 of the university's 900 students used it. This week it was announced that the Higher Education Funding Council for England is currently dismantling UKeU, the company set up to run the project and is seeking to sell its assets.
Curriculum Online: Last year the Department for Education and Skills spent £2.4m on the Curriculum Online website. Research shows that despite this spending, the website is still unpopular with teachers. The government has therefore decided to pay Flow Interactive to give it a makeover. There are now subject-specific home pages, which include news and features. Resources have also been divided into more hierarchies relating to topics. The website allows you to search through 1000s of multimedia resources. It is still a mess and it is very surprising to discover that it is on the short-list for the Government Computing/BT Syntegra Awards for Innovation.
History
World History: This website includes narrative on trends from pre-history to the 21st century - trends in religion, attitude, technology, philosophy and political organization. It includes ninety text maps. The site has a section of book reviews to supplement narrative. The author tries to tell a story while presenting the positions of various sides of conflicts with accuracy, leaving his commentaries for a third section of his site. Since this site went online in 1997 it has benefited from much scrutiny. Errors have been found and corrected. Pages have been rewritten, and the author is keen on continuing the struggle for accuracy and realistic descriptions. He has used primary sources, but, as have others who write broad sweeps of history, he has drawn from the works of numerous historians who have devoted their professional lives to a more narrow focus of study. And he aims at avoiding distortion through omission.
Revolutionary Players: This project, supported by the New Opportunities Fund focusing on the history of the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands in Britain between the years 1700 and 1830. The region became internationally significant for achievements in science, industry, art and culture. The website contains images of many resources from museums, archives end libraries representing the history of the period. There are four main ways of accessing this material: Time, Place, People and Theme. You can also read Articles on historical subjects, enter the Digital Library of primary sources, explore a Gallery of images and create your own Album of items from the site.
Sports Education
Olympic Games Lessons: In 2004 the Olympic Games will return to their birth place, Athens, Greece. The aim of this Easynet website is to provide you with suggested activities and background information to assist teachers in planning schemes of work to study the Olympic Movement in your school. This information can provide a focus for cross-curricular Olympic activities. The level of participation may vary in each school depending on the age range, structure and the length of time available. If time is limited you can choose one activity from the different subject areas.
Olympic Games Project: The History Department of the European Virtual School is launching an Olympic Games Oral Project. The plan is to start threads on the International Education Forum where people can post their recollections of previous Olympic Games. It is hoped that we will be able to persuade former competitors to post their thoughts as well. The second part of this project will involve people posting their impressions of the 2004 Olympic Games. This would make a good project for students with a desire to become a sports journalist. If you want to join this project, register your interest with the International Education Forum.
Politics
Memories of Communism: Only 14 years ago, in 1989, Romanian people reversed the communist power. During the discussion with her students, in 2000, Florina Serbu discovered that "the reality of the past is unknown by them, worse, they even can't think about it! Their parents, with their daily problems, forget the bad aspects of those times, and sometimes they have the tendency to remember only the good part of the communist era. I believe that it is our duty not to leave them to forget those times! Otherwise we risk to live them again!" Florina Serbu got her students to interview their relatives about daily life during communism. The material is in Romanian and English.
UK Electoral System: This Russel Tarr activity is based around the question: "What sort of electoral system should the UK have?" The students are taken through three systems: Constituency System, Proportional Representation and a hybrid system drawing upon both the constituency and the PR models. Each system is analyzed and the students are asked thought-provoking questions. There is also a worksheet that goes with this activity.
Special Needs
Interactive Learning: Bristol University's Graduate School of Education is carrying out an investigation into how new technologies can improve teaching and learning. Some of the research focused on year 7 and 8 boys with a range of social communication difficulties including dyslexia, attention deficit and hyperactive disorder and behaviour-related problems. The full report will be published later this year but their preliminary findings are encouraging.
Special Needs London: This event provides the ideal forum for teachers, deputies, head teachers and SEN specialists to source the most effective curriculum, management and SEN resources for schools across London and the South East. It takes place at National Hall, Olympia (30th September - 2nd October 2004) and includes more than 70 informative seminars from leading education experts.
Music
FARNE: Folk Archive Resource North East (FARNE) is home of Northumbrian music online. From here you can access 4,000 songs, tunes, sound recordings and photographs from across North East England, bringing the musical heritage of the region alive. Sections include Learn, a beginners guide to the music, instruments and dance traditions of the region and Listening Post where you can hear and read about Northumbria's musician.
Music for Teachers: The Music for Teachers website is being developed to provide practical support for the design of Music Schemes of Work to match the requirements of the revised National Curriculum in England. Clear teaching objectives are suggested to provide a series of progressive 'steps' within the seven 'elements' of music and these are applied from Key Stage 1 to the end of Key Stage 3. This attempts to address the difficult issues of skills progression over the whole of the 3 key stages. Many other files and support materials, including extensive databases of songs and teaching ideas, are also available to download and the entire series of support materials can be made available on CD/ROM."
ICT
E-Learning Credits: This month sees £100m worth of e-learning credits being made available to schools. However, the Department for Education and Skills admitted last week that there was still £75m unclaimed from the 2003-04 budget. Any credits which are not used will be taken back by the government in August. Eric Spear, the former president of the National Association of Head Teachers says: "Of course they are not being used, there's a limit to the amount you can spend on software. We're approaching saturation point."
Strategic Leadership of ICT: Headteachers throughout England have the opportunity to register for the Strategic Leadership of ICT (SLICT) programme which will be running in the autumn term. Developed jointly by Becta and the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), The Strategic Leadership of ICT programme (SLICT) is a targeted intervention programme aimed at assisting headteachers to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to take a strategic lead of ICT in their schools. In February 2003, the Secretary of State for Education announced the national rollout of the SLICT programme to provide up to 10,000 places by 2006.
Magazine Section
Lobster 47: The Summer 2004 edition of Lobster has just been published. Articles include Halliburton: Winning the Brown and Root Way (Colin Challen), Terrorism, Anti-Semitism and Dissent (Tom Easton), Vote-Fixing USA (Alfred Mendes), The GMB: Our Friends in the North-East (John Elliot), Iraq and American PR (Corinne Souza), John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee: JFK and Vietnam (Robin Ramsay), The CIA and The Paris Review (Richard Cummings), Enduring Freedom (Mike Small) and Radio Enoch (Terry Hanstock).
