Education on the Internet
Number 53: 15th January, 2003
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 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
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)
