Education
on the Internet
Number
128: 7th July, 2004
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 52,076
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
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=829
Online
Seminars
Raising
Attainment at Key Stage 4: In this seminar Dan Moorhouse discusses
how to improve student performance at GCSE. He argues persuasively
that "to raise attainment at any level the teacher and department
has to be fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the student
and any potential barriers to learning that they may face. At the
beginning of KS4 a vast array of information is available to us as
teachers and this has to be used effectively to provide us with a
firm basis upon which we can build." If
you have views on this subject, register
with the History Forum and join the debate.
News
and Articles
Private
Schools: Recent research suggests that the average cost of a private
education is £7,500 a year. This is three times what is spent
on the child receiving a state education. If they gain power the Conservative
Party have claimed that they will encourage parents to take £5,500
out of state coffers to pay for private education. The plan forbids
its use on any school with fees higher than this. It is difficult
to see how this will work. With private schools costing up to £9,000
a year and new ones needed capital to set up, few new schools would
emerge to take up the offer.
Adonis-Blair
Axis: Ted Wragg, emeritus professor of education at Exeter University,
has for a long time been a critic of the educational policies of Tony
Blair and his senior adviser Andrew Adonis. Wragg claims that: "The
latest right-wing wheeze to emanate from ABA (the Adonis-Blair Axis),
is the proposal of a two-tier schooling system. A few new swish academies
will select pupils and glow in the dark, while beneath them festers
the morass of bogstandard schools. It seems virtually identical, apart
from minor detail, to the grant-maintained school plus city technology
college system dreamed up by the Conservatives in 1988."
Education
Policy: Speaking a day before the government's five-year education
plans are unveiled, the prime minister said equity and excellence
could go hand-in-hand. Mr Blair told the Fabian Society: "In
the education strategy we publish tomorrow, our ambition is to shift
from good to excellent in the quality of education offered to the
great majority of young people in this country." Britain's education
system had always been excellent for a minority but putting those
benefits in the hands of the great majority was now in reach, he argued.
"We will not extend selection by ability, either at five or 11,"
he said. "We want parents to choose schools, not schools choose
parents." Nor would there be subsidies for parents who wanted
to send their children to private schools.
Maths
Waldo's
Maths Pages is a secondary level maths site, which uses Java (tm)
applets to demonstrate different mathematical topics. It is aimed
at Key Stage 3 (11 to 14), GCSE (14 to 16), but mostly AS/A2 Maths
and Further Maths (16 plus). Its content is 100% original and the
creation of a maths teacher (and self-taught programmer) in Kent.
The programs are used by him and others as classroom aids, and as
investigative resources for pupils individually. New material and
improvements are being added all the time, and suggestions from teachers
and pupils for future inclusion are always welcome.
Centre
for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching: The CIMT was established
at the University of Exeter in 1986. As the CIMT is a centre for research
and curriculum development in Mathematics teaching and learning it
was only a matter of time before it began to explore the possibilities
of the Internet. Jointly sponsored by Esso, British Steel, the Post
Office and Singapore Airlines, the website is being used to build
a database of resources for students and teachers. Some of the mathematics
worksheets available include those that cover topics such as Genetic
Fingerprinting, Postcodes, Time Zones, Tin Can Design, Bar Codes and
Birthdays.
English
Writers
in the USA: 1860-1960: Brief biographies of seventy-eight writers
born in the United States. This includes novelists and playwrights
such as Louisa May Alcott, Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Edward
Bellamy, Ambrose Bierce, Mary Borden, John Jay Chapman, Stephen Crane,
Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, Hamlin Garland, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair
Lewis, Jack London, Edwin Markham, Arthur Miller, Frank Norris, Clifford
Odets, Eugene O'Neill, Dorothy Parker, David Graham Phillips, John
Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Edmund Wilson and Richard Wright.
To
Kill a Mockingbird: This website on Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
was developed by Linda Taggart-Fregoso in the Schools of California
Online Resources for Educators (SCORE) Project, funded by the California
Technology Assistance Program (CTAP). The novel depicts the themes
of misunderstanding and prejudice and this unit presents an opportunity
for students to explore these concepts. This unit asks students to
consider the following questions: Why do good writers use symbolism
in their writing? Why is point of view an important technique to consider
when writing? Why is it difficult to persuade others to be just and
courageous? How do you support interpretations? What makes a good
piece of persuasive writing?
Science
Interactive
Learning Pages: John Ewart is Head of Department in IT in Milford
Haven School in South West Wales. He designed this website primarily
for teaching Science to less motivated KS4 pupils following a modular
Science course. Later he developed the site to include lessons in
ICT. The pages of the site follow a common design: a combination of
text and graphic information with multiple choice questions or cloze
exercises to assess the understanding of the information in the site.
Chemguide
is a no-frills site aimed at Chemistry students at a level equivalent
to UK advanced level (roughly ages 16 to 18). Although it is written
to cover the demands of UK A level syllabuses, it is being used successfully
worldwide by students in all sorts of other educational systems. To
help students to understand the Chemistry, topics are covered with
much greater care and space than is normally possible in textbooks,
and the language level and layout is deliberately kept as simple as
possible. The writer is an experienced teacher, ex-Head of Chemistry
at Truro School, Cornwall, UK, and the author of two Chemistry textbooks.
Music
Bob
Dylan: The songs of Bob Dylan have been used in the classroom
for many years. This website provides the lyrics of his complete catalogue.
The following could be of use to teachers in a wide variety of subjects:
Blind Willie McTell, The Death Of Emmett Till, All Along The Watchtower,
Chimes Of Freedom, George Jackson, Hurricane, John Wesley Harding,
Pity The Poor Immigrant, Lenny Bruce, Ballad Of Hollis Brown, The
Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, Blowing In The Wind, Masters Of
War, Mississippi, Oxford Town, The Times They Are A-Changing, Only
A Hobo, With God On Our Side and Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues.
Phil
Ochs Lyric Index: Phil Ochs committed suicide in 1976. In his
brief career Ochs wrote some of the best folk songs of the 20th century.
This website includes the lyrics of All Quiet On The Western Front,
Automation Song, Ballad of Medgar Evers, Ballad of Oxford (Jimmy Meredith),
Ballad of the Cuban Invasion, The Ballad of Billie Sol, Chaplain of
the War, Draft Dodger Rag, Freedom Riders, Going Down To Mississippi,
Here's to the State of Richard Nixon, Joe Hill, Love Me, I'm a Liberal,
Spanish Civil War Song, Talking Cuban Crisis, There but for Fortune,
Talking Vietnam, This Old World Is Changing Hands, You Should Have
Been Down In Mississippi and Too Many Martyrs.
Media
Studies
Carte-de-Visite
Photographs: From 1859 onwards there were millions of small studio
portrait photographs produced all over the world in a format known
as Carte-de-visite. In the UK they were discontinued from about 1905.
They were the first cheap, mass produced form of having an image of
yourself, family and friends or even famous people! The were placed
in albums made for them and now turn up in sales and are very collectable.
They show how the Victorians looked in their Sunday best! This website,
created by Roger Vaughan, contains a large section of these photographs.
American
Photographers: Biographies of 42 photographers working in the
United States between 1840 and 1980. There are also brief articles
about Pictorialism, Documentary Photography, The Camera Club, Camera
Work Magazine, Photo-Succession Group, Group f/64, Photo League, Surrealism,
Farm Security Administration, Standard Oil Project, Photojournalism,
Family of Man Exhibition, Life Magazine and Photomontage.
Modern
Languages
LinguaCentral
is a website dedicated to learners and teachers of French, Spanish
and German. Italian, Russian and Japanese are also featured. There
are hundreds of links to online language-learning material for specific
skills practice or broader language and vocabulary learning. Most
content is created by LinguaCentral but other websites are linked
from the LinguaCentral web pages. The emphasis is on purposeful and
motivating resources giving rise to real progress in the learning
of the language. Resources available are varied but all are focused
on enjoying the learning process.
Musselburgh
Modern Languages: Musselburgh Grammar School has recently launched
a website to support pupils and staff in teaching and learning. It
pulls together existing resources, together with presentation files,
internet challenges and lessons teaching staff can use directly. There
are also links to cultural resources, including newspapers, magazines
(and translation tools), webcams, photo galleries, cyber school visits.
The site also contains ideas and research articles, many of which
have been linked to from specialist sites, including the Partners
in Excellence programme in the West of Scotland.
Book
Section
Battling
Wallstreet: The Kennedy Presidency: In this intriguing and penetrating
analysis, Donald Gibson does not simply replay the standard commentaries
on the Kennedy presidency, many of which are ill-informed, even if
well-meaning. Gibson looks at what JFK himself said, wrote, and did,
contrasting that with the words and actions of his enemies - The Wall
Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and the corporate and banking magnates
themselves, who, as this book shows, truly despised the President.
The current conventional wisdom depicts Kennedy as a cautious, even
a conservative president, a Tory Democrats committed to the status
quo and to Establishment. But this book makes a compelling case to
the contrary, suggesting that President Kennedy was always willing
to do battle for his policies, even in the face of vicious attacks.
(Donald Gibson, Battling
Wallstreet, Sheridan Square Press, ISBN 1 879823 09 8)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
