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| Two Superior and Timely Sites for Black History Month |
| A Student's Guide to the Study of History |
| Ben's Guide to US Government |
| Purdue University's Online Writing Lab |
| Virtual Presentation Assistant |
| Beowulf In Hypertext |
| Frank Lloyd Wright: Art and Technology in Harmony |
| Understanding Algebra |
| Wild Ones Curriculum Library |
| Chemmybear |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| The Mint and Your Money |
| College Planning Center |
| The Chronicle of Higher Education |
| Homeschool Home Free |
| Fun and Learning, Not Mutually Exclusive |
| Games and Girls |
| FNO Educational Technology |
| Multimedia File Formats on the Internet |
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| Netsurfer Digest |
TEACHER'S PET
Editor's favorite
Two Superior and Timely Sites for Black History Month
February is Black History Month in the United States. These two sites offer a compelling reason for recognizing that every month is African America History Month. The Kids Zone site offers young viewers games and museum quality exhibits on such subjects as Jackie Robinson and the Tuskegee Airmen. These exhibits are well thought out and have plenty of information and links to other resources - plus they should stimulate a visit to the library for some viewers. The Afrocentric News Service - with a mission that certainly serves older students and adults - performs a similar function, but with great attention to current events in Africa and their relation to African Americans in the US. Both sites deserve visits during all of the calendar, not just February.Kids Zone: http://www.afroam.org/children/children.html
Afrocentric News: http://afrocentricnews.com/
SOCIAL SCIENCES
History, geography, political science, sociology, law, anthropology, philosophy, and archeology
A Student's Guide to the Study of History
We've all heard the adage that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If this were true, there'd be no more war, poverty, or ugly ties given for Father's Day. A more accurate rendering might be "those who are forced to learn history don't always grasp its relevance". For those who wonder why we must learn history at all, there's A Student's Guide to the Study of History. The site is meant to be a guide for students of history, but the content will be of interest to just about anyone. The table of contents is intriguing, dealing with topics such as 'The proper attitude' and 'How to read history'. Unabashedly subjective, the author decries the average American's lack of historical knowledge, which he blames partly on poor teaching practices. He admonishes the would-be student to keep an open mind, and to not expect any easy answers. He encourages us to draw upon the images of historical events that we have absorbed from movies and literature, although he also warns us to be wary of the 'blatant or subtle propaganda' inherent in these images. Considering the plethora of nonsense being passed off as history on the Internet (does the name David Irving ring a bell?), learning to read, understand, and sort through this information is a must-have skill.http://www.pagesz.net/~stevek/guide/guide.html
Ben Franklin would be proud of the economy of words and ease of accessing key facts about the government in this US Government Printing Office site. This specific URL is one section of a more comprehensive source of government information. While the information is concise, getting to the information and keeping up with where you are can be difficult. It is not intuitive and there is no navigation bar, only a single back button that will actually take you further back than where you started. The information consists of high level facts and descriptions of government branches, lawmaking, and the election process. Although the site casts itself as a resource for students in grades 9 through 12, the games and activities are far too simple for high school, perhaps better for middle school. There is a nice selection of manageable resources for researching the National High School Debate topic.
http://bensguide.gpo.gov/9-12/index.html
LANGUAGE ARTS
English studies, grammar, poetry, prose, and second language studies
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
Is the owl really wise? This OWL (Online Writing Lab) certainly is. Need some help with how to document that Web site in your APA research paper? You're just two clicks away from the answer. Need some help with active rather than passive voice? The OWL is there to serve. This is an organized and intuitive site. The header includes a search field and the footer includes the URL for the page you're viewing. Both the header and footer appear consistently on every page. This site is a model of navigational ease. Handouts cover a dozen or so subjects including planning/writing/revising/genres, research papers, punctuation, sentence construction, and parts of speech. Workshops in .html or downloadable PowerPoint files deal with the likes of the resume, evaluating source, research and documentation, and business writing. Online tutors work primarily for Purdue students; however, they will respond to limited questions from anyone.http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Virtual Presentation Assistant
If you're one of those of whom it is said that the fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of death, help has arrived. Even if you aren't in that group, help has arrived. This informative, easy-to-use site is rich with commonsense insight and links to public speaking resources. Starting with selecting your topic through speech construction, visual aids, and the actual delivery of the speech, this site covers it all. In addition to specific advice on technique, there are links to audio and video archives of noteworthy speeches. This University of Kansas site will help the apprehensive and adept speaker alike.http://www.ukans.edu/cwis/units/coms2/vpa/vpa.htm
The ancient text of Beowulf is easy to access in the Old English and modern English at McMaster University's sparse but easy to navigate site. With the exception of the opening graphic the site is entirely text. A frame on the left contains links to all content areas without scrolling. Beyond the text of the poem, the content is limited to a description of the main characters and the history of the work. The primary advantage of this site is the ease of accessing the actual text. Our only complaint is the persistent pop-up ad that dogged us through the site - and we think pop-up ads are at least as monstrous as Grendl. In contrast, the University of Nevada at Reno offers no online text, but does provide brief analysis and some smartly presented links to even more comprehensive resources. UNR doesn't have much in the way of original content, but its links to external resources are obviously chosen with care. It's everything you wanted to know about Beowulf, and many things you didn't know you wanted to know - including sections on Beowulf and Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon and medieval studies, the nature of the manuscript itself, and more. It's a rich resource for any student of Beowulf.
McMaster: http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~beowulf/
UNR: http://www.library.unr.edu/subjects/guides/beowulf.html
FINE ARTS
Visual arts, music, theater, and dance
Frank Lloyd Wright: Art and Technology in Harmony
Frank Lloyd Wright remains among the great American architects of the 20th century, his work a unique nexus of art, technology, and nature. Even if his works appear on ties and bookmarks, the buildings and texts remain among the most exciting in the field. This site offers students and teachers a Web based perspective on Wright's career complete with extensive links to other resources on the architect and his structures. Given the image-intensive nature of the site, bandwidth is important, but the pictures and writing make it a gem for those who love Wright's buildings and those who want to know why so many other people enjoy this virtuoso's works.http://www.delmars.com/wright/flwright.htm
MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Mathematics, chemistry, physics, astrosciences, computing, technology, biology, and botany
http://216.247.77.187/algebra/
The Wild Ones library is a compilation of curriculum plans submitted by teachers to share with others. The site is divided into classroom, schoolyard, and fieldtrip activities, as well as a few teacher articles. There's also a short Spanish section at the end. As the name suggests, the thread through all of the content is life, mainly animal life. It should be no surprise then to learn that the site is in fact part of the Wildlife Trust, an organization dedicated to wildlife conservation. Most of the content seems to be aimed at junior or middle grades, although there is considerable latitude in most of the articles to allow teachers to tailor the content and approach to fit the class. Indeed, the information is mostly in outline form, allowing the flexibility and creativity on which great teaching and learning thrive.
http://www.thewildones.org/Curric/curricLib.html
Otherwise known as the mole hole, the Chemmybear site is the work of Paul Groves, a high school teacher in Pasadena, California. The contents mostly relate to Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry, and include a couple of interesting lab experiments, one involving the reaction between nitric acid and copper, and the other the formation of liquid oxygen. Perhaps the most useful resource here is the set of AP Chemistry study cards. We also noted reviews of some study guides, information about elements, and a set of links to other interesting chemistry sites.
http://www.spusd.k12.ca.us/chemmybear/index.html
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Cliques, Phonies, and Other BaloneySKILLS FOR LIVING
Domestic sciences, study skills and other day-to-day skills for getting through life
http://www.themint.org/
RESOURCES
Encyclopedia, libraries, reference resources, and other places to which teachers can turn
http://aplanforme.com/collegeplanning/index.html
ADMINISTRATION
Education theory, school and board administration, and teaching aids
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is to university education in the US as Variety is to the world of entertainment. Although the paper attempts to be international in scope, it really is about the United States. If you want to know about the latest academic scandal or job action, the Chronicle is your source. Alas, much of the site is subscription dependent. That is, if you're not a subscriber, you can't register and take advantage of the site's many features. Of course, the site's most important feature, a comprehensive job listing of positions in academia is available free, as are some of the paper's cultural and editorial sections. If you're in higher education you already know about the Chronicle; if you're not, you might find this site of interest in the same way an anthropologist finds a hitherto undiscovered tribe of interest. In turn, you might come across something that you did not realize would interest you.http://chronicle.com/
ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
Distance learning, home schooling, and special education opportunities
http://www.homeschoolhome.com/
RESIDUE
A little of this, a little of that
Fun and Learning, Not Mutually Exclusive
Learning takes many forms, and educators today realize that there should be more to school than chalkboards, lectures, and regurgitating facts. There has been a recent emphasis in our schools on problem solving and thinking skills, and an excellent method for teaching these skills is through the use of games and puzzles. Games stimulate, encourage reflection, and are just plain fun. Thinks.com offers up a healthy serving of games, puzzles, and more. Many of these diversions are Java applets, like a picture of Bill Gates that can be morphed, and jigsaw puzzles that can have as many as 72 pieces. There are crossword puzzles, art and crafts projects, word games and a whole lot more. OK, so maybe they're not all educational, but they are all fun. Kids will have a ball here, and so will their teachers. If your principal happens to walk in while you're putting the finishing touches on the Java Mr. Potatohead, make sure you tell her the bit about developing problem solving skills, but don't let her play, or she might never leave.http://thinks.com/?900
This is no feast and no cornucopia, but a fairly simple place that examines a number of mathematical (sort of) games and - here's what intrigues us - considers them to some extent from a gender perspective. Some fifty games are described and about half of these are reviewed, the latest addition being at least a year old. Many of the games are no longer available. The reviews are useful and the intent is serious and worthwhile, it's just that for the most part the games considered aren't really mainstream computer games and it's not entirely clear just what one is supposed to do with the information here. The overall conclusion seems to be that the games described short change girls in particular from the point of view of mathematical empowerment. What it comes down to, we deduced with our usual brilliance (no false modesty here!), is that the place really is asking questions more than providing pat solutions or answers. Can computer games aid in mathematical development, and if so do they serve girls as well as boys? It's the result of a research project after all, and so the answers are neither definitive nor finished.
http://www.terc.edu/mathequity/gw/html/gwhome.html
TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING
Computing as the medium
http://www.fno.org/
Multimedia File Formats on the Internet
Download mavens are usually pretty savvy when it comes to file formats. Students and teachers who want to make full use of the Internet's resources are probably familiar with at least a couple or three of the file types available for downloading and use. zip, .mp3 and .exe are familiar and popular formats, but what about .cur, .ico, and .png? Even experts can become confused by the numerous and sometimes obscure formats floating around out there. Where can we turn to make sense of this jumble of letters and files? A good place to start is Multimedia File Formats on the Internet by Allison Zhang, the Electronic Resources Librarian and Webmaster at Rush Rhees Library, at the University of Rochester. This highly informative site is subtitled A Beginner's Guide for PC Users, but even proficient PC users are sure to find valuable information here. There are sections on sound, picture and video files, including information about identifying and using these files. Also included are lengthy discussions of file compression and digital movie files. Zhang wisely includes links to related freeware and shareware programs - although some of the programs are a little dated, such as one that requires a 386 or better to run. Oh, and in case you're interested, .cur denotes a cursor file, .ico is an icon, and .png is a relatively new picture format.http://www.lib.rochester.edu/multimed/contents.htm