Education on the Internet
Number 42: 30th October 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 28,030 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
Guidelines for Schools: Sophos has produced guidelines outlining how schools can protect themselves against virus attack. These guidelines are designed to warn pupils of the risks associated with computer viruses, as well as assisting teachers in teaching school children about computer security. These guidelines give an overview of what the different types of virus are, how they infect computers and how to effectively protect against them. The guidelines also include some suggestions for classroom activities relating to computer virus prevention.
BBC Learning is now providing a series of short online learning courses. This includes Computers and the Internet (Becoming Webwise), Design & Technology (Build-A-Bot Techlab), Gardening (How to be a Gardener), Health (First Aid Action), Modern Languages (Talk French, Deutsch Plus, Italianissimo, Spanish Steps), Nature (Blue Planet Challenge), and History (Archaeology, Family History, Local History, Wars & Conflict, Victorian Britain).
Certificate in eElearning: The Graduate Certificate in eLearning is a one year part time course of study aimed at complementing participants’ previous specialist education and training experience and to enhance knowledge and skills necessary to implement quality elearning educational programs. The course is aimed at participants wanting to undertake a practical and flexible elearning course that focuses on designing, evaluating, implementing, managing and delivering elearning educational programs in higher, vocational, and school environments. The course focuses on important issues relating to the planning of elearning programs, the development of elearning teaching strategies and pedagogical principles, and student experiences and expectations of elearning.
Latin America: eMarketer predicts that the number of Internet users in Latin America will reach 60.6 million by 2004. The research firm estimates that here will be over 33 million Internet users in the region by the end of this year, and 43.4 million by 2003. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico will account for 65 percent of the total Internet population in Latin America by 2004. According to eMarketer, with the exception of a few Caribbean islands with small populations, Costa Rica has the highest Internet penetration rates in the region at present.
Science
European Young Consumers: Teachers can encourage pupils to be more aware consumers, live a healthy lifestyle through good eating habits and understand product labels through the European Young Consumer Competition. Teams of primary or secondary school pupils and their teachers are invited to take part. It is a fun project that can fulfil learning goals in Biology, Science, Home Economics, Citizenship and Physical Education.
Robotics Education Project: NASA's Robotics Education Project is intended to raise children's interest in robotics and promote it as a possible career choice. The website highlights many applications of robots, such as space exploration, medicine, and mechanical automation. It also provides news articles, multimedia games, educational activities, and lesson plans.
WWTLearn: Interested in the environment, wildlife, habitats and sustainability? Then visit this new educational web site from The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. The website delivers a comprehensive range of National Curriculum-linked, cross-curricular materials about water, wetlands and wetland life. WWTLearn also provides lesson plans, factfiles, data sets, images and online games.
Politics
Inter-Parliamentary Union is the international organization of parliaments of sovereign states. Established in 1889 the IPU is the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue and works for peace and co-operation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy. The IPU supports the efforts of the United Nations, whose objectives it shares, and works in close cooperation with it. The IPU website has a very good section on women in parliaments including a world chronology of women's suffrage and an archive of statistical data on women in National Parliaments.
DemocracyNet is an interactive website that allows people interested in US politics to search for candidates currently running for political office. Enter your zip code to find out who's running for offices on your ballot and where the candidates stand on issues you care about. The site is sponsored by the League of Women Voters (LWV), a national organization with chapters in every state.
Our Documents is a online repository of important primary documents for studying American politics. Cosponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration, the USA Freedom Corps, and the Corporation for National and Community Service, this site currently contains the Lee Resolution (1776), Declaration of Independence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1777), Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), Original Design of the Great Seal of the United States (1782), Treaty of Paris (1783), Virginia Plan (1787), Northwest Ordinance (1787), Constitution of the United States (1787), President George Washington's First Inaugural Speech (1789), Federal Judiciary Act (1789), Bill of Rights (1791), President George Washington's Farewell Address (1796), Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), Louisiana Purchase Treaty (1803) and Treaty of Ghent (1814).
World Social Forum is an open meeting place where groups and movements engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. The WSF intends to debate alternative means to building a globalization in solidarity, which respects universal human rights and those of all men and women of all nations and the environment, and is grounded in democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.
Art
FitzWilliam Museum Online: The Fitzwilliam Museum was founded in 1816 by the bequest of the VIIth Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion to the University of Cambridge and contains magnificent collections of works of art and antiquities of national and international importance. These include antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Roman and Romano-Egyptian, Western Asiatic and Cypriot Art; applied arts, including sculpture, furniture, clocks and rugs; coins and medals; illuminated manuscripts and printed books; paintings, drawings and prints. The Fitzwilliam Museum has so far provided online access to information on 10% of its collections.
American Indian Paintings: In 1960 Mrs. Avery, an Arizona native now living in Texas, purchased a painting by Navajo artist Beatien Yazz. She became hooked. By 1999 her world-class collection of original works by American Indian artists grew to over 500 paintings. With the help of the Arizona State Museum she has created an online exhibition of her collection. The website also contains stories about her collecting methods of the last forty years and the relationships or connections she built with the artists.
Media Studies
Journal of Theory, Technology and Culture: Online journal published weekly. Recent articles include Language and Politics: Agonistic Discourse in West Wing (Samuel A. Chambers), Remediating Democracy: The Public Intellectual, Hypertext and the West Wing (Patrick Finn), Digital Democracy: When Culture Becomes News (Samuel A. Chambers and Patrick Finn), Culture Pessimism and Rock Criticism (Mike Grimshaw), Hyper-Heidegger (Arthur Krocker), Beyond Postmodernism? (John Armitage), Pleasure Island (Kenneth Chen), Sentencing Learners to Life (Cliff Falk), HTML as Needlepoint (Michael Dartnel) and Digital Ideology (Arthur and Marilouise Kroker).
Sociology
Social Science Information Gateway is a freely available Internet service which aims to provide a trusted source of selected, high quality Internet information for students, academics, researchers and practitioners in the social sciences, business and law. It offers users the chance to read descriptions of resources available over the Internet and to access those resources directly. The Catalogue points to thousands of resources, and each one has been selected and described by a librarian or academic. The catalogue is browsable or searchable by subject area.
Mead Project: Compiled and created by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop at the Brock University Department of Sociology in Canada, the Mead Project contains an array of primary documents by George Herbert Mead and his contemporaries. Along with a collection of seminal papers and articles written by Mead from 1881 to 1938, the site also contains a variety of supplementary scholarship produced by William James and John Dewey.
Internet Services
Education Index Web: This website, created by Hobsons, an international college and career publisher, claims to provides a guide to "the most useful education-related sites on the Web." The website can be browsed by subject or by lifestage, from prenatal and infant all the way to college and continuing education. Since it went online in September 1996, the Education Index has grown to more than 3,000 sites in 66 different categories.
GoToMyPC: Expertcity is a leading provider of Web-based remote-access and customer-support technologies. Expertcity's remote-access solution, GoToMyPC™, enables both consumers and enterprises to remotely access and work on their PCs from any Internet location. GoToMyPC is a consumer service that gives individuals unlimited access to their computers from any Web browser anywhere and enables them to conveniently and securely access email, files, programs and network resources from home or the road.
