Apologies... a visit in April 04 turned up the fact that some old links were out of date... hence the headings with no entries.
In July 2008, I rechecked the links... congratulations to the sites that are still up and running!
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The following are, at 7/08, no longer valid links... at least via the URL I used before. You might want to search for new homes for the material... it was good before, and presumably has improved over the years... if still available somewhere....
I received the following as an email from Heritage OnLine. It may be of interest...... Berit's Best Sites for Children (7/08: The old URL no longer takes you to something for kids.) Berit, Cochran Interactive's Online Librarian, presents an excellent, extensive list of links to sites oriented toward elementary-school children. Each site has been carefully selected, reviewed and given a rating out of 5. Major topic areas are Just For Fun (arts, crafts, recreation), Kids on the Net (pen pals, elementary schools, kid/family home pages), Creatures Great and Small (various animals & other critters), Serious Stuff (academic subject-related sites), And More . . . (safe play on the Internet, other kids sites). You can click on a sub-topic name to go to the sites in that area; once you're there, you can scroll through the entire list. A well-done, well-annotated set of hotlists for children. ========== Index of Resources for Historians 7/08: No longer valid- http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/index.html A HUGE hotlist (about 1700 links, file size about 185K) which takes time to load but is well worth the wait. Links are listed in alphabetical order by subject area, with history as an organizing theme but with lots of interesting links only loosely related to history. Links range from: Africa: African Art Graphics Files (first) to: Travel: Internet Grid; Hotel Anywhere (random pick from the list - currently interlinks over 27,000 separate travel related web sites with over 1000 sites being added weekly) to: World Weather: Comprehensive Weather Server (last) The authors state that "Our general aim is to offer a sufficient number and variety of pointers to suggest the wealth of material available, to allow the user to build a personal bookmark file quickly and effectively, and to provide those building web sites a convenient source of pointers." ========== Al Bodzin's Home Page 7/08: No longer valid- http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/a/ambodzin/public/home.htm Al's web page serves as a resource for K-12 educators, especially science educators. He is currently a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in Instructional Technology for Science Education at North Carolina State University. Al learned to incorporate technology into his biology teaching while a high school teacher in South Carolina. This is an exceptionally well-done page with links to Al's personal favorite sites (Nanoworld, Ocean Planet, & Classroom Connect) and to pages with selected links to a lot of "great sites" in biology, ecology, science, and K-12 education. ----------------------------- Still valid 7/08!! : Heritage OnLine <http://www.hol.edu/> bill themselves as a provider of Internet-based 400/500-level continuing education courses for K-12 teachers. They focus on guiding K-12 educators in integrating use of the Internet into their K-12 classroom curriculum.
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If you are using the Internet and you are still at school, here is a chance to share your opinion as to it's worth. Also, see this site for some good websites by kids.
(These are British independent schools, often with a boarding element, and for 8-13 year olds, often with departments for other ages.)
Not all SATIPS schools are IAPS schools... but many are. SATIPS isn't a school, it is a teachers' organisation. Their website (click on next link) will give you information, and a better list than mine of such schools!
(These are a sub-set of British independent schools, often with a boarding element, and for 13-18 year olds, often with departments for other ages. In ENGLISH: 'public schools', in AMERICAN: similar to US 'prep' schools)
<If you know of any CURRENT valid links, please email them to me.>
<None known at present! Email suggetions, please?! (Button: above)>
Please... except as indicated (none yet!) please don't write and ask 'How do I do that?' Someday (ha!) I'll write these things up more fully. Until then... I hope they inspire you, but I don't have time to go into more detail.
Two ideas in one, here. The UK radio station 'Classic FM' did a survey in early '96. They asked listeners to send in their 3 favourite pieces of music. About 30,000 responded. Classic FM compiled a list of the most popular 300 pieces. First idea... can you get the list of favourites from the net? (Yes... use the Google search engine, and search with 'classic fm 300')
Once you've got the list of 300 pieces, import them into a database, or even a spreadsheet with sorting capabilities. What composer had the most pieces in the list? How were the votes distributed? How many popular pieces are from opera, from religious works, have a vocal part... etc. Half the fun of this is letting your own interests suggest quetions to explore. It is also worth thinking about the problems the producer of the list had to face. If Vivaldi's Four Seasons 'Spring' movement is someone's favourtite, is that a vote for 'Four Seasons', or 'Spring'? Etc!! Enjoy!
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I've just seen a complimentary review of some materials for teaching databases to children. There are 4 projects, one said to suit 8 year olds. Each includes some items to put into a database, and activity sheets to work from.
The 'items to put into a database...' are: (a) 24 Santas, each drawn slightly differently (belt with or without buckle, etc), (b) 24 dogs (similar to (a), but harder), (b) 48 polygons (useful maths issues here) and (d) database of the first 900 numbers with fields like 'Prime?'
The main element of the package is the ink-on-paper part. Generally, or your pupils, you may have to generate the machine readable part... though especially in the case of the numbers database, some m/r support exists. This, of course, stems from the myriad platforms we all use!
Called: 'Maths Through Databases' (MathS is English for what Americans call Math). From: KW Publications, 42 Compton Drive, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B74 2DB, England. Cost: 15 Pounds UK sterling.+P&P
Solubility Measurements: This is mostly a chemistry or physics idea, with a spreadsheet helping! It is appropriate to things like measureing the solubility of table salt in water at different temperatures. Suitably presented, it would have a place in classes from 9 years old upwards, non-specialist classrooms or 'proper' labs.
It annoys me to see bad science in the name of making things 'easy' for the pupils. One often sees dubious experimental techniques proposed for solubility measurement labs. I like the following because I think it is conducive to good results. I think the lab is a great chance for a class to pool results, and to use a spreadsheet. By the way... I also think it is vital that the pupils be able to do their own sums, before the worksheet is provided to save them the hassle. You can download my worksheet by clicking here. It was produced in Quattro, but I avoided anything that might export poorly. You can make your own easily, anyway.
Proceed as follows: Weigh a clean, dry testtube (datum A). In a separate testtube, prepare a solution of the solvent/solute under investigation. Put excess solute in, and get the temperature reasonably steady. (Lots of scope here to discuss experimental error.) Decant (pour off gently, leaving solids behind) a quantity of the saturated solution into the previously weighed testtube. Weigh it quickly, avoiding as far as possible any loss of solvent (datum B). After you have weighed testtube, sovent and solute, evaporate away the solvent. Weigh the testtube and solute (datum C).
You now have all the data you need. C-A tells you how much solute you had (result X). B-C tells you how much solvent you had (result Y). Divide result x by result y and multiply the answer to that by the density of the solvent (say, in g/l), and you will know how many grams of the solute will dissolve in a litre of the solvent (if you used the g/l density). Note this is not quite the same as the number of grams of solute present in a litre of solution... see which of your pupils spots that.
This makes a good, straight-forward investigation the pupils can undertake. With one computer, the data entry should not be too time consuming, and the computer can be made to generate a graph from the results as they come in.... which lets pupils see if their results are in line with what others are seeing. Slow pupils can do a few solubility determinations, and quick pupils can do more.
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I recently had some fun devising a spreadsheet to generate a graph. The graph showed the path a ball would follow if thrown upwards with a certain amount of vertical and horizontal velocity. It is quite easy! When I have time, I'll say more. For now... try it yourself.
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Do you remember the 'good old days'? If you ever came across 'Sumaria' or 'Hammurabi'... economy simulation games.. they would make candidates for modelling by your pupils in a spreadsheet. (I think I mean '...modelling in a spreadsheet by your pupils.' Aren't the subtlties of English fun?)
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We had some floods where I live- Chichester, England. With a feeling that perhaps I was being overly ambitious, I set about modelling a wastershed in a spreadsheet. It came out remarkably easily, convincingly, elegantly. I had a field, a stream and a river. I had transfer rules for fieild to stream, stream to river. (Simple functions relating depth and rate.) I had a row per day, with a user input column for rainfall. Everything else was calculated: Depth of water in field, stream, river.
As with all programming projects, a lot of the fun was in what extensions were possible... several fields and streams feeding the river, for example.
Programming has become a poor relation in the circles I am aware of. This is very sad!! Don't let it die!!! A lot of fun and mental exercise can be had. Logo makes an acessible starting point (See my page of recommended software). Delphi from Borland makes programming Windows a reasonable proposition. Borland's Turbo Pascal for DOS is WELL worth the initial familiarisation tribulations.
I see computing in schools moving to the arrangements now in place for music . All pupils get music appreciation. Some get private one-on-one instruction in playing an instrument or singing. The equivalent in computing is private lessons in programming. Everyone should get a taste of progamming, but not everyone needs to becopme a serious amateur..... but it should be possible for the interested. Hence the need for one-on-one programming lessons. Commetns welcome here... what have you seen work? What do you think of the views expressed?
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The floods mentioned above (in the spreadsheets ideas section) gave rise to a Logo program simulating a bird's eye view of a watercourse flooding.