Education on the Internet

Number 35: 11th September 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 26,610 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

spartacus@pavilion.co.uk

News and Articles

Homework in Canada: According to a recent Ipsos-NPD report teenagers in Canada spend an average of 2.4 hours per week online conducting research for school. Girls spend an average of 2.9 hours online per week researching for school, compared to an average of 2.0 hours for boys. Around 56 percent of Canadian teenagers go online to research for science classes, while 42 percent conduct online research for social science classes and 36 percent for English projects. Geography, Modern Languages and Maths are also popular subjects that are researched online.

GSN: Global SchoolNet is a not-for-profit education organization. GSN, a developer of online content since 1984, partners with schools, communities and businesses to provide collaborative learning activities that prepare students for the workforce and help them to become responsible global citizens.

Explore the Web Competition: In eXplora, students and coaches are challenged to explore a theme together and to collaborate beyond borders. The eXplora Challenge is an Internet competition for teams of pupils in secondary education. The teams create websites that are interesting and fun for fellow pupils. Winning teams are invited to attend the eXplora Youth University Camp on the Canary Islands, in autumn 2002.

ICT to Develop Literacy and Numeracy: The University for Education (Ufi) who administer Learndirect have produced two papers in the use of ICT to develop literacy and numeracy. The first is a summary of a research project that looked into the effectiveness of using ICT to support people with literacy and numeracy learning needs. The research project, carried out by the Institute of Education, University of London on behalf of Ufi, ran from April 2000 to March 2001. The second is a guide that was produced in response to the conclusions of the research It was designed to help staff in learning centres to develop ways of working that attract and support basic skills learners to develop skills through ICT. It provides examples of current good practice from a variety of learning centres.

History

Census Online: The 1901 British census was first posted on the Internet eight months ago. Margaret Brennand, from the Public Record Office, said at the time: "A huge amount of work has gone into taking the original census forms, scanning them, creating digital images and a comprehensive index to enable people to search for more than 32 million individuals living in England and Wales in 1901." The website was so popular that the system could not cope and the service was withdrawn. Now the Public Record Office has announced the availability of a new test site that will be accessible between 9am and 7pm (Monday to Saturday). A queuing mechanism has been introduced to stagger the number of database searches. Users are allowed to spend only two hours on the site.

Donner Party Online: The Donner Party wagon train of some twenty vehicles and about 100 men, women and children, left Independence, Missouri in April 1846. Badly organized, with overloaded wagons and a late start, they struggled over the Oregon Trial to Fort Bridger, where they decided to take the little-known Hastings Cutoff route. The party was caught by early snowfalls in the Sierra Nevada mountains and forced to camp at Truckee Lake. By the time the ordeal was finally over more than half the Donner Party had perished. Tom March's excellent website provides some good ideas of how to use the Internet to study this dramatic subject in the classroom.

Peter Cooper: In 1830 Peter Cooper's Canton Iron Works in Baltimore built America's first steam locomotive. His business flourished and he established the largest blast furnace in America at Philippsburg, New Jersey. Cooper was also involved in laying the first Atlantic cable, and was president of the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company. Cooper had a social conscience and in 1875 he established the radical Greenback Party. However, his attempts to get himself elected president of the United States ended in failure. This website provides a brief overview of this amazing man.

English

Teachit Primary Competition: In a bid to develop its new Primary resources area further, Teachit is offering great prizes to Primary teachers in return for Primary English and Literacy resources. The first prize is a school site licensed version of the excellent Kar2ouche Primary Curriculum The Romans interactive educational software (worth over £270) and the second prize is a complete Oxford Spelling Kit. To enter, teachers simply need to send their resources, ideas or worksheets to Siobhain Archer, the Site Editor, by the end of this month.

Jane Austen: A comprehensive website on the life and work of Jane Austen. The site has links to annotated and illustrated e-texts versions of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey. Students can also access her minor works, poems and letters. There is also a collection of online academic articles on Austen available from the site.

Modern Languages

ZUT: Catherine Murphy as worked as a French teacher for the past ten years. In this site, you will find a list of topics for each year, and for each topic at least a couple of exercises for each skill, reading, writing and listening. A lot of these exercises can be used in conjunction with an interactive whiteboard. Although best done online, a lot of the 400 exercises can be printed out and used in the classroom.

Languages Online: German: This website includes a collection of online lessons under the headings: Grammar, Vocabulary, Read, Write, Listen, Speak, Pronunciation and Quizzes. There is also a section on culture, examining several German-speaking nations, such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Search Engines

Google: In 1937 H. G. Wells travelled around the world promoting his World Brain scheme. His plan was to create a vast repository that contained every piece of knowledge in the world. He argued that the World Brain would be freely available to everyone and would therefore eliminate the ignorance that sustained tyranny. His scheme never got off the ground but some observers have claimed that Google is on the way to becoming this World Brain. A recent report by OneStat reveals that Google now carries out 53.2 per cent of all web searches. Yahoo!, the second largest, has only 20.4 per cent. This is followed by MSN Search (9.1), Terra Lycos (3.7), AOL Search (2.9), Altavista (2.8) and Ixquick (2.2).

Google-Watch: Daniel Brandt is founder and president of Public Information Research (PIR) and programmer and webmaster for the organization's several sites including Google-Watch, a website that monitors the activities of Google. Brandt argues that Google's "crawlers" (software which creeps daily through the web to monitor and catalogue new and changing websites) are prejudiced in favour of larger and older websites. Brandt suggests that Google is now so powerful that it should be registered like a public utility company.

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