Education on the Internet
Number 127: 30th 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 51,820 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
Learning Styles: All teachers are aware of the fact that students learn in a variety of different ways, and that even the same information given to a class by the teacher is received by the students in a number of different ways. Therefore all teachers need to ensure that they develop their lessons to tap into the varied learning styles of their students. This seminar sets out a number of approaches for doing this and explains how to ensure that the lessons you prepare are fit for the students in your school. Many different methods of ensuring success in planning are suggested. The seminar is aimed at those at the start of their teaching careers looking for a way to tackle this crucial and complex challenge, as well as at more experienced teachers looking for ideas or inspiration on how to plan to meet the needs of the full range of their students by using a diversity of teaching and learning styles. If you have views on this subject, register with the History Forum and join the debate.
News and Articles
UK Web Archiving Consortium: There is currently no legislation obliging people to submit copies of websites to legal deposit libraries. Six organizations (British Library, National Libraries of Wales and Scotland, the National Archive, the Wellcome Trust and the Joint Information Systems Committee) have established the UK Web Archiving Consortium. The objective is to store about 6,000 websites for posterity. Mark Middleton, who is managing the project, claims: "We will be identifying sites that have political, scientific, social or artistic interest for the nation and for future generations."
MindWeavers: The idea for MindWeavers started in the middle of 1996 following the discovery that many children with a specific language impairment (SLI) had problems in perceiving simple sounds, particularly sounds that changed rapidly in time. Subsequent research has shown that children with a variety of learning problems, including SLI, autism, dyslexia, and attention deficit disorder, have identifiable physiological signs of hearing problems in the central auditory pathway of the brain. However, other research showed that intense auditory training could help, or even cure these problems. MindWeavers received investment from the University of Oxford and from Oxford Innovation Ltd and is based at the Oxford Centre for Innovation in Mill Street, Oxford.
Right to Choose: The education "Right to Choose" package is the latest Conservative policy to be launched as the party tries to take on Labour over public services in the run-up to the next election. The plan would give every school grant-maintained status, making them able to control their own budgets and choose to select pupils by ability. Unveiling his party's plans, Michael Howard called for good schools to be freed from the "strait-jacket" of central control. He said Conservative policy would be based on: parents' right to choose a school; giving teachers real freedom; and opening up education to new providers. There are already more school places than there are pupils but the Tories want to raise the surplus further by creating 550,000-600,000 extra places.
English
RymeZone: Students can use Ryme Zone to help write poetry and song lyrics. To use RhymeZone, type a word into the search box, select a function in the dropdown list next to the box, and then hit "Go get it!" to view the results. Here are the different functions that you can select from that dropdown list: Rhymes: (words that rhyme with the word you typed in); Synonyms (words that are the same or similar in meaning to the word you typed in). Also included are Antonyms, Definitions and Homophones.
Rhymer: Find rhymes without stressing, sweating, or fretting. Rhymer does the work for you. Find the rhymes you need to complete your masterpiece. With over 93,000 words, Rhymer takes the storm out of brainstorming so you can spend your time creating. Great for songwriters, poets, advertisers, teachers and kids! Windows or Macintosh compatible. Rhymer appears on Word's Tools menu and lets you insert rhyming words directly into your document. If you have a different word processor, you can still run the program by itself and use the Windows clipboard to copy and paste words into your document.
Politics
War on Terrorism: "In March 2003, Americans thrilled to televised scenes of U.S. forces moving into Iraq. Well-spoken soldiers, modern equipment, and embedded reporters suggested a sense of purpose, competence, and courage that resonated across the country. But today, 14 months later, the mission is in shambles, scarred by rising Iraqi popular discontent, continued attacks against US forces, infiltration of foreign fighters, mounting civil strife, and no credible sense of direction." These are the views of General Wesley Clark, one of the America’s most distinguished retired military officers. During his thirty-three years of service in the United States Army, he held numerous staff and command positions, served in Vietnam, and rose to the rank of 4-star general and NATO Supreme Allied Commander.
Michael Moore: One of the most controversial and provocative films of the year, Fahrenheit 9/11 is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's searing examination of the Bush administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events of 9/11. He looks at how - and why - Bush and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saudi connection to 9/11, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and Saudi money had funded Al Qaeda. It is in this atmosphere of confusion, suspicion and dread that the Bush Administration makes its headlong rush towards war in Iraq. Fahrenheit 9/11 takes us inside that war to tell the stories we haven't heard, illustrating the awful human cost to US soldiers and their families. To find out more visit Michael Moore's website. It includes a discussion of the facts included in Fahrenheit 9/11.
Business Studies
Tutor2u is a portal site for students of Economics, Business Studies and Politics. The objective of Geoff Riley is to build a comprehensive, user friendly study portal, and to contribute to the study and examination success of all our users. At the heart of Tutor2u lies the Discussion Forums. A widening range of bulletin-board style discussion groups that provide users with a unique opportunity to interact with each other. In just 16 months, the Discussion Forums have attracted over 2,000 registered users and some 19,000 posts. Tutor2u also includes a range of study materials. The comprehensive collection of revision notes covers the key areas of economics and politics. Tutor2u maintains one of the Web's most comprehensive collections of reviewed study links, carefully categorised and described to help users find the data and support they need.
Business Education on the Internet: Bized is based at Bristol University and is a dedicated business economics information gateway for students, teachers and lecturers. Sections include Company Facts where top companies answer questions and offer case studies to help students with their coursework. BP and Unilever have provided material and Virgin Atlantic and the Meat and Livestock Commission have also promised to join the scheme. Another feature of the website is Extel Data where students can look at key features of the accounts of 500 major companies. These companies can be compared by using the Company Report Profiler. This excellent site also has a Tutor Support area where teachers can obtain classroom support materials to help them use business information on the Internet.
ICT
Visual Thesaurus: The Visual Thesaurus takes a unique, and remarkably beautiful, approach to presenting the results of a word lookup. Discover and learn from nearly 140,000 words, meanings and relationships Through its emphasis on exploration and vocabulary building, the Visual Thesaurus can improve reading, writing and communication skills. Type in a word in the text box to the upper left of this window, click "look it up," and you'll be rewarded with an interactive map showing the meaning of your word. If you'd like unlimited access to the Visual Thesaurus, you will need to subscribe to the Online Edition, or buy the Desktop Edition.
Dialectizer: Samuel Stoddard's website allows you to convert English text to any of several comic dialects. The Dialectizer takes text or other web pages and instantly creates parodies of them! Try it out by selecting a dialect, then entering a URL or English text below. Options include Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, or Hacker. The translation is done via a huge series of search-and-replace operations. The translation programs do not analyze sentence structure or keep track of parts of speech. They merely look for certain sequences of characters and replace them with other sequences. The search strings are sometimes whole words, sometimes parts of words, or sometimes more than one word. The most complex are Cockney and Redneck, which have between 600 and 900 search strings.
Primary Education
Phonmena: A simple computer program that teaches children to distinguish between sounds can dramatically boost their listening skills. It can allow them to progress by the equivalent of two years in just a few weeks, the game's creator claims. The game, called Phonomena, was devised by David Moore of the University of Oxford, UK, as an aid for children with language problems, but he says his latest trials also show that it can help any child. Other experts, however, are reserving judgement until independent tests are carried out. Phonomena is designed to improve children's ability to distinguish between different phonemes, the basic sounds that form the building blocks of language. Up to a fifth of all children are thought to have problems hearing the differences between some sounds, says Moore, who heads the UK Medical Research Council's Institute of Hearing Research.
Mighty Jungulator: Futurelab, the research centre based in Bristol, works with partners on projects that put prototype ICT packages. It does not develop commercial products. Instead, it attempts to test the educational potential of new technologies. For example, they have recently worked with Nathan Hughes, a professional sound and animation expert, to help children from Bristol's Luckwell primary school produce an animated advent calendar. The project used a prototype 3D animating program called Virtual Puppeteers alongside the Mighty Jungulation music manipulation tool.
Internet Services
Alexa: This website allows you to discover details about any website. Type in the URL and it will tell you the site's world ranking, how many page impressions the website gets, total number of users, and the length of time visitors stay on the site. It also provides a traffic history graph of the site. Another useful feature is that you can compare the records of any two sites. You can also provide reviews of websites (placed on the Amazon site).
Webmonkey: This website has been teaching people how to build websites of their own since 1996. If you intend to create a website, then this is the right place to visit. Information is organised under Authoring (HTML Basics, Tables, Frames, Browsers, Tools, Stylesheets, DHTML, XML); Design (Site Building, Graphics, Fonts); Multimedia (Audio/MP3, Shockwave/Flash, Video, Animation); Programming (JavaScript, Java, ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, Perl/CGI); Backend (Databases, Apache/XSSI, Unix, Security, Networks, Protocols, Jobs).
Book Section
Encounters With Communism: This memoir by perhaps its last surviving eyewitness casts new light on communist penetration of the Federal Government in 1930-50 and on the tides of pro-Soviet subversion which overwhelmed Cuba and menaced Mexico and Brazil. Written in a clear narrative style, Nathaniel Weyl's engrossing account describes the shock waves on the American Intelligentsia caused by the Alger Hiss espionage case and a decade later, by the Cuban crisis. Involved in cold war activities, Weyl enjoyed the company of such Latin American presidents as Lazaro Cardenas of Mexico and Fulgenio Batista of Cuba. (Xlibris, ISBN 1 4134 0747 1, $17.84)
