The Internet and educational television:
BBC educational programming is substantiated by additional material on the Internet. A programme videoed and used in the classroom can be supported by handouts printed out from http://www.bbc.co.uk/education
There is also the BBC learning station, an interactive site aimed at teachers, parents and pupils using the British syllabus. Many of the ideas can be applied in Irish schools, but it would be m ore valuable if RTE backed its educational programmes in a similar manner, honed specifically with the Irish syllabus in mind.
RTE's service now includes very little apart from programme makers' contact addresses, competitions and listings of future broadcasts. See http:www.rte.ie/tv/education/index.html for the full extent. Changes are in the pipeline, according to RTE, but not until at least September.
Meanwhile, several links from RTE sites are worth a look. Leaving Cert and Junior Cert past papers can be accessed, for example. Educational programmes broadcast, although not made by RTE, do have web pages. Newton's Apple has a comprehensive home page with links pertinent to each programme in the series. It suggests activities and provides handouts to go with them. See for yourself at http://www.ktca.org/newtons/index.html
RTE is involved with a project allowing schools to access semi-interactive Internet sites through a television. EdCast will function on the same principle as Aertel, and the scheme will be piloted shortly.
Links, research and interactive learning sites: Homework and heaven - words rarely uttered together, but the Homework Heaven web page justifies the combination. Ten outstanding educational webpages are featured weekly, but not forgotten once their time is up.
Over 100 innovative sites are meticulously archived into subject categories. Reach the pearly gates at http://www.mthhs.mtlib.org/hwh.html The selection includes JS Bach's home page (http://www.jsbach.org/) which details his life, works, recordings and parallels with contemporary musicians.
The contemporary world is the concern of http://www.howstuffworks.com/ Describing the inner-workings of mobile phones, car engines and cruise missiles, this site realises that children are curious about the world around them. References to Star Trek and graphics help to create an informal air of accessibility.
Unfortunately some of the Homework Heaven -listed sites assume that the whole class has access to a personal computer, but not every school is that fortunate yet. This obstacle can be overcome by hooking a computer up to an overhead projector, or simply taking the ideas, graphics and some text from the pages and presenting it in your own way.
Other sites with useful links are: http//www.brainstation.com/ andhttp://www.syndicate.com
Do-It-Yourself Sites:
The controls are in the teacher's hands at the Puzzlemaker site. It stores programmes to create crosswords, anagram puzzles, maths squares and mazes from clues and information the teacher concocts.
Quick quizzes can be printed as handouts to introduce, revise or simply offer a topic in a different format. The site at www.puzzlemaker.com should be in every teacher's bookmark file.
For weary classroom warriors lacking inspiration in winter months, visiting
http://www.pacificnet.net/dex.html would be worthwhile. Its mission is to help teachers to help teachers. Lesson plans and ideas can be sent to the page which organises them under various headings such as arts, science, special education and social sciences. The drawback is that some contributors ideas are not particularly special, but intermittently gems can be found among a host of generally workable ideas.
Sites of Ireland:
Most of these sites were designed in the United States or, increasingly, in Britain. Local Irish sites are still being constructed and, while holding promise, remain coldly unresponsive right now.
http//www.ucd.ie/learnnet/web-watch.html provides links to the scanty Irish educational sites.
http://www.scoilnet.ie/english/htm/home/index.htm houses a skeletal Scoilnet, outlining intentions for providing resources, lesson plans, teaching tips and a help service. Web-page builder John Hurley of the National Council for Technology in Education (NCTE) expects the site to be "well populated" by the end of January and fully operational in March. The present site is, he says, a prototype designed to attract responses from teachers advising the NCTE on what they want from the Internet. It's aimed at schools with one computer accessing the Internet, reflecting reality in many Irish schools, but will be adjusted as education in Ireland becomes more technology-orientated.
The NCTE web page is worth a look at now, not just to make suggestions but also to look at the currently active sections of it. Primary schools can download topical quizzes and interactive puzzles. More interesting, though, are the links to schools that have already set up web sites.
Many of them are spectacular, such as Gaelscoil Chill Mhantain's at http//ireland.iol.ie Teachers are to have considerable input into the NCTE site - a panel of teachers will undertake the upkeep of certain parts of it.
The aim is to make the site active, for teachers to submit their lesson plans to be stored in a searchable database on-line. If teachers use and add to the service this web page could become one of the most important educational resource for Irish teachers on the Internet.
