Education
on the Internet
Number
46: 27th November 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 29,745
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
Association
of Teacher Websites (ATW): How often have you visited an "educational"
web site, only to find an apparently random jumble of pages that bear
no relation to your subject, teaching or learning? The ATW is an association
of websites created by the real experts - teachers. The ATW helps
its members share ideas and work together. It provides a single portal,
which is a guarantee of quality for pupils, teachers and parents.
It does not charge its members for any services, and contributors
share any organizational tasks. The ATW currently has 88 approved
sites covering all curriculum areas and key stages.
eLearning
Awards: European Schoolnet's prestigious eLearning Awards were
presented for the third time at a prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden
on 21 November 2002. Nineteen winning projects were picked out from
more than 700 entries, and invited to present their projects to high-level
experts from Ministries of Education all over the world and private
companies. Winners received cash prizes or equipment for their schools.
The eLearning Awards were launched as part of eSchola, an event to
bring together schools all over Europe.
Simon's
Raising Achievement Website: Produced by Simon Midgley, the aim
of this website is to show how students' educational achievements
may be increased. It does this both by linking to research, in the
UK and around the world, on strategies which may help to raise achievement
and by providing practical examples of teaching approaches and resources
which may help educators do this more efficiently - and enjoyably!
In particular, the site focuses on the emancipatory power of ICT -
looking equally at theoretical and practical issues. Additionally,
there is practical help and ideas for teachers and teaching assistants
who are supporting dyslexic and other students who learn differently.
To show how all of the ideas and strategies fit together in an actual
school situation, details are included of the Raising Achievement
project at one school, Rhyddings High in East Lancashire.
ERCs:
The European Resource Centres for Schools and Colleges (ERCs) provide
teachers and students with information on issues relating to Europe
and support the development of the European dimension in the curriculum.
The ERCs offer resources, many of them free, which can be used to
introduce a valuable European and international dimension into the
classroom. The inclusion of the European dimension in the classroom
can broaden pupils' horizons and gives them an understanding of what
it means to be a part of the European Union.
Internet
Services
Quia
Web is one of the world's most popular educational technology
websites. It pioneered the "create-your-own" concept, giving
teachers the ability to create customized educational software online,
built around their own course materials and made available to students
over the Web. The idea proved so popular that more than 300,000 teachers
have registered to use the service. Quia provides templates for creating
14 different types of online activities, including flashcards, matching,
concentration (memory), word search, hangman, jumbled words, ordered
list, picture perfect, pop-ups, challenge board, scavenger hunt, rags
to riches (a quiz-show style trivia game), columns, and cloze exercises.
Quia also includes a directory of thousands of online activities and
quizzes in more than 50 subject areas.
Hot
Potatoes is a suite of programs published by Victoria University
and Half-Baked Software. Teachers use the Hot Potatoes programs to
create educational materials, especially exercises and tests. The
Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create
interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, crossword, matching/ordering,
jumbled-sentence and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot
Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for non-profit
educational users who make their pages available on the web.
Question
Tools: Marking questions by hand is a time-consuming, expensive
and sometimes inaccurate process. Question Tools will automatically
mark tests and exams for you. Students and trainees can receive immediate
and accurate feedback on their performance. Question Tools is a software
suite that allows anyone with a Windows PC to create on-line tests
and exams. The suite comprises: SimpleSet (a free and easy to use
question editor), Exam (a free and secure alternative to delivering
tests in a web browser), Editor (a professional’s tool for creating
and editing questions), Results Analyser (for dealing with group results)
and Server (for delivering tests over intranets and the internet).
History
African
American Publications is committed to providing students and adult
researchers with accurate, authoritative, and accessible information
on a wide variety of ethnic and ethno-religious groups in the United
States and Canada. In addition to Americans of African heritage, African
American Publications also offers a variety of print reference sets
and complementary biographical online resources covering Hispanics,
Asian Americans, Native Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, Americans
of European descent, and notable American men and women. The website
includes nearly 1,200 authoritative biographies of notable African
American men and women.
Gale
Black History: Gale is a business unit of the Thomson Learning
division of The Thomson Corporation, a world leader in e-research
and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.
To celebrate Black History Month it has provided a free resource site.
Within this site, teachers and students can read biographies of significant
African-American individuals, follow a timeline of events that helped
shape African-American heritage and enjoy activities taken from the
Black History Month Resource Book.
Sources
for Building History: Sources for Building History is Jean Manco's
guide to researching historic buildings in the British Isles. It explains
how to find related manuscripts, maps and images, while pointing out
some of the pitfalls of such sources. Sources for specific building
types are given together with information on the type. A section of
the website covers ecclesiastical sources. Subject bibliographies
include dating, fabric, gazetteers, local history and materials. There
are annotated links to relevant archives held by record offices, local
libraries, museums, galleries and universities and online catalogues.
The site also includes contextual material providing an introduction
to town and village development.
Mathematics
Algebra
Project: Founded by Civil Rights activist Robert P. Moses in the
1980's, the Algebra Project has developed curricular materials, trained
teachers & trainers of teachers, provided ongoing professional
development support, and community involvement activities to schools
seeking to achieve a systemic change in mathematics education. The
Algebra Project builds local networks of students, parents, teachers,
administrators, community activists and professionals into policy
groups that take responsibility and ownership for implementing the
project. The Algebra Project presently serves over 40,000 school students
at 22 urban and rural sites in 13 states across the South, the West
Coast, the Midwest and the Northeast. In the words of Robert P. Moses:"
"The main goal
of the Algebra Project is to impact the struggle for citizenship and
equality by assisting students in inner city and rural areas to achieve
mathematics literacy. Higher order thinking and problem solving skills
are necessary for entry into the economic mainstream. Without these
skills children will be tracked into an economic underclass."
MathsNet
Modules: An online ASA2 mathematics course at MathsNet. This course
covers most modules in the current A Level scheme (P1 to P6, S1 to
S3 and M1). M2 and M3 are still in development. The course includes
over 600 pages of interactive explanations of concepts using a wide
range of resources either collected from web sites round the world
or home-grown. Included are: interactive displays of graphs, interactive
algebra, a glossary of key terms, exam advice, a discussion forum
and a unit devoted to background knowledge. There are also over 200
interactive A level examination questions based on recent papers from
the various exam boards. Each exam question has a randomized element
within it so that in effect each is a limitless supply of similar
questions on a specific theme. There are also collections of questions
organised into papers complete with online stopwatch.
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.
Education
Using PowerPoint: This website aims to make high quality education
PowerPoint slideshows available to teachers (as a classroom tool)
and students (as a revision tool). It features almost complete coverage
of the GCSE Science double award course and the GCSE Physic course,
including many diagrammatic explanations. Guaranteed to save teachers
a lot of time!
Doc
Brown's Chemistry Clinic is a non-commercial 'nuts and bolts'
constantly evolving and expanding revision web site for chemistry.
The material is written by Dr W P Brown, Head of Chemistry, Whitby
Community College, England. There is a wide range of revision notes
and tests to support any UK based GCSE (USA grades 9-10) syllabus
containing chemistry. AS/A2 (USA grades 11-12) revision material includes
notes and tests on the Structure of Organic Compounds and sets of
volumetric analysis calculations. Some KS3 (USA grades 6-8) material
is now available.
Modern
Languages
Bonjour:
This award-winning website offers a variety of French resources and
online activities. Originally set up as a school website, Bonjour
is now used in hundreds of schools worldwide. Students can access
the site during lesson time as well as at home. Endorsed by the National
Curriculum, the NGfL, The Guardian, The BBC, Channel 4 and even the
Cabinet Office, Bonjour constitutes a quality resource for all learners
and teachers of French. Its downloadable resources include a host
of worksheets that complement the online activities.
YourDictionary
provides the most comprehensive and authoritative portal for language
and language-related products and services on the web with more than
1800 dictionaries covering 250 languages. More than 1,500,000 people
a month visit YDC. YourDictionary's immediate predecessor, A Web of
Online Dictionaries, was launched in 1995 by Dr. Robert Beard at Bucknell
University, as a research tool for the world's linguistic community.
ActiLingua
Academy: This website offers visitors not only extensive information
on learning German in Vienna, including all there is to know about
our wide range of courses, accommodation facilities, and cultural
programme, but also sample exercises, a guide to Vienna, travel information
and many other interesting topics.
Book
Section
Radical
Equations: Bob Moses went to Mississippi in 1961, a young man,
drawn by the sit-ins. By 1964, his work and others' to organize Black
voters in Mississippi had famously transformed the political power
of entire communities. Nearly forty years later, Moses is back in
Mississippi, organizing again, this time as teacher and founder of
the national math literacy program called the Algebra Project. In
this book of personal narrative and impassioned argument, Moses brings
his civil rights experience to bear on education today. In a technical
era when the most pressing civil rights issue is economic access,
Moses sees a crisis in math literacy in poor communities as urgent
as the crisis of political access in Mississippi in 1961. For Moses,
the solution requires - as it did in the 1960s - organizing people,
community by community, school by school. (Bob Moses,
Beacon Press, £10.00)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
