The Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, bringing exhibits, resources, and the fun of a museum visit, right to your desktop. Leonardo da Vinci Museum, his famous paintings. The Missouri Botanical Garden, which has develops educational materials for elementary schools.
Imagine studying geography and or history by examining a map,
and using point and click approaches to go to a location.
Then learning about the history, culture, current attractions,
and perhaps seeing pictures of the current area and so on.
Virtual Tourist and Virtual Tourist II provide adventure
throughout the world. Go to the world map and click on the
area you would like to visit and study.
What about going to the Moon and follow NASA's space shuttles,
see the most recent pictures of planets and stars not easily
available to everyone. The place:
Home
of NASA's K-12 . Which mission is to provide support and
services for schools, teachers and students, to fully utilize
the Internet, and its underlying information technologies,
as a basic tool for learning. They supported by the NASA
Information Infrastructure Technology Applications project, and the High Performance Computing and Communication program. K-12 Internet Initiative projects are supported by NASA centers around the country.
Current events can provide many educational experiences. For example, visit NBC News in Chicago, CBS, C-SPAN, Fox Network, and CNN Interactive: All these television networks provide a valuable tool for teachers and students. Newspapers such as: USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Dallas Morning News, are now available on line.
The Internet is helpful when looking for information in other languages, international news or just curious about the rest of the world. The Human Language Page, World Constitutions, U.S Department of State, .French Page, with links in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. Spanish Lesson on Line, for excellent reinforcement in learning Spanish.
Internet in Mexico,
just one of the many Mexican site - in Spanish.
By the Wire, An Italian computer newsletter. WWW in Deutschland, in German with information about cities, towns and web sites. Russian Information. A clearinghouse for information concerning Russia, CIS and eastern Europe with links to the Ukraine and Moscow.
The Kids on the Web provides a number of experiences for students. A number of materials are listed in Internet Resources for the K-12 Classroom. Organization of Children's Literature can be helpful in locating and keeping up-to-date with the numerous children's books being published.
The Global
Schoolhouse Project which goal is to build a communication
between schools. Their WWW server (Craighead, 1994) provides
an asynchronous electric spine as a repository of diverse
information, including a description of the project's goals,
a list of its participants organized by school with home pages
for teachers and students, and access to mailing lists and curriculum.
A great number of schools have started to make school information accessible to parents and community. With new mechanisms, students work is available throughout the WWW. Some examples are: Grand River Elementary School (1994) in Lansing, Michigan and Hillside Elementary School (1994) in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Both of these schools assists students in creating their own personal WWW pages. The Rice School/La Escuela Rice, in Houston Texas, is a product of a collaboration with Rice University. The Rice School offers a unique educational program based in innovation and creativity in all aspects.
The Web66 project is designed to facilitate the introduction of this technology into K-12 schools. Webb66 is maintained through the University of Minnesota. The goals of this project are:
- To help K-12 educators learn how to set up their own Internet servers.
- To link K-12 WWW servers, educators and students at those schools.
- To help K-12 educators find and use K-12 appropriate resources on the WWW.
The Web66: WWW School Registry allows schools to see, learn, and communicate about other teachers on the World Wide Web. As of August, 1996 there are over 3,500 schools on the web!
Government information provides a treasure trove for those
learning to understand our society. Through accessing government
information and statistics, students can re-evaluate newspaper
editorials, and study the human impact on the environment,
past, present and future.
The
United States Geological Survey (1996) provides information
and curriculum units. Another example is the
United States Bureau of the Census (1996), which publishes data and analyses through the WWW. Students can learn more about our government by visiting the White House and/or seeing the text of bills and current information about Congress and Legislative Information on the Internet, making the White House more approachable than ever before. There is now a guest book for which people can send comments. Students can explore government sites, thus making the government much more real to them. Furthermore, such connections can, in fact, make the government much more "for the people" and "by the people" through such direct connections.
The potential for communication networks to amplify the reach of libraries is being pursued by many libraries, as can be seen in the variety of offerings on the WWW. A noteworthy site is the North Carolina State University library (Morgan, 1994), which in addition to books, provides links to popular periodicals like Mother Jones (1994). Perhaps the vision of on-line information access for the "information superhighway" is placing the Library of Congress on the network. The difficulties in converting current vast holdings of paper books into digital media also illustrates the distance that must be covered. However, the first step in this journey has already been taken as can be seen by the Library of Congress's Home Page (1996). The general vision is simple and powerful: place the holdings of the Library of Congress on-line coupled with flexible search engines, thus providing unprecedented access. Students could pursue virtually any topic, no matter how obscure or popular, without having to worry that the book is not in the inventory of their local library or had already been checked out.
Some sites are focusing on developing intellectual skills, such as problem solving and critical thinking (eg., Odyssey of the Mind, 21st CenturyProblem Solving, and Swarthmore's Geometry Form--creator of Geometer'sSketchpad. Some sites are emphasizing visualization such as the CoVisProject at Northwestern, Mathematical visualization, and Interactive On-LineGeometry.
IBM Corporation has develop a home page to provide teachers with teaching units, which utilizes Internet resources according to months, some eg.
July's activities;
It figures!
This activity utilizes Internet resources
in researching information relating to the history
of mathematics, real world uses of math skills,
and computational problems. (Grades 3-6)
* View teacher materials
* View student activities
* Download Intrnet mathematics activity
* Interesting mathematics web sites
June's activities;
The three branches of government.
This activity utilizes Internet resources
in researching information relating to the three
branches of government, the power and responsibility
each branch holds.
* View teacher materials
* View student activities
* Download Internet government activity
* Interesting US government web sites
Source: IBM, 1996)
Other examples from IBM Corporation are: -
- It's a "map" thing. This activity utilizes Internet resources in researching materials relating to geographic skills and comprehension of information found on maps.
-
-
- Into the garden. This activity helps students to distinguish between observations and inferences based upon scientific inquiry into plant growth by growing a plant locally and observing one grown at the Tele-Garden Web site.
-
- Dinosaurs. This activity utilizes the Internet in researching information relating to fossils, dinosaurs, and paleontology.
-
-
- Olympic fever.This activity uses resources on the Internet to educate, excite, and involve students in the upcoming Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.
-
- The sky's the limit! This activity utilizes the Internet to research clouds, rainbows, and other weather related phenomena found in the sky.
-
- Mr. President - Who are you? This s activity familiarizes students with the Presidents of the United States through analysis and research of the events and times in which they held office.
(IBM, 1995).
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Due to the individualized medium of publishing on the WWW, its
diversity nearly defies exposition. Examples related with
distant learning are used to illustrate this enormous array
of information. However, these examples can barely scratch the
surface of what is available. This paper is to show utility,
rather than to provide even a representative summary.
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which supports an educational program for teachers to develop Internet skills; created engaged learning curriculum projects; and prepared staff development plans to disseminate their knowledge throughout their districts.
- Yahoo contains links to many Internet resources organized into subject categories. If you have ever had trouble finding omeone's e-mail address, try the Four 11 Directory Services or WhoWhere? instead. You can also add your own e-mail address and other information about yourself to the Four11 or WhoWhere? directories.
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Distance Education Clearinghouse located at the University of Wisconsin Extension. This Web site links to all levels of distance education.
- FlexLearn Systems Center For Distance Education located in Fairbanks, Alaska provides an on-line catalog that features more than 100 accredited correspondence courses for working professional students. The center is a division of the University of Alaska.
- Cyber Hi School This is a unique high school that is conducted entirely on-line via the Net sponsored by Web Communications.
- WebCrawler . This is a searchable database that you can use the words distance education and it will search up to 500 Web sources and display them in linked form so you can point to them. The only catch is that the number of possible links are over 800!! .
- National Teacher's Enhancement Network has a number of areas of interest to distance learning. It's main focus features in-service on-line courses for high school and community college teachers. It is headquartered at Montana State University. The National Teachers Enhancement Network offers graduate-credit science and mathematics courses to teachers nationally. Teachers are able to participate in the tele computing courses from convenient home or work locations by dial-up modem connections or Internet access. The Network provides teachers with high quality graduate science courses taught by university scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. It also enhances professional networking nationwide between science teachers and active research scientists.
- HTML Tutorial at Maricopa Community College. A friendly tutorial to learn HTML. Ten lessons all together.
- Principio Project An integrated, interdisciplinary, and globally networked way of learning designed for students entering the 21st century. A two year curricular option for sophomores at Peddie.
- Yahoo's Education linkage is perhaps the most useful single sources of references for educators. Actually, the entire Yahoo Web Site is very useful for any topic. This one is an absolute must link in any list. The links are by subject and the number of sites at each listing are indicated in parenthesis.
- Tech and Distance Education Branch Courtesy of the Ministry of Education Province of British Columbia, Canada.
- TeamNet Collaborative Distance Learning Projects sponsored by Los Angeles County School District. TEAMS Distance Learning is administered by and is a service of the Los Angeles County Office of Education. This is a site for classroom projects to be performed on-line.
- AGN Home Page South African Growth Network of Distance Learning. Africa Growth Network is a distance learning organization delivering training and education programs through satellite and decoder transmission technology to the learner in the Union of South Africa.
- ICS Learning Systems Home Page International Classroom Systems claims to be a world leader in Distance Learning.
- Electronic Classroom This site gives you a great view as to what an electronic classroom really entails situated at the University of Bergen in Norway. Distributed Electronic Classrooms are used for distance education. During the 1995 spring semester, two language courses were given in the electronic classrooms in Bergen and at the University of Oslo.
- Virtual Campus This learning center is sponsored by Apple Computer and focuses on Mac software and distant learning hardware and software for the Mac.
- AskERIC Home Page-Educational Resources. Any resource search in education will yield a mountain of info here.
- Foundation of International Tutoring- Will gear up for operation in Aug. Anyone who would like to function as an on-line tutor or anyone needing a tutor are welcome to apply at this site.
- The QFORM and QSCORE on the Web. This is a way of developing multiple choice questions and scoring them via a web site.
- Collaborative Learning This is the web site of the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis). Today, CoVis is comprised of thousands of students, over one hundred teachers, and dozens of researchers all working together to find new ways to think about and practice science in te classroom.
- Eric Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and communication. Of particular interest is the distance education materials and the new Internet course materials found at this site. Steve Stroup is the User Services Coordinator for the ERIC Clearinghouse On Reading, English, and Communication.
- Dallas County Community College District This site is the home page site of one of the largest and most prolific community college systems in the United States. It has seven campuses plus a Telecommunication Center. Three of the seven campuses have their own home page sites, Richland College , North Lake College, and El Centro College.
- There is an Electronic University Network (EUN) The Electronic University Network's accredited colleges and universities offer 32 degrees -- undergraduate, MBA, M.S., and Ph. D. Those not seeking a degree can choose from more than 300 courses in every college-level discipline, plus non credit continuing education courses. The EUN has been partnering with accredited schools to offer college online since 1984.
(Source: Logan, 1996).
These are but a sampling of materials currently available at the time ofthis writing. The World Wide Web is still in its infancy, and it is anticipatedthat many other excellent materials will evolve. I, like many other teachers plan to keep our own home page, to publish work from the students and interact with others worldwide.
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METHODOLOGY
The researcher used the electronic catalogs of The White House, The Library of Congress, The Database AskEric, IBM Corporation, and North Central Regional Educational Laboratory to review the literature available on engaged learner and the World Wide Web. Many sources from the Internet were also accessed related with the use of the WWW in education, the need to reform curriculum, and the need to use the new technology in preparation for the students for the 21st century.
To obtain information in how technology is use in education surveys were posted at: ed.linc.all, Teacher 2 Teacher POSTINGS, NOVAE, hub.mail.service, and all internet assistants listserves during June/July of 1996.
Less than expected responses were received. Those that responded were elementary and secondary teachers, media center directors, technology coordinators, computer resource teachers, special and gifted education teachers, library paraprofessionals, internet specialists teachers, one vice director of high school, two university professors, and one school board member. The researcher also directl contacted schools posted at Web66, asking for their help with the survey.
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