Netsurfer Education 02.03

This single page site from the Library of Congress' (LOC) Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture is a concise history of the Back-to-Africa movement for liberated slaves as an alternative to emancipation in the USA. The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1817 and established a settlement in Africa - which eventually became the country of Liberia - for Blacks in 1822. It should be noted that the Society was strongly opposed by abolitionists. Interest in colonization waned and the ACS focused on educational and missionary activities in Liberia itself. When the Society was disbanded in 1964, its records were donated to the LOC. The page features links to documents, memoirs, and maps from the LOC's manuscripts, rare books, and maps collections. This and the related exhibits are a sampler of the themes and materials covered in the Mosaic publication, but are good introductions to the topics for junior and high-school students and will give them a little experience in dealing with primary source materials.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html

Youth Parliament

The British Columbia (BC) youth parliament goes beyond the usual pretend sessions designed to familiarize students with parliamentary traditions and practices, and includes a real program of action. The annual Parliament is held between December 27th and 31st at the real-life Legislative Chambers in Victoria and involves 90 representatives of youth organizations from across BC. Proposed activities are presented as government bills, and if passed they must be acted on. One traditional program is Camp Phoenix, which takes about half of the annual budget (which the parliamentarians must raise). The Camp is designed for children who wouldn't otherwise get a chance to commune with nature in this way. In 1999, they also inaugurated Youthspeak '99, a forum aimed at stimulating discussion about issues of concern to people between 14-25. The newsletter, the Parliamentarian, is a huge .pdf file you may not care to download, and a couple of the other documents refused to open for us. However, the Parliamentary Handbook is pretty neat. The site also has links to other youth parliaments and related places. (To read a ..pdf file, you'll need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader, a very useful free tool that should be in every surfer's bag of tricks.)
Parliament: http://www.bcyp.bc.ca/index2.html
Adobe Acrobat Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

LANGUAGE ARTS
English studies, grammar, poetry, prose, and second language studies

Anne Frank, the Writer

For learning purposes, is Anne Frank to be studied in English class or in history? Today, we choose English. Among the many lessons that Anne and her tragedy teach, for this moment we'll focus on the power of her writing. In the pages of her poor little plaid diary, kids can learn that the real strength in writing doesn't come from the $5 words that some students - and too many adults - adopt in essays or assignments, but from the writer's belief in her words - and from context. Like "To Kill a Mockingbird", Anne Frank's story distils the horror of history into personal, intimate tragedy. Her story, too, as she tells it, is filled with cues from which students can talk or write about universals like growing up, family dynamics, first love, responsibility, and privacy. Inevitably, though, the diary is also a door to discussions about history, humanity, courage, diversity, Nazi policies and propaganda, and genocide. Anne Frank in the World offers guidelines for teachers from grade 5 on. The diary link focuses on the diary itself. The Anne Frank memorial page gives an overview of events. This last site demands a warning; it includes several death camp photographs that will certainly be too intense for younger students.
Anne Frank in the World: http://www.uen.org/utahlink/lp_res/AnneFrank.html
The diary: http://af.simplenet.com/
Anne Frank memorial: http://home8.inet.tele.dk/aaaa/Annefrank.htm

Shakespeare Magazine

Freud read Shakespeare over and over his entire life, constantly searching for subtext, for insights into human character and personality. And, if a guy like that couldn't get it the first time around, what chance has your average college freshman, or your basic aspiring actor? Face it, maybe you could use a little help yourself, Professor. "Shakespeare Magazine" published three times a year by Georgetown University and Cambridge University Press, now has an online edition with lots of creative teaching ideas - free. Subscribe for a mere $12 a year and access lesson plans and archives.
http://www.shakespearemag.com/

IDEAS for Excellence Newsletter

This biannual online publication of Ballard and Tighe Publishers, producers of material for teaching students whose native language is not English, contains articles in six categories: assessment, English language development, instructional methods, literacy, parent involvement, and SDAIE/sheltered instruction. (SDAIE, which stands for Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English, is "a pedagogical approach that uses students' background knowledge as a foundation on which to build learning and access the core curriculum".) Teachers of English as a second language should find helpful material here. The newsletter also invites queries from potential contributors.
http://www.ballard-tighe.com/ideas/index.htm

FINE ARTS
Visual arts, music, theater, and dance

Art and the Arts

The idea of the Visible Knowledge program is to trigger cross enrichment between contemporary art and core high-school curricula by using the Web for collaboration and sharing. If that sounds like a peculiar quest, this high-school outreach program of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art might persuade you otherwise. For a start, you can view and download curriculum units on American Identity, Whose History Is It, Anyway?, and The Time of Our Lives (aging), with one about the Amazon promised for later. As well there's an online library, with links and resources, classrooms that teachers can set up for their own students, studios, which are individual student pages, and a gallery of art by students and participating artists. This is a very nice idea ably done, and well worth exploring.
http://www.vkp.org/

Making Crafts and Friends

At MakingFriends.com, the focus is actually on making crafts, although you can also meet people and share ideas in the site's Forum. With a rich list of craft ideas categorized by age appropriateness, you'll find no shortage of ideas for upcoming holidays, special occasions, or even just for fun! One of the main types of crafts is the "Friends," which are kind of like paper dolls for all of the holidays and several other themes. Each and every craft lists detailed instructions and necessary materials, many of which can be printed directly from the site, free. You can also buy various crafting supplies or just stick with the free goodies. Whether you seek a simple craft idea or a lengthier project, MakingFriends.com is a great place to make yourself comfortable as you browse.
http://makingfriends.com/

MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Mathematics, chemistry, physics, astrosciences, computing, technology, biology, and botany

Space Day

Back in the Alan Shepard-John Glenn days (the first John Glenn days), kids were crazy about space. Decades later, with the US Space Shuttle program a low Earth-orbit trucking firm, Russia's Mir vacant, and the International Space Station way behind schedule and over budget, the bloom is off the rose. Space Day (May 4, 2000) hopes to rekindle some of the earlier spirit. Sure, it's promoted by Lockheed Martin, who stands to gain with any space oriented spending, but it's still a good starting point to build the excitement again. As is often the case with a site like this, they have found some fascinating yet esoteric links to other space sites. And, there are space simulation games, run on your browser in ShockWave. While waiting for one to load, we were amazed to read that if the Earth were scaled down, so its diameter were only .1", our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri, would still be over 5000 miles away!
http://www.spaceday.com/

Shake Yo' Honey Maker

Mild-mannered teachers may not be prepared to play the flamboyant role of the forager bee - which involves waggling about the classroom, shaking one's booty in the name of entomology. But you must read this entomologist/teacher's truly memorable, imaginative way of demonstrating to students, through role playing, how bees work together. "The Honeybee Dance" page, posted by the Michigan Entomological Society, explains the elaborate mathematically precise waggling dance a forager bee uses to tell hive members where the flowers laden with nectar and pollen lie. Students play the parts of worker bees and flowers ...while some daring personality - perhaps with a future in exotic dancing or music video choreography - can play the forager bee, who does the waggle-thang and gets the honey making drama rocking.
http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/mes/notes/entnote22.html

Intelligent Child

We like a site that repeatedly tells kids, "Until you know everything, keep asking �Why?'" - particularly when that site also aims to demonstrate to girls that "Astronomy is science fiction without the fiction and Physics is a lot more interesting than Barbie." Developed for the promotion of science education, Intelligent Child presents children in the late elementary grades with the message that science learning Rocks! Its various features - such as How do you drive a satellite? What is a spacewalk? What's up with the "face on Mars"? How much bigger is Jupiter than earth? - use animated .gifs, color diagrams, and way-cool photos from NASA to make science exciting. There are some links to other Internet resources for parents as well as for kids. The current offerings are somewhat sparse, but it looks as if more material is planned for the future, so this site definitely rates a bookmark and a return visit.
http://www.intelligentchild.com/index.html

Connected Curriculum

This looks like a place best frequented by the sliderule crowd or advanced students at university level, dealing as it does with projects designed to show how mathematics relates to real world problems involving engineering and the physical sciences. Certainly with subjects such as differential calculus, approximations, chemistry, physics, electrical and mechanical engineering, it's no place for the mathematically faint of heart. You also need all your standard browser plug-ins firing on all cylinders here, and to get the most out of the modules, the site warns, you need a computer algebra system such as Mathematica, Maple, MathCad, or the TI-92. Ably dodging the very real risk of getting mathematically overextended, we sampled a few of the problems presented here, and found them to be set imaginatively but in a simulated real-world environment. For example, one deals with a possible leak of radioactive material from a nuclear reactor and postulates that you must deal with the public as well as with the science, the sort of nasty complication that real life often presents.
http://grandmac.calpoly.edu/default.html

Museum of Paleontology Offers Lesson Plans

As detectives, paleontologists revel in bits of dead, dried up, dirty old stuff as puzzle pieces compositing 3.5 billion mysterious years of earth history. Let the interdisciplinary lesson plans posted at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology turn students into fossil sleuths, too. Paleontology serves as a fine introduction to science because it combines archaeology, biology, and geology - in addition to other disciplines such as history, mathematics, and geography.
http://www.UCMP.Berkeley.EDU/fosrec/Learning.html

Plate Tectonics

Did the earth move for you? Well, it does for us all. The various ramifications of the constantly shifting earth's crust are dealt with in this fine Web site for both on- and offline studies of plate tectonics for high-school students. The core of the site is a text, with hyperlinked illustrations, diagrams, and maps, covering volcanism, island birth, faults, quakes, and related topics. This is augmented by a superb interactive map of the world's ocean floors that highlights various hotspots and faults around the world. The Online Research section has articles from both scholarly and popular publications and there are also links to the National Earthquake Center, Volcano World, and the United States Geological Survey page on Alfred Wegener, the originator of the theory of continental drift. You can also purchase a tectonic globe, if you're so inclined.
http://www.platetectonics.com/

Moving Up the Food Chain

Produced by the larger Web site called Planet Pals, this short and sweet Food Chain page simply explores the basics of ecosystems. The Web masters use one simple page to present a brief explanation of the three groups of participants in a food chain: the producers, the consumers, and the decomposers. Through this model, students can study a wide variety of ecosystems found in nature. Print out the main illustration on top for a nice graphic organizer to help students visualize and understand the basic concepts.
http://www.planetpals.com/foodchain.html

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Sports and Health

Link to Your Health

Sponsored by the prestigious Johns Hopkins University, Environhealth Link examines the link between health and our environment. The Web masters ponder questions such as, Why are so many children becoming asthmatic? What can we do today to assure that our tomorrows are safe? The site presents practical ways for teachers to help better our environmental situation through specially designed lesson plans on topics like air, food, radiation, and water. Aimed toward middle- and high-school students, Environhealth Link is updated every couple months with the latest information on issues related to environmental health sciences. Link-loving teachers will appreciate the plethora of Web sites suggested by the Environhealth Link experts on the environment, health, science, and other broad topics.
http://www.mpt.org/learningworks/teachers/ehl/

Schedule a Trip to Safety City

North American kids might recognize Vince and Larry from their public service announcements promoting the use of safety belts. Little did you know, these crash test dummies moonlight on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Safety City home page. Through games, movie, and colorful presentations, Vince and Larry host an educational adventure for kids on the importance of safety on our roads, whether they're on foot, on a bike, or in a car. Students can visit the Crash Test Lab to see what happens when cars crash and passengers aren't wearing seat belts. Or, they can click over to the School section to learn more about school bus safety. On the Bike Tour of the site, kids can make sure they have the proper safety equipment for riding a bike. With virtual hosts like Vince and Larry, children will truly enjoy learning the important safety issues of the road.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/kids/

SKILLS FOR LIVING
Domestic sciences, study skills and other day-to-day skills for getting through life

Talking with Kids

As anyone who's tried it knows, talking with your kids about serious stuff isn't easy. Here's some help. Talking With Kids About Tough Issues has an online forum, a toolkit for organizers of the Talking with Kids program, Web banners, ten tips, a resources section, and more. One of the key ideas is to use natural opportunities to talk about important issues, rather than waiting for a formal occasion. Another is being free to admit ignorance and then finding out together. Dads tend to be more squeamish than moms when it comes to frank talk, so there's a special section here on getting dads to loosen up and take the plunge. When it happens, open communication with children is such a wonderful thing that's it worth working for, and this site certainly can help. This place isn't very deep, so you won't find all the answers for achieving perfect communication here but you'll certainly
get off to a good start. http://www.talkingwithkids.org/

Netsurfer Recommendations

Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the cover or title to order the item at a hefty discount from Amazon.com and send a few pennies our way as well.

Country Cottage playhouse

Little Tikes; ASIN: B00000IS63

We don't own this playhouse ourselves; kids in our world have long ago outgrown it. However, we know parents who have one, and they can't say enough good things about it. Right near the top of the list is the matter of durability. The thing seems nearly indestructible, as Amazon reviewers seem to agree. There's also been a lot of thought given to the design; fingers aren't likely to get caught in hinges and the place comes partially furnished to boot. One reviewer sees the playhouse as the educational medium that our friends use; it's a great locale for talking to kids and getting them to open up on their terms in a setting that they see as their own. For their neighbors' sakes, we hope the houses the kids eventually buy will be somewhat less colorful, but the Country Cottage playhouse still comes recommended.

RESOURCES
Encyclopedia, libraries, reference resources, and other places to which teachers can turn

EDSITEment

A project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, EDSITEment's aim is to help students use the Internet as an aid and tool to "help students explore the ways of men and women make and find meaning in human life". In practical terms, the idea is to give students access to all of the information, media, literature, reference works, formats, etc. that the Internet has to offer and to help educators exploit the Internet as a classroom resource. The heart of this ambitious project is the Lesson Plans, annotated with goals and skills, which truly integrate Web resources and classroom activity. Each stage of the lesson makes the students use Web resources in a serious way and help them relate to the lesson at hand. The Top Site section (a large annotated links list, organized by topic) features sites on history, philosophy, English, foreign languages, and art history, and many of them are linked to the Lesson Plans. Tools for School gives practical advice on Internet usage in class, including a glossary and browsing tips and there are also home-centered Internet-based activities. The site is directed toward a non-techie audience, i.e. teachers who may not be familiar with Web surfing. If you're thinking of using the Internet in your classroom, this is a fine place to start.
http://edsitement.neh.fed.us/

ADMINISTRATION
Education theory, school and board administration, and teaching aids

Developing and Implementing Academic Standards

From the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy comes this template for "the crafting of top-notch academic content standards, assessment devices, and performance standards, plus effective methods of implementing standards". By examining both good and bad examples of current academic standards, this extensively documented report tackles questions such as these: How does one tell a good standard from a bad standard? What are the ingredients for rigorous academic standards? How do we measure compliance with standards? Which incentive system works best in implementing standards? But it's hard not to see a political agenda in the closing summary: "Without fear of competition, the incentive to reform is often blunted or non-existent. That is why it is so important to open up the education marketplace to competition through programs such as school choice. The bottom line, then, is that only by making public schools compete will there be any consistent incentive to make standards work".
http://www.pacificresearch.org/issues/edu/standards/main1.html

Vocational Education

For ten years, until the end of 1999, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California, Berkeley worked to strengthen school-based and work-based programs to prepare individuals for lasting and rewarding employment, and lifelong learning. The results of the Center's work are preserved here in this gold mine of vocational education information. More than 80 publications from the 10 years of work at the Center are available in full text online in .html format, some with access to searchable databases of information collected during the work. As a small example of the approach taken, they point out that teaching carpentry isn't enough to ensure students can become carpenters. Also needed are skills related to small business and how to apply carpentry skills in noncarpentry occupations and businesses. The documents represent an absolute treasure chest of useful and informative ideas and techniques suitable not only for teachers but also parents, especially when confronted with programs that appear to depart from traditional academic patterns. There are also links to other sites dealing with vocational education.
http://ncrve.berkeley.edu/

ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
Distance learning, home schooling, and special education opportunities

ADHD Special Needs Resources for Misunderstood Kids: Outside the Box

Teacher Laurie Hagberg used to think that attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were just terms parents used when they couldn't discipline their children. Then her own son was born and, even in his infancy, she and her husband realized that he was not like other children. With the help of a caring kindergarten teacher they learned of the diagnosis of ADHD and their son is now receiving. As a result of her experience, Hagberg has compiled a vast number of resources for both parents and teachers who must work with kids with ADHD. Her Web page includes links to resources for all subject areas and grade levels, information on current news and research findings, and even some material relating to other disorders such as autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. You can search the site by keyword and sign up for the monthly newsletter.
http://home.att.net/~adhd.kids/

RESIDUE
A little of this, a little of that

Lingua Franca

Lingua Franca is a print magazine that calls itself the review of academic life. This is its online version with excerpts from current and past issues in electronic format. As does The Atlantic, the magazine nicely sidebars stories with annotated links to related topics. You'll find stuff here you won't find in mainstream, high-volume magazines, amusing stuff, interesting, odd, even unexpected stuff, and very often an unconventional side of issues, something to aid in critical thinking perhaps or just to give a different take on things to relay at the water cooler. In the March issue two items took our fancy: Mistaken Identity Theory, Why Scientists Always Pick the Wrong Man, and Inside the Love Lab, an interesting look at how interspouse dynamics may predict the likely permanence or otherwise of a marriage. There's also a regular Hirings and Tenurings column and one on Conferences/Jobs. The book reviews, too, are particularly valuable if you want relief from the usual blockbusters.
http://www.linguafranca.com/index.html

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CREDITS

Publisher: Arthur Bebak Editor: Judith David Contributing Editor: Production Manager: Bill Woodcock Netsurfer Communications, Inc. President: Arthur Bebak Vice President: S.M. Lieu	Writers and Netsurfers: Jon Baum Mary Daniels Brown Beth Lewis Michael Luke Elizabeth Rollins
NETSURFER EDUCATION © 2000 Netsurfer Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. NETSURFER EDUCATION is a trademark of Netsurfer Communications, Inc.