Education
on the Internet
Number
53: 15th January, 2003
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 31,025
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
Spring
Day in Europe: Each school in the EU member states or associated
countries is invited to take part in Spring Day in Europe. Participation
can be in any form: a discussion, a meeting with celebrities and experts
involved in European matters, a debate between pupils within the school
or between pupils from schools in different countries, either directly
or via the Internet - the options are endless! There are no cumbersome
procedures or financial requirements. Regions or countries wishing
to develop projects at their level are welcome to do so. So far over
1,120 schools in 28 countries have registered to join the project.
Citizenship
Education: Volunteering charity CSV, a specialist in citizenship
education, has launched a competition to encourage teachers and students
to link Citizenship and ICT. The competition encourages all secondary
school students in England to design a web-page on their Citizenship
project, and offers the chance of winning a digital camera and seeing
their work uploaded onto CSV's Citizenship website. Individuals or
groups of students can include text, images, photographs, audio or
video in their competition entries. Submissions will be judged according
to evidence of students' ability to reflect on and communicate Citizenship
projects.
Votes
are Power: Many young people are asking questions such as: Why
can't I get a drink after 11pm? Why should getting a degree leave
me £1000s in debt? Why don't we cut greenhouse gases? Should
we do more for the homeless? The UK is a democracy. You can vote and
have your say about what goes on with all sorts of issues. But could
you inspire others to vote? Why not tap into your creative side and
develop a groundbreaking piece of design to get your message across.
Enter the Votes are Power design competition and win an Apple ibook,
work experience with a leading creative agency, and the chance to
see your work used in an ad campaign and displayed at the RSA.
History
20th
Century France: The encyclopaedia is being created in sections.
So far the following sections are available: Military Leaders: 1900-1920,
France and the First World War, French Armed Forces: 1914-18, French
Politicians: 1920-1945, Military Leaders: 1920-1945, French Politicians:
1945-1970, France and the Second World War, French Armed Forces: 1939-45
and the French Resistance.
History
of the European Union: This website, History
of the European Union: Integration
Process and European Citizenship, has been produced by Juan Carlos
Ocaña, a teacher from Spain. The website focuses on the history
of the EU an the legal notion of European Citizenship. It is targeted
to upper secondary education and early university grades students.
Apart from historical information organised in a chronological way,
biographies, glossary, texts and a timeline are available.
Science
Science
and You: George Santayana is famously quoted as saying "Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This
website, created by Henry Mulder, plans to explore the history and
philosophy of science in a down-to-earth fashion. Mulder plans to
take a look at all aspects of Science with a special focus on how
many of the concepts that guide modern science came to be.
Physics
at Appleby College: A comprehensive collection of interactive
Java applets on Waves, Sound, Light, Optics and Electricity. The applets
are suitable for grades 6 to 12 science/physics students. With some
of the applets students are able to perform Virtual experiments, extract
data from these virtual experiments and input data from laboratory
experiments. Other applets are interactive demonstrations that allow
the student to manipulate some of the variables and observe the results
of these manipulations. They can be used effectively as both a teaching
and learning tool.
Citizenship
CEWC-Cymru:
The Council for Education in World Citizenship-Cymru is an educational
charity working with young people to promote understanding of the
contemporary world. It provides support for local, national and global
citizenship education in Wales. Among events organised by CEWC-Cymru
are the Wales Schools’ Debating Championships, Model United Nations
meetings, European Youth Parliaments, residential conferences and
human rights workshops. It also provides curriculum materials and
training in Welsh schools and colleges. The recent major addition
has been Citizenship Today, a teacher support pack for teaching citizenship
from Key Stages 1 to 4. While based on the Welsh Personal and Social
Education Framework, it contains lesson plans which would be relevant
to all parts of the UK.
Citizen21:
The education unit at Charter88, has produced a range of educational
materials to encourage and develop understanding of the political
institutions in the United Kingdom and how they work. Background reading,
questions for self directed study, workshop materials and any additional
resources are posted on this website and will be regularly updated.
It is aimed at people who work in schools, with youth, in the community
and the adult education sector. The core topics are: bill of rights;
voting; parliament; freedom of information; decentralisation (including
devolution); citizenship; and democracy.
Politics
Explore
Parliament: This site is hosted by the Parliamentary Education
Unit and has two main sections. Junior Parliament is designed to introduce
primary pupils to some of the history, traditions and structure of
Parliament. Explore Parliament, for secondary pupils, seeks to encourage
understanding of and participation in the political process. Interactive
games such as Quest, a quiz for primary pupils, and Act of Parliament,
an online debating chamber for 14-16 year olds, seek to encourage
pupils to find out more about Parliament. There is a wealth of information
about every aspect of Parliament in the central dataweb. The Teachers
Lobby contains guidance on using this site across the whole curriculum.
Governments
Online: Comprehensive database of governmental institutions on
the World Wide Web: parliaments, ministries, offices, law courts,
embassies, city councils, public broadcasting corporations, central
banks, multi-governmental institutions etc. Includes also political
parties. Online since June 1995. Contains more than 17000 entries
from more than 220 countries and territories as of May 2002. The country
listings note when entries were last updated and there is also a section
highlighting material that has been added to the site in the last
thirty days. This site can be accessed in English and German.
Website
Directories
Journalist's
Toolbox: This website features more than 17,500 Web sites helpful
to the media and anyone else doing research. Use the pulldown menu
or search engine to locate information from a variety of beats and
news industry related topics. The Journalist's
Toolbox E-Newsletter features search tips, new resources and other
news and notes of interest to the journalism, research, academic and
online communities.
HotBot:
Since its launch in 1996, HotBot has been named the Number One search
site on the Web in independent reviews from the top consumer-oriented
computer and personal-finance publications in the United States. HotBot
indexes every word, link, and media file on more than 160 million
Web documents and refreshes its entire database of documents every
three to four weeks. It also allows users to construct sophisticated
search queries of its index without previous knowledge of complex
search terms and methodologies. Instead, HotBot offers users a simple,
point-and-click interface, intuitive pulldown menus, and the ability
to use plain English terminology for constructing searches.
ilectric:
The ilectric info portal is an online directory and metasearch engine.
Created in September 2000 by Justin Schlecter, owner of UpsideOut
Web Services, ilectric has grown into a robust suite of research tools.
The website handles about 6,000 searches from 18,000 unique visitors
every day. The portal is 100% standards compliant with the the World
Wide Web Consortium's specifications for valid HTML and CSS to ensure
that our pages are accessible to all. We update the site almost every
day with new features and bug fixes.
Looking for a new teaching
job? Search for your ideal job at Eteach, the UK's no.1 teacher recruitment
website. Here are some of the permanent vacancies currently available
on Eteach.com: Current vacancies include: Head of History Department,
Secondary school, Yorkshire; history teacher, Secondary school, Essex;
Deputy Headship, Primary school, West Midlands. To apply, or search
for more jobs like these, visit : Eteach.com
Book
Section
Reading
Chekhov: A literary
journey into the world of Anton Chekhov, Reading Chekhov is
a beautifully written meditation of the work and life of one of Russia's
most widely read authors. In the book Janet Malcolm takes on three
roles: literary critic, biographer and journalist. Her close readings
of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov's
life and framed by an account of a recent journey she made to St.
Petersburg. Writing of Chekhov's life, Malcolm demonstrates how the
shadow of death that hovered over most of his literary career - he
became consumptive in his twenties and died in his forties - is almost
everywhere reflected in the work. She writes of his childhood, his
relationship with his family, his marriage, his travels, his early
success, his exile to Yalta - always with an eye to connecting them
to the themes and characters of the stories and plays.(Granta, ISBN
1 86207 586 7, £13.99)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
