Education
on the Internet
Number
55: 29th 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 31,930
subscribers to the newsletter.
All
reviews are added to our web
directory. There are sections on Internet
Services,
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
Professional
Development: The DfES is supporting continuing professional development
(CPD) by offering £500 to help teachers keep their skills and
subject knowledge up to date. How you spend it is up to you: classroom
observation, course fees, work shadowing, visiting other schools,
travel to key sites, funding supply cover while you pursue your development
activity. You can claim the bursary in both your fourth and fifth
years of teaching and spend it on any work-related development opportunity.
Comenius:
Comenius School Projects are joint, cross-curricular initiatives set
up between at least three schools or colleges across at least three
countries. They give pupils, students and staff the chance to work
directly with those in other countries on topics of common interest.
The projects focus on the joint work carried out in the classroom
between the different sets of pupils and students. Information and
Communication Technology often plays a key role in the projects and
can be an ideal means of developing and exchanging work and materials
as well as maintaining the momentum and personal contacts of the collaboration.
Comenius School Projects are not about creating extra work in an already
packed curriculum, but rather taking work which is already happening
in the curriculum and placing it in the context of a European project.
Successful applicants receive a standard grant of up to €2000
for a co-ordinating school and up to €1500 for a partner school.
This is to cover the general costs of being involved in the project.
An additional grant is available
on top of this to contribute towards mobility costs within the project.
This enables between four and six teachers and between two and four
pupils to attend planning or evaluation meetings during each year
of the project.
Research
Scholarship Programme: Each year 1000 scholarships at up to £2,500
each are available to serving classroom teachers to engage in supported,
school focussed research. The scholarships enable teachers to develop
their professional knowledge, understanding and confidence and to
enhance their professional practice. They will also enable and encourage
the sharing of effective practice and professional knowledge within
the teacher’s school and across the wider educational community.
The application period
for this year runs from 6 January 2003 to 28 February 2003. The scholarships
will be available to teachers from September 2003 enabling them to
complete their research in the academic year 2003/4.
History
SchoolHistory
Games: The games section of SchoolHistory offers a great way for
teachers to help students test their knowledge and understanding without
even realising it. Answer ten questions correctly to force a teacher
to walk the plank, get questions correct to try and beat a famous
goalkeeper, get fifteen questions correct in a row to fling your teacher
away. All these games have recently been improved and developed so
it is now even easier to use knowledge to try and shoot fairground
ducks or guess historical terminology to save Henry VIII from being
hanged. Every game has the facility to create your own.
Old
Operating Theatre Museum: The Operating Theatre was built in 1822
in the old Herb Garret of St Thomas's Hospital. While the Garret has
a charming old world atmosphere of oak beams and bundles of herbs,
the Theatre itself is a shocking reminder of the harsh reality of
life before modern science and technology. Britain's oldest surviving
Operating Theatre has been restored with much original furniture,
including a 19th Century operating table. This is an innovative site
that gives you a 360 Panoramic Tour of the Operating Theatre and the
Herb Garret.
English
Stufun:
Studies need not be boring. It can be interesting and students can
enjoy learning. This is the motto of Stufun. The first phase of Stufun
included definitions of the grammatical terms, questions in pictorial
forms, quizzes and exercises which would encourage students to think.
To make it more interesting, it has introduced eight cartoon characters
who are a part of the Stufun family. The second phase of Stufun includes
Gictionary (Online Picture Dictionary), Similar Sounding Words and
Interactive Exercises.
Guide
to Grammar and Style: A collection of articles on grammar and
style by Jack Lynch. The entries are of two types: specific articles
on usage, and more general articles on style. The specific articles
cover such mechanical things as when to use a semicolon and what a
dangling participle is; the general articles discuss ways to make
"proper" writing even better. The specific articles can
be further divided into two classes: (1) grammatical rules and matters
of house style, matters rather of precedent than of taste; and (2)
more subjective suggestions for making your writing clearer, more
forceful, and more graceful. The specific articles are intended for
quick reference, such as when you have to find out whether which or
that is appropriate.
Science
School
Science: This website has been produced by Industry Supports Education
(ISE). ISE was founded in the late 1980s and has produced printed
publications for schools since then. The aim is to provide information
about the science learnt in schools and how it is applied in industry
and research. All the resources are written by experienced teacher
authors. All the electronic resources have a similar layout and work
in the same way. They include an interactive glossary, interactive
diagrams with roll overs, some quick questions and a find facility.
David
Peat: This is the personal web site of the writer and physicist
Dr. F. David Peat. It contains a large number of essays on physics,
Jungian psychology, art, economics, creativity, the ideas of David
Bohm, the world view of Native America and Gentle Action. The site
also contains transcripts of interviews with scientists, artists and
composers such as Sir Michael Tippett and Anthony Gormley, along with
some sound clips.
Art
Artist
Toolkit: Artists use visual elements and principles like line,
colour and shape as tools to build works of art. On this imaginative
website you can learn about these concepts in a variety of ways. This
includes watching animated movies demonstrating the elements and principles.
You can also watch professional artists Ta-Coumba Aiken and Judy Onofrio
create original compositions to see how artists use the visual elements
and principles.
Art
Educate: Educate's
art section complements the QCA Primary Schemes for Work for Art.
A full unit of work is provided: weekly lesson plans, worksheets,
interactive resources and assessment. Topics include printing patterns,
collecting natural lines, drawing around shapes, experimenting with
textures by making clay tiles, imaginative painting, looking at textures,
looking at colour and simple paper collage.
Web
Services
Hoaxbusters:
Interspersed among the junk mail and spam that fills our Internet
e-mail boxes are dire warnings about devastating new viruses, Trojans
that eat the heart out of your system, and malicious software that
can steal the computer right off your desk. Added to that are messages
about free money, children in trouble, and other items designed to
grab you and get you to forward the message to everyone you know.
Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While hoaxes
do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are
still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where
they exist. At CIAC, we find that we spend much more time de-bunking
hoaxes than handling real virus and Trojan incidents. These pages
describe some of the warnings, offers, and pleas for help that are
filling our mailboxes, clogging our mailservers, and that generally
do not have any basis in fact.
Purportal:
Internet hoaxes and chain letters are e-mail messages written with
one purpose; to be sent to everyone you know. The messages they contain
are usually untrue. A few of the sympathy messages do describe a real
situation but that situation was resolved years ago so the message
is not valid and has not been valid for many years. Hoax messages
try to get you to pass them on to everyone you know using several
different methods of social engineering. Most of the hoax messages
play on your need to help other people. Who wouldn't want to warn
their friends about some terrible virus that is destroying people's
systems? Or, how could you not want to help this poor little girl
who is about to die from cancer? This website enables you to check
whether a message is a hoax or not.
Advertising
Times
Literary Supplement: Subscribe online today and enjoy a reduced
subscription rate, free access to the TLS Subscriber Archive. Subscribers
can search every issue of the paper back to October 1994.
Scholarship
Experts: Fill
out the form on the website and with some basic information about
yourself to see how many current scholarships you are potentially
eligible for. Once the nine-step profile is complete, you can see
how many scholarships match your profile and then decide whether or
not to subscribe to the time-saving Scholarship Experts service.
Teacher
Created Materials: Teacher Created Materials is an educational
publishing company founded in 1982 by Rachelle Cracchiolo and Mary
Dupuy Smith, two classroom teachers. All the products available on
the website are "created by teachers for teachers and parents."
You can search by item number, title, keyword, topic, subject area,
or age/grade.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
