Education on the Internet
Number 128: 7th July, 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 52,076 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
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)
