Netsurfer Education 04.01

Why do kids so dread writing? You'd think they'd welcome the chance for self-expression. And, they should. But, posited Donald H. Graves, writing too often has little to do with expression and more to do with adult standards of spelling and legibility. Instead, we should allow kids the opportunity to express themselves, reveal their knowledge, form their ideas. Led to express themselves and connect to a listener or reader, focus follows. Especially among kids whose learning disability compromises the ability to meet the conventions of legibility, spelling, and grammar, writing stops having anything to do with expression. In 1985, Graves proposed the process approach to writing, a "writer's workshop" technique that partners students and teachers in finding a child's voice. It requires some significant and some subtle shifts in the way we deal with children who are learning to write, as opposed to copy. Do we really need to say that it is child-centered?
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/writing/graves_process.html

SOCIAL SCIENCES
History, geography, political science, sociology, law, anthropology, philosophy, and archeology

All the News That Fits

More than 40 years ago, Edward R. Murrow spoke before the Radio and Television News Directors Association, castigating his industry as "fat, comfortable, and complacent" and television as a tool to "detract, delude, amuse and insulate us". What would he make of the media circus on the doorsteps of murdered children or the Rivera story that turned from maudlin fiasco to high dudgeon snit? How would he rate the cozy Bush League reporting of the war on terrorism? What could be said about media attention on celebrity shenanigans that displaces reporting about overseas hot zones outside the Middle East? Today's students of journalism grew up with the warm fuzzies of "Entertainment Tonight", with little exposure to the kind of critical thinking that marked the golden age of broadcasting's Fourth Estate. Can reporting ever be entirely without bias? Goodness, we hope not. How else could one talk about Nazi Germany? Trying to revive, perhaps restore, journalism to its former status is Columbia University's Project on Excellence in Journalism. Students hoping to enter into a noble profession, those developing their critical thinking skills, or analyzing propaganda should look closely at its pages.
http://www.journalism.org/index.html

64,442 Degrees of Separation

The Degree Confluence Project aims to visit and photograph every latitude and longitude integer degree intersection in the world. Well, minus the ones at the poles or under water, which still leaves 12,000 or so. The photos and information from all visited confluences are posted at the site. You might think there wouldn't be much to write about, say, a field in Belgium, but that's where you'd be wrong. The descriptions accompanying the photos are mini travel logs, personal accounts of a few hours in the life of someone living in or visiting Kocaeli, Turkey, Tikniouine, Morocco, or any of the hundreds of other exotic (or not so exotic) locales. For those interested in more than mouse-bound travel, there are directions for participating in the project.
http://www.confluence.org/index.php

Rulers and Elections

Such simple ideas, such valuable resources. Here we offer two companion sites that can go a long way to answering questions both straightforward and subtle. The first site, Rulers.org lists by country the people designated as presidents, prime ministers, premiers, dictators, kings, emperors, governors and governors-general, viceroys, commanders, shahs, chairmen, princes, chancellors, and much more. In fact, the details of this site and the patience of its owner boggle the mind. Given the sheer numbers, we couldn't expect that each ruler would have a complete biography, but there's still a very respectable biographical database, too. For a quick overview of a country's political life, it would be hard to do better. The companion piece to this site is Electionworld.org, a database of current elections and election law around the world. It's a good database, but not a comprehensive one. The entry for Zimbabwe, for instance, shows the barebones of the supposed process but fails to mention Mogabe's conflicts with third-party observers and a supreme court decision that rendered invalid one of his recent laws limiting voters' rights. Perhaps as valuable, though, is the set of links to opponent parties of governments both democratic and, um, less so.
Rulers: http://rulers.org/
Elections: http://www.electionworld.org/

Mythology for Kids

Windows on the Universe is a fine astronomy site from the University of Michigan and we've sung its praises before. Within the pages of this site, though, is an excellent resource for kids studying classical Western mythology. Choose the level - beginner, intermediate or advanced - and begin learning about the mythology that shaped the Western vision of the heavens, from our solar system to the constellations. There are bonuses, too. A clickable world map whisks you off to Norse, Sumerian, Japanese, Yoruban, Inuit, Polynesian, and ten other mythologies. Complex family trees are rendered relatively simply, perhaps by deus ex machina in some cases, with a measure of bowdlerization. If you're looking for real authenticity, you might need to re-jig the family trees. Hyperlinks offer generous cross-referencing and easy segue from myth to science and back again. The graphics are also smart - beautiful, but presented with enough restraint to keep loading crisp.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/tour.cgi?link=/mythology/mythology.html

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

Burn, Muggles, Burn

Kids take a lot of things for granted - as do we. For the most part, we assume that we can acquire and read any book that we want. Sure, we chuckle at the long-ago and naive efforts to ban "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Tropic of Cancer". But, we only need to look around a bookstore today to feel pretty secure in our freedoms. Right? Mmm. Not so fast. Schoolbooks have become the cause du jour among book banners and censors, and right now Harry Potter and his buddies are taking the heat. We have to thank those stalwart souls for their intervention because it helped to awaken some kids to the dangers of censorship. Their ire raised, kids rallied to kidSPEAK, where they've described their efforts to combat rising censorship in their schools. They spoke at school board meetings, wrote protest letters, signed online petitions, and offered support to each other through the site. Unfortunately, the site seems to have run its course, and we're unable to find it today. Less activist, more analyst, the Great Harry Potter Debate steps up to fill the breach.
http://www.elycia-webdesign.com/harrypotter/debate/

The Lord of the Rings in The New York Times

Collecting resources from its archives going back more than 60 years, The New York Times presents a comprehensive history of the story sometimes named Book of the Century. There's a book review of "The Hobbit" from 1938 and reviews of its sequels from 1954 and 1955. Lesson plans abound, not to mention an intriguing contest (now closed) to create the front page of a newspaper addressing themes and concepts from the books. Young artists can explore the principles of screenwriting. Kids can also discover just how movies are marketed. There's a journey through Middle Earth, covering Tolkien and his stories, and the ubiquitous trivia quiz. Given the sheer volume of Tolkien pages out there, it would be hard for any single site to be comprehensive. The Times has found its own niche in all the hoopla, though. Teachers and parents should be aware that this site seems to be partnered with New Line Cinema, but The Times really treats the filmmakers as resources rather than using the paper as a shill.
http://www.nytimes.com/specials/advertising/movies/tolkien/index.html

There's Magic in the Web of It

There seems to be some controversy as to whether this is indeed 'the web's oldest Shakespeare site', as a site at MIT also claims the title, both having evidently been started within months of each other way back in '93. Be that as it may, there's a whole lot of Shakespeare goin' on over here. All of the bard's works are posted in HTML and plain text. The kicker is the Shakespeare Search Engine, which performed flawlessly on a recent visit. Links to other Shakespeare sites are included. As for the controversy, the MIT site may be older, but the search capability is broken there with a notice posted that it should be fixed soon, dated Nov. 13, 2000. So if that term paper on "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is due tomorrow, you may want to try here first.
http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/test.html

FINE ARTS
Visual arts, music, theater, and dance

Talk to the Hand

Matt Buchanan doesn't tell us much about himself by way of biography, but his choices and commentaries speak very well of him indeed. He offers several dozen drama lesson plans on his home page, but it's his puppets that have our attention today. Here's what he says of using puppets in the classroom. "Puppetry is a great way to bring more reticent or shy children out of their shells. When a child operates a puppet, the focus is on the puppet, rather than on the puppeteer, and the child forgets to be self conscious. If you watch a child operating a puppet, you see that every emotion and every movement of the puppet is mirrored in the puppeteer. The child really is 'acting'. The puppet simply provides a safety net - an extra level of reality between the performer and her audience." To that end, he outlines instructions for making puppets from found objects, paper bags, socks, newspaper, even our hands. Undaunted by time or materiel, he even suggests how to construct Japanese bunraku puppets (it's more in the acting than the making, we think). It seems Matt is a drama teacher and performance is the goal. As arts and crafts, though, these pages also have merit.
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/3765/puppets.html

Drama Outside the Western Tradition

A recent assignment sent us scrambling through the Web for resources on theater beyond the Greek-inspired Western tradition. Perhaps the most well-known of those traditions is Japanese drama, expressed in noh, kabuki, bunraku, and kyogen. This selection of sites introduces students to the smooth transitions of kabuki's revolving cypress stage, the hypnotic stylization of noh, and the elegant suspension of disbelief in bunraku. Together, these pages offer enough Flash exhibits and other extras to bring these arts to life for students. And, may we also suggest that if English classes still find Shakespeare a little turgid for their MTV tastes, they might enjoy some comparative cinema with Kurosawa's rip-snorting interpretations of "Macbeth" ("Throne of Blood/Kumonosu Jo") and "King Lear" ("Ran")?
Noh-kyogen: http://www.iijnet.or.jp/NOH-KYOGEN/english/english.html
Noh mask expressions: http://www.mis.atr.co.jp/~mlyons/Noh/noh_mask.html
Mask gallery: http://www11.freeweb.ne.jp/art/noh-mask/index.htm
Kabuki pavilion: http://www.kabuki.gr.jp/pavilion/english/index2.html
Kabuki story: http://www.lightbrigade.demon.co.uk/
Bunraku: http://osaka.yomiuri.co.jp/bunraku/english/
National Bunraku Theatre: http://www.mis.atr.co.jp/~mlyons/Noh/noh_mask.html

Harry Potter Without the Words

Despite Jonathan Frazen's sniffy protestations, books are about more than just the words. If you intend to reach even an audience of one, books are about enticing that audience to open up to that first page. And, comprehension is about more than the words, too. Kids can begin to understand these facts for themselves through a smart teachervision.com lesson that uses the cover art from 12 editions of the first Harry Potter offering in ten different countries to illustrate how the same book can be marketed a dozen different ways. American readers, for instance, might not realize that the publishers were taken by surprise when "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" proved to have legs with adult readers. It prompted them to offer an edition identical in all respects except for the menacing monochromatic steam engine, a Hogwart's Express barreling toward us right out of an Agatha Christie whodunit or "The Lady Vanishes". The Japanese cover is a revelation, too, with its unmistakably Oriental influence and its shape, unique among the examples. And, we're not quite sure what to make of the totally unfamiliar Harry who stares at us from the Icelandic cover art. A strong lesson plan anchors the art. We've even used this one ourselves to good effect.
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-2692.html

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

Do-It-Yourself DNA

From the University of Utah comes this marvelous site that had us oohing and aahing through several visits. Here's a page that teaches us how to extract DNA from living things right in the comfort of our own kitchen. There's a pithy little definition that compares stem cells to actors waiting to take on a role. The very accessible experiments are, in our experience, unique for the imaginative simplicity of their process and the wonder of what they teach. To create a cell, begin with two zip closure bags. When you're done, you've given concrete form to concepts that are the foundation of learning in genetics. How are genetics and conservation related? What do our genes have to do with hearing? How does mutation happen? Find out here. The Genetic Science Learning Center is one of the most appealing and smartest sites we've ever had the pleasure to visit. You can't start using it soon enough.
http://gslc.genetics.utah.edu/index.html

Dirt: Eat It Up!

Kids love color. They love dirt. They love water. They love little things that they can watch grow. What could be better for kids and appeal to them more than a school garden? We generally try to stay away from commercial sites, but this package seems so darned interesting that we wanted to let you make your own decisions. Registration will net you seeds and an online course, including some wonderful lesson plans that use the garden. Without turning the school into a plant nursery, there are even suggestions for recouping the costs with plant and seed sales. We don't mind commercial sites that are this wrapped up in kids and that have taken care to produce such a nicely rounded package. We hope some kids are lucky enough to benefit from it soon. If this comprehensive program isn't to your taste, try Gardening for Kids. It doesn't have the same pizzazz, but there's still plenty there to explore.
Kidsgardening: http://www.kidsgardening.com/
Gardening for Kids: http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Glade/3313/

Project Exploration

Some of us are lucky enough to work in a job that fulfills us. Palaeontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon not only love their work. They want to share their excitement with other people. The objective of their nonprofit Project Exploration site is to reduce the distance between natural science and the public, especially populations that have been historically underrepresented in professional science. With the site they want to inspire and empower urban youth and girls through hands-on experiences with palaeontology and natural science. The site is packed with intriguing exercises. What would you pack in a Land Rover to cross the Sahara? How would you dig up a fragile dinosaur skeleton? What's so scary about a dead supercroc? Sereno and Lyon run programs that are most certainly hands-on, training kids in Chicago and taking them to points both east and west for dino hunts. When we were kids, we could go to summer camp. Can we go back and try again?
http://www.projectexploration.org/index.htm

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Sports and Health

One of the Good Guys

While NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman charges people to watch the partycam at his house, Grant Hill has taken a more kid-friendly approach. You won't find much insight into basketball here, although there are scores and schedules. Focusing on the game, education and family, he wraps kids in a safe place with coloring books, puzzles, word games, nicely understated inspirational quotes from people other than himself (Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Muhammed Ali, for goodness sake!), and Orlando Magic news. Is there some corporate content? Well, yes, but frankly it's aimed mostly at adults, who should understand these things, and it's confined to its own clearly labeled section. We liked that his mother, father, and wife earn biographies nearly as long as the star's. We don't buy into much self-promotion among sports figures. What they do on the court and field is what we believe. But, to the extent that Hill is reflected in his site, we think he's probably pretty good company and a better private figure than many of the glitterati.
http://www.granthill.com/home.asp

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

Netsurfer Recommendations

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

A Volcano in My Tummy: Helping Children to Handle Anger
Eliane Whitehouse and Warwick Pudney
New Society Pub; ISBN: 0865713499

One of the most frustrating challenges a parent or teacher faces is an angry child. Do we discourage children from expressing their anger, forcing it even deeper? Or give them license to run roughshod? Anger is a pervasive theme in too many accounts of abusive, depressed, or violent children and adults - anger contained under enormous pressure or anger unrestrained. Rather than trying to suppress anger as a disruptive force, Whitehouse and Pudney urge its healthy use. We need anger, they say, to protect and motivate ourselves. Their guide does more than justify that belief; it provides exercises and activities that teach kids to recognize the source of their anger, and when and how to express that anger both effectively and appropriately. The 25 lessons address specifically or generally problems such as - but not limited to - name-calling, poor sportsmanship, swearing, vandalism, tantrums, sulking, and teasing. There's even advice for running staff meetings about an anger management program. Teachers who don't have the time to deal with ongoing anger - and who does? - can take advantage of the authors' advice for integrating anger management into different curricular areas.

For more selections, check out the Netsurfer Library at http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/

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

Student-Led IEPs: A Guide for Student Involvement

We've seen some pretty sketchy, frankly generic individualized education programs (IEPs) for kids whose teachers are at a loss to know how to identify youngsters' needs or interests, so this fine document earns high grades from us. The paper's own introduction says it. "[T]he special education field has embraced the concept of self-determination, and special education teachers have included students with disabilities in various aspects of their IEPs. However, "[s]uch participation requires that students have sufficient knowledge about IEPs, learn skills related to developing an IEP, and develop skills that will facilitate participation in their IEP meetings. This guide provides suggestions for helping students with disabilities participate in developing their IEPs, present information at IEP meetings, and possibly lead their IEP meetings." You'll need the free Acrobat reader to view the guide.
IEPs: http://www.cec.sped.org/bk/catalog2/student-led_ieps.pdf
Acrobat Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

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

Research for the Masses

Many are familiar with Matt Drudge and his report, but only some are familiar with Matt's brother's site, RefDesk. RefDesk is a storehouse of knowledge at your fingertips, a digital version of your local library's reference desk, hence the name. We don't hear the term 'portal' bandied about as much as we used to, thankfully, but this is a portal if ever there was, a portal's portal, if you will. You can check all of the major wire services, search the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, or get help with your kid 's homework with a few clicks. The site can be a bit overwhelming, so you might want to start with the Top Ten RefDesk Pages link, a 'best of RefDesk' which offers a fabulous assortment of facts, news and fun, an encyclopaedia, an Almanac and more. Yikes, that's a bit overwhelming too. This is a stupendous resource that will surely make it to your bookmarks, but be prepared to be overwhelmed.
http://www.refdesk.com/

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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 Michael Aaron Dennis Beth Lewis Michael Luke Elizabeth Rollins Dov Schwartz William Wilder
NETSURFER EDUCATION © 2002 Netsurfer Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. NETSURFER EDUCATION is a trademark of Netsurfer Communications, Inc.