Education
on the Internet
Number
63: 26th March, 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 34,435
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
Spring
Day 2003: On Friday March 21, 2003, 5501 schools from all European
countries, and sometimes beyond, dedicated the day to Europe and its
future. They did it after months of pedagogical preparations and driven
by the conviction that this was a unique opportunity to make the voice
of young Europeans heard. Presidents, Ministers, European Commissioners,
Members of the European Convention, Members of the European Parliament,
Members of national parliaments, regional and local politicians went
to schools and answered questions from very motivated young Europeans.
Spring Day 2003 is a landmark in European education, never have so
many teachers, pupils and politicians cooperated around a common goal
with such strength and motivation in a school environment.
Did
U Know has been developed by National Museums and Galleries on
Merseyside and has been funded through the New Opportunities Fund.
The website features interactive pages about all manner of topics
- from portraits to Liverpool docks, from sunbeams to local history.
The idea is that anyone can try out the website's games, exercise
their brain cells and have fun all at the same time! It's ideal for
new users of the web too; with simple language and explanations it
will give everyone a chance to explore some fantastic objects in Liverpool's
museums regardless of where they live or whether they've ever visited
museums.
Cyberwar:
The U.S. military has reportedly developed impressive offensive cyberwar
capabilities, including the ability to use microwave or other electronic
impulses to disrupt or destroy electronic components. The goal of
a cyber attack might be not mere disruption - but destruction. A cyber
attack may go after DNS servers and spoof official government sites,
as a propaganda mechanism. It may take the form of the mythic HERF
(High Energy Radio Frequency) guns, or microwave bombs, or truly malicious
polymorphic viruses or worms designed to destroy networks. Conventional
defenses may not prevent such attacks - although good backup and disaster
recovery practices may minimize damage. Is a cyber attack an act of
war? Is cyber espionage likewise an act in violation of international
law? These are some of the questions dealt with by Mark Rasch of SecurityFocus
Online.
History
Domesday
Project: The BBC Domesday Project was a landmark multimedia resource
which was produced to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original
Domesday book. School children and researchers from across the country
collected together a massive amount of material which was recorded
on two special Video Discs. The BBC Domesday was fantastically innovative
and it was organized on a scale which has not been seen since. Unfortunately,
the Video Discs were rendered almost unreadable when the hardware
needed to play them became obsolete. Camileon, a joint project between
universities in Michigan & Leeds, is currently involved in rescuing
this material by developing an emulator that runs BBC Domesday on
a modern computer.
Flight-History
is dedicated to developing an extensive online archive of aviation
history. The archives currently focus on the pre-jet era. In time
Flight-History will extend the archive to the jet era and space. Recent
stories that have been added to the archive include The Gipsy Engine;
The Birth of a National Air Force; Bishop vs The Red Baron; The Victoria
Cross Flight, The Flying Tigers in China; Miles Aircraft Company;
History of the WACO Aircraft Company; The USS Macon; The Men on the
Flying Trapeze and Crash.
Rose
Pastor Stokes: Near the end of May 1918, federal prosecutors tried
and a jury convicted Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes for violating the
Espionage Act of 1917. The trial occurred in the United States District
Court of the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City. The United
States government indicted nearly two thousand people and successfully
convicted about one-half of them under the Espionage Act. Relatively
few were political agitators. The conviction of Stokes was important
to the United States district attorney, Francis Murray Wilson, because
Stokes was both a wealthy socialite and prominent socialist. This
web page by Michael P. Donnelly provides a detailed account of this
famous case.
Geography
Weather
Online: Whether you want a quick-look forecast for your outdoor
events, or an appreciation of the many complex charts used to produce
these forecasts, Weather Online is an excellent source. The website
has hundreds of model output charts, displaying everything from Pressure
Patterns to Lifted Indices. Many of these are of a technical nature,
but are accompanied by complete descriptions allowing the user to
analyze and understand these plots in no time. Furthering the educational
theme of Weather Online are its weather features, which are updated
weekly. Weather Online amassing a huge number of these features, exploring
and explaining the many weather phenomena we see on our planet.
Country
Studies: This website contains the on-line versions of books previously
published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division of the Library
of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored
by the US Department of Army. The Country Studies Series presents
a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social,
economic, political, and national security systems and institutions
of countries throughout the world and examines the interrelationships
of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors.
Mathematics
Optimnem
is dedicated to the promotion and application of the ‘Fluid Thinking’
concept-skills; in learning, in education, in personal and business
development. Fluid Thinking involves our most primary and natural
skills - from sensitive observation and imagination, to pattern recognition
and connection building. The website includes a games section where
you can play Connect 4, Hex 7, Triplets and Tactix.
National
Numeracy Strategy. This website produced by Teaching and Learning
Resources provides a collection of materials on numeracy. This includes
Maths Shapes Crossword, Fractions Matching Game, 2D Shapes, 3D shapes,
and Problem Solving. You can also download from the website the yearly
teaching programmes from the DfES that illustrate how mathematics
can be planned and taught from Reception to Year 6.
Design
& Technology
Inventors
and Inventions: A new part of Bill Richmond's website, Design
& Technology On The Web, currently details the achievements of
25 inventors and their inventions with additional individuals and
their achievements in the pipeline. This is a useful homework help
and coursework-inspiration resource that is allied to the Designers
& Designs section that covers the achievements of 35 international
names and their designs.
Essaybank:
Technology: This website is the UK's largest database of free
student written essays. It offers a database of student written essays
on a wide variety of topics to assist students and non-students educate
themselves, appreciate wider points of view, and see concise overviews
of complex issues. All of the essays on Essaybank have been purchased
by Essaybank or have been contributed by its users.
Science
Studying
the Technologies of Regenerative Energies: The Comenius team running
a project on Studying the Technologies of Regenerative Energies (STORE),
involving schools from France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal and
Slovakia, has just launched its new collaborative website. Recent
articles added include Fuel Cell Technology, Solar Energy, Wind Energy,
From Laboratory to Solar Factory and Exhibition on the Sun.
BrainPOP
Science: BrainPOP is the leading producer of educational animated
movies for children. The company creates original animated movies
to explain concepts in a voice and visual style that is accessible,
educational and entertaining. Subjects covered in Science include
Air Pollution, Atmosphere, Atoms, Big Bang, Crystals, Dinosaurs, Global
Warming, Fossil Fuels, Isotopes, Ocean Floor, Newton's Laws, Light,
Magnetism, Invertebrates, Groundwater, Cell Structures, Relativity,
Tundra, Waves and Water Cycle.
Internet
Services
Iraq
War Virus: A new virus, W32/Ganda.A-mm, has emerged from Sweden
during the opening stages of the Iraq War. The message “Here's
the screensaver I told you about. It contains pictures taken by one
of the US spy satellites during one of its missions over Iraq. If
you want more of these pic's you know where you can find me. Bye!”
The Ganda.A worm uses its own SMTP email engine and appears to gather
email addresses from the recipients’ Microsoft Outlook address
book. Further details can be found at the MessageLabs website.
ASRG: The Anti-Spam
Research Group (ASRG) focuses on the problem of unwanted email messages,
loosely referred to as spam. The scale, growth, and effect of spam
on the Internet have generated considerable interest in addressing
this problem. Once considered a nuisance, spam has grown to account
for a large percentage of the mail volume on the Internet. This unwanted
traffic stands to affect local networks, the infrastructure, and the
way that people use email. The purpose of the ASRG is to understand
the problem and collectively propose and evaluate solutions to the
problem. The work of the ASRG will also include investigating techniques
to evaluate the usefulness and cost of proposed solutions. Usefulness
is described by the effectiveness, accuracy, and incentive structure
of the system. The cost of the system refers to the burden imposed
on users and operators of the communications system. These costs include
any changes to the normal use of the system or actual changes in the
monetary costs of using the system. The group will investigate evaluation
infrastructures such as public trace data archives and research tools
to measure and analyze the problem and the solutions.
Book
Section
The
First Scientist: Back in thirteenth-century Europe, in the
early years of the great
universities, learning was spiced with the danger of mob violence
and repressive religious censorship. Roger Bacon, a humble and devout
English friar, seems an unlikely figure to challenge the orthodoxy
of his day - yet he risked his life to establish the basis for true
knowledge. Bacon advanced the understanding of optics, made geographical
breakthroughs later used by Columbus, predicted everything from horseless
carriages to the telescope, and stressed the importance of mathematics
to science, a significance ignored for 400 years. His biggest contribution
was to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and
exact measurement was the surest foundation for truth. Brian Clegg
uncovers the realities of life in a medieval university and friary,
setting out the shadowy facts of Bacon's life alongside his writings.
The result is both a fascinating biography and a picture of the age.
(Brian Clegg, Constable
& Robinson, 1 84119 618 5, £16.99)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
