Education
on the Internet
Number
42: 30th October 2002
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
spartacus@pavilion.co.uk
News
and Articles
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.
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