Education on the Internet
Number 21: 7th March 2002
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 18,574 subscribers to the newsletter.
All reviews are added to our web directory. There are sections on Primary Education, English, Mathematics, Science, Modern Languages, History, Geography, Design & Technology, Business Studies, Media Studies, ICT, Sociology, Music, Politics, Economics, Photography, Art & Design, Theatre Studies, Physical Education and Religious Studies.
John Simkin
WebQuest: This site, created at San Diego State University by Bernie Dodge, offers teachers and students examples, with explanations, of how to use, select, and analyze information found on the Internet for teaching any subject at any age. WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented approach that supports thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
eSchoolnet: European Schoolnet is an international partnership of 23 European Ministries of Education developing learning for schools, teachers and pupils across Europe. The portal provides insight into the use of ICT (information and communications technology) in Europe for policy-makers and education professionals through its resources on curriculum, e-learning, practical ideas, online courses and its collaborative work-spaces.
Statistics for Education has launched a new web bookshop to provide teachers, lecturers and other customers with easy access to a selection of the most useful statistics and related publications. The aim is to provide a one-stop shop for data from different national, international and business organisations. The Statistics for Education Bookshop offers a carefully selected list of useful publications for data users within schools, colleges and universities.
Web Directories
Topmarks is a mine of information for teachers, parents and pupils alike. The search engine features only the best educational resources carefully selected by teachers. It has a keyword search option as well as the facility to browse by age group and/or subject. Topmarks prides itself on keeping 'dead' links to a minimum through regular checks of featured sites. The Teachers' Area provides opportunity for Internet interaction with other schools both in the UK and further afield. Practitioners can also use the Teachers' Forum to share ideas. The Parents' Area provides advice and information on preparing children for school to give them the best start, together with a useful selection of sites to help make sense of educational jargon. The site is clearly laid out and is easy to navigate, enabling children and those not so familiar with the World Wide Web to use the Internet effectively, especially as a homework helper.
Schoolzone: The Schoolzone website is based around an educational search engine designed to help you find good material on the internet. Set up by parents and teachers in 1996 there is no charge for usage and content is arranged into three areas: students, teachers and parents. The Schoolzone site indexes and has in searchable format: 40,000 UK teacher reviewed educational resources; educational events all around the UK; schools database; school suppliers database; software reviews; links to on line games, free downloads and shareware; homework helpers; revision guides; educational news; exam boards; fundraising ideas and competition listings.
English
Wired for Books: Read, listen, watch: these are the options for visitors to the website, Wired for Books. Using streaming media to deliver sound and video, the folks at the Ohio University Telecommunications Center are trying to get people, both young and old, excited about books. The offerings range from scholarly discussions to children's stories, from Shakespeare to Anne Rice. In-house audio productions of Macbeth and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland attract the audio book lovers, as do CBS Radio's famous author interviews, conducted by Don Swaim from the 1970s to the 1990s. The site also provides a virtual space for Ohio University writers and scholars. Notable local authors include Terry Anderson reading his poems from The Den of Lions, written while he was held hostage in Beirut during Lebanon's bloody civil war. Sometimes, special visitors to the university, such as Antonya Nelson, (In the Land of Men) stop by to record a story.
INKENT: Gareth Thomas teaches secondary English at the Archbishop's School in Canterbury. The inkentENGLISH website began in 1997 as an English teachers' links site, but since the advent of a number of good sites catering for English links, the site has evolved into a practical platform for his own teaching. It contains material to support lessons, homework, and e-texts for current work. The site is under constant revision and by the end of August 2002 it will contain all his Schemes of Work for English planned out for the school year.
ProQuest Literature: This subscription service website features over 106,000 fully searchable plays, poems and prose works. These are presented alongside thousands of secondary resources including reviews, articles, reference works, video clips and contextual images. The service also contains a growing range of teaching resources including a series of GCSE schemes of work.
Art
JMW Turner Archive: In 1856, nearly five years after Turner's death, his estate was settled by a decree in which the works found in his studio that were considered to be by his own hand were accepted by the nation as the 'Turner Bequest'. This comprises nearly 300 oil paintings and around 30,000 sketches and watercolours (including 300 sketchbooks). Turner left instructions that they had to be kept together in a special gallery. It was never built and although an extension was added to Tate Britain to house the collection, it could only display a fraction of it. However, after a 150 year wait, the entire Turner bequest has now gone online at the Tate gallery website.
Hieronymous Bosch: The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam have created an adventure game on the life and works of the painter Hieronymous Bosch. The website, which won a Euro-Prix 2001 in December, also includes sections on Bosch's Works, Bosch's History and Bosch's Influence.
Design & Technology
IEEE Virtual Museum: This website is premised on the belief that examining what was increases our understanding of what is. It explores the global social impact of electrical and information sciences and technologies and demonstrates the relevance of engineering and engineers to society. Designed for educators, pre-college students, and the general public, the virtual museum debuted with two exhibits. The first, Socket to Me! How Electricity Came to Be examines the early history of electricity and how it has been used in fields such as communications, computing, laser technology, and medicine. The second, The Beat Goes On: How Sounds are Recorded and Played explores sound recording from the early days of the phonograph to digital recording and distribution. Exhibits feature interactive features and animations, audio and video clips, and images of artifacts and historical social events. Three more exhibits are scheduled for release by third quarter 2002. These will explore the different applications of microwaves, the works of Thomas Edison, and contributions women have made to electrical and information technologies. A teacher section is currently in development and will provide educators with instructional classroom materials.
Design and Technology Site: This is a site for teachers and pupils of Design and Technology and provides a range of information sheets. It covers aspects of technology such as; the design process, basic electronics, gears, cams, moments of force, computer control, graphics techniques, technology and cultures, vocational education, PCBs, keywords, pic-microcontrollers, basic CNC work and more. One of the main aspects is the design process section, which guides pupils and teachers through folder work aimed at GCSE success in Systems and Control, Resistant Materials and Graphic Products.
Science
ChemNet: The ChemNet website is a portal and resource site for the UK's email discussion list for chemistry teachers primarily on issues concerning A-level and GCSE teaching. It presently links 400 school chemistry departments. The website is sponsored by Cambridge Software (producers of the industry standard chemical structure software, ChemDraw), and is split into teaching areas, focusing on the use of the Internet and ICT in teaching Chemistry. Thus there are links to Periodic Tables, Chemical Databases and databooks, as well as free software members have recommended. The ChemNet email discussion forum was set up by Keith Wilkinson in 1997 from Winchester College. The forum offers support, ideas, reviews and is a non-profit group run for and by enthusiastic chemistry teachers. ChemNet has also produced downloadable freeware, notably the Solutions Assistant, a calculator written for teachers and technicians to assist compute the mass of compounds needed to make up standard solutions.
A Level Biology: This site by Mark Rothery is aimed primarily at AS and A2 level biology students. It contains comprehensive notes that cover the whole specification that are well illustrated interactive past paper questions with answers, keypoint summaries, word documents of handouts, galleries of practicals and dissections, a discussion forum and links to high quality biology websites.
Geography
Scalloway Geography: The author of the site, Danny Mc Neill, is a Geography teacher at Scalloway Junior High School, Shetland. His website is designed to help revision for the Scottish Qualifications Authority exam, Standard Grade Geography. Students revising for GCSE Geography should also find much of the content helpful. It is divided into 13 sections - Physical Landscapes, Weather, Climate, Physical Environment, Land Use, Settlements, Farming, Industry, Population, International Relations, Trade Aid and Self Help and a unit on Revision. Each section has a number of short pages of text and diagrams, followed by a mixture of interactive exercises. These encourage the student to think and learn rather than just read. Past paper questions are arranged by section which allow students to see the levels required in the actual exam. Recent additions are mind maps that can be clicked and printed.
Bishop Heber Geography: Graham Russell designed Bishop Heber Geography Department's website to support students in all years who are studying Geography. It is essentially a 'gateway' site, pointing them to 'good Geography' on the web. Pages are organised into Key Stages, and there is a 'Help with Homework' page. Students are encouraged to access links to various websites to support work they are doing.
Religious Studies
Fundamentals of Buddhism: The Fundamentals of Buddhism has been produced by BuddhaNet, an organisation based in Sydney, Australia. The creators explain that this website is the "result of a vision to link up with the growing world-wide culture of people committed to the Buddha's teachings and lifestyle, as an on-line cyber sangha". It provides information on twelve areas of Buddhist teaching and covers the life of Buddha, the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, Karma, rebirth, dependent origination, the three universal characteristics and the five aggregates.
Sikhism: Sandeep Singh Bar began this impressive website in October 1994 after discovering there were no websites about Sikhism. He has produced a wonderful resource for the religion's 20 million followers and all those interested in Sikhism. One of the features of the website is the downloadable audio files of all the daily Sikh prayers. Other categories include: a Glossary, the Sikh Alphabet, Sikh Names and Reading List. The Essay section contains articles on specific aspects of Sikhism. For example, one essay explains the background to why smoking has been banned for followers of Sikhism since the 1780s.
GCSE RE: This website is a resource for all teachers and students of Religious Education. Divided in two main sections the site covers both content and coursework assistance. The coursework section has guidance on essay writing and coursework writing as well as help pages on common coursework topics as a growing number of question and answer pages from questions that students have e-mailed. The Revision section contains notes, sample questions and tests on: Buddhism, Christianity Islam, Judaism, Mark's Gospel, Roman Catholicism and Christian Perspectives.
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