November 2004 Web Site
Reviews
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| • Art • English Language • General • Health & Wellbeing • Info & Com Tech • Languages • Math(s) • Performance Arts • Science • Social Science • Technology Education • WebQuests • Asia & Asian • Aus & Aboriginal • Christian Education • NZ & Maori • US & African American
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Art |
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The Drawing Board http://www.edbydesign.com/art/drawboard.html This is an interactive drawing board where students can click their mouse on the canvas and create their own digital masterpiece. Ideal for year levels 0-4 RR |
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The Tate Library Online http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/learnonline/infocus.htm The Tate Gallery provides an excellent electronic front door here where students can carry out a simple search, subject search or artist search based on the Tate collections. There are also specialist areas dealing with works, subject and artists as well as imaging and interviews with artists. Ideal for year levels 7-12 RRRR |
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The Victoria & Albert Museum Image Collection http://images.vam.ac.uk/ You may search here for over 18,500 works and thousands more collections. The database covers a wide range of objects under the themes of fashion, sculpture, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photography, textiles . . . This is an excellent resource for both teachers and students. Ideal for year levels 6-10 RRRRR |
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A Collection of Unexpected Photography http://www.filemagazine.com/ What LIFE magazine did for photography in the 60’s and 70s FILE magazine is attempting to repeat in the 21st century. What students will find here is a fantastic collection of some of the world’s most well-known art photographers, presenting the world in a wide range of different formats, taking photography in completely new directions. Inspirational and some brilliant works available here. Ideal for year levels 5-12 RRRRR |
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Art History Goes High-Tech http://www.locl.net/homes/eystr/arthistory/
If you are studying or
teaching art history then this web site created by Mrs E. - an art
history teacher, will provide you with an excellent collection of
resources dealing with "awareness and understanding of art", as well
as topics entitles Renaissance, civil liberty, battlecry, modernism,
environmental, and "writing on the wall". |
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Draw & Colour with Uncle Fred http://www.unclefred.com/
Drawing cartoons is an
excellent way to practice basic shapes and the development of artistic
ideas. This web site presents a step-by-step process for learning to
draw a range of cartoon characters and in the process students can
develop a set of principles, drawing not only cartoons but also
realistic lifeforms and images. |
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The World Art Image Database http://worldart.sjsu.edu/
The World Art Image
Database allows you to search over 35,000 images from throughout the
world. The images are zoomable, allowing high-resolution images to be
made available and you are able to collate your own portfolio of
images to refer to at a later date or allow others to view,
essentially setting up
your own private
collection of images. This is an excellent resource for any art
student. |
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Art History: A Preliminary Handbook http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fiar/hndbkhom.html The Department of Fine Arts at Okanagan University College presents this excellent online Handbook for students studying visual culture. The book looks at the very essence of what art is, the elements that make up any artistic work, evaluation in tests and exams, assignments, reflective questions students can use when viewing a piece, on how to avoid pitfalls in presenting assignments. Although designed for a particular college course this is an excellent resource for all senior art students and teachers. Ideal for year levels 8-12 RRRRR |
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The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
The most comprehensive
and well researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50 volume
"five-foot shelf of books" and the 20 volume shelf of fiction.
Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher,
religion, focal and historical subject through the 20th century. This
is a vast online resource containing international works of fiction
from a wide range of countries. |
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The Online OneLook Reverse Dictionary http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.html
Think of this web site as
a search engine for words and phrases. If you have a word for which
you'd like a definition or translation, we'll quickly shuttle you to
the web-based dictionaries
that define or translate that word. If you don't know how to spell the
word, we'll help you do that too. No word is too obscure - more than 5
million words in more than 900 online dictionaries are indexed by the
OneLook® search engine.
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High School Journalism http://www.highschooljournalism.org
Many students at high
school level get involved with their school newspaper, monthly journal
or annual yearbook and this web site provides them with excellent
resources including motivational material, the essence of the craft,
getting a good story, creating impact as well as providing teachers
with inspirational lesson plans. |
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The University of Adelaide's Electronic Book Archive http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/
The Adelaide University
has collated online more than 700 classic works of literature,
philosophy, science and history. Each work has been carefully
formatted for maximum readability either on-screen or when printed.
The collection is fully searchable. |
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Librarians Index to the Internet: Poetry http://lii.org/search/file/poetry
When searching for good
poetry sites, the archive of links made available here will provide a
wide range of results. With over 30 different genre available here,
there is plenty to choose from. |
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Shakespeare in the Classroom http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/
William Shakespeare's
influence exceeds that of many historical figures. 400 years after
his death, contemporary writers, actors and filmmakers continue to
find inspiration in his work. Yet for many educators, motivating
student interest in Shakespeare remains a challenge. The educational
materials provided here will make teaching Shakespeare an engaging and
exciting learning adventure. |
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The Paperback Revolution http://www.crcstudio.arts.ualberta.ca/paperbacks/
The introduction of the
paperback novel was heralded as an attack on the good taste of the
sophisticated reader! From the launch of the first paperback in 1935
it took until 1960 until the sales (in dollar terms) of paperbacks
exceeded the sales of hardcopy additions. This web site presents the
history of introduction of the paperback and pointers to its success.
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Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary http://www.doubletongued.org/
This United States based
dictionary includes a host of old and newly emerging words. |
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Shakespeare in Quattro http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html
On this site you'll find
the British libraries 93 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed
in Quattro which were printed before the theatres were closed in
1642. This fantastic resource in its original format provides even
greater insight into the works of this creative genius. |
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General & Professional Development |
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Connecting Brain Research with Dimensions of Learning http://www.ascd.org/author/el/2001/november/hardiman.html
By linking what we know
about how the brain works with a framework for teaching and learning,
we can improve the likelihood that various education reforms will
actually help students learn; including students with special-needs.
Recent advances in brain research has provided educators with some
critical keys for unlocking the potential for better teaching and
learning. Unfortunately, however, much of our perceived understanding
of how our minds work is based on supposition and half-truths.
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Electronic Portfolios http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic82.htm
Electronic portfolios are
a creative means of organising, summarising, and sharing artefacts,
information, and ideas about teaching and/or learning, along with
personal and professional growth. This is a reflective process and
the development/creation of the e-portfolio can be a powerful tool in
investigating student knowledge and understanding. This web site
investigates student and teacher electronic portfolios and has a
considerable number of links to articles and web sites. |
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Project-Based Learning http://glef.org/php/keyword.php?id=037
In Project-Based
Learning, students work in teams to explore real-world problems and
create presentations to share on what they have learned. Compared
with learning solely from textbooks (not that any of you do this!),
this approach has many benefits for students including increased
research and problem solving skills, creating a deeper understanding
of the subject matter as well as having increased itself correction
and motivation. |
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The Gateway: Educational Materials http://www.thegateway.org/
The Gateway to
Educational Materials contains detailed descriptions of over 40,000
educational resources found on various United States Federal, state,
University, non-profit and commercial Internet web sites. Read
carefully the copyright considerations for each individual site. |
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Electronic Portfolios: Emerging Practices for Students, Faculty & Institutions http://webcenter1.aahe.org/electronicportfolios/index.html e-Portfolios can be a powerful tool for learning, reflection and assessment. This site looks at the construction of electronic portfolios by students to present and reflect on the work that they have done. It also looks at how faculties start to document and reflect on their own classroom practice. Ideal for teachers RRRRR |
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Shodor Curriculum Materials Online http://www.shodor.org/curriculum/
Teachers will find here
an excellent collection of curriculum materials which can be searched
by grade level, subject or theme. Many of these fully interactive
Java applets as well as additional online resources can be used within
present units of work. |
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Mathematics & Reading Help for Kids http://math-and-reading-help-for-kids.org/article_directory/index.html
Here you will find links
to articles dealing with a variety of children's education topics
including the parent's role in education, how-to tips for parents,
learning disabilities and problems as well as assistance with teaching
children basic mathematical and reading skills. |
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Tipu Ake: Self-Help Resources for Leadership Development http://www.tipuake.org.nz
The Tipu Ake life cycle
is an easily applied, action focus leadership model that exploits New
Zealand style teamwork. The focus here is organisational
transformation and sustainability and in this case the focus is on
schools. Although this process was initiated in a New Zealand
framework, the ideals, philosophy and transformational structures
could be applied to schools or school districts in any country with
equal success. Inspirational stories which question some of our
basic assumptions about organisational philosophy. |
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Dr Helen Barrett’s Electronic Portfolios http://electronicportfolios.org
Dr Helen Barrett is an
international expert on electronic portfolio development for learners
of all ages and she presents at this web site a wide range of
resources, Blogs and Wikki’s, metaphors and research papers dealing
with every aspect of the use of electronic portfolios in education and
citizenship setting. |
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Information Inquiry for Teachers http://www.eduscapes.com/info/models.htm
Many educators use
Information inquiry as the foundation of all "traditional content
areas". Rather than focusing on individual skills, many educators
prefer to use the problem solving or inquiry based approach in the
process of working with information and creating communication. This
web site deals with this approach by demonstrating a number of
different ways that teachers can assist students in developing
information inquiry processes. |
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Teaching Thinking Skills http://www.aare.edu.au/99pap/mel99174.htm DEAD LINK
This paper investigates
the teaching of thinking through description and analysis of the
infusion approach, as exemplified by the work of Robert Swaetz, David
Perkins and Sandra Parks, After consideration of a substantive
contentious issue raised by the analysis, the paper considers the
logic of curriculum decision-making in relation to the choice of ways
of teaching thinking. This is an excellent background paper based on
the work of three of the foremost researchers in the area of applied
thinking in an education settings. |
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The Design of Learning Environments http://books.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html/131.html In this chapter of an online article ("How People Learn: The Brain, Mind, & Experience, & School) the authors discuss implications of new knowledge about learning for the design of learning environments, as applied to schools. Learning theory does not provide a simple recipe for designing effective learning environments: similarly, physics constraints do not dictate how to build a bridge! This excellent article is relevant to all schools no matter how long ago they were constructed _ THIS DOESN’T sound GOOD MARK!. Some simple remediation work can make a huge difference to learning environments in the 21st century. Ideal for teachers RRRRR |
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Virtual Teaching Aids Become a Reality http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,10577,1314022,00.html Virtual Reality is one of the last great challenges in the technology world, and there are already programs out there that allow students to work in virtual reality worlds. This article presents some background on this, and
how this technology is
being used in schools to not only motivate students at a better allow
them understand complex concepts. |
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Teaching Thinking Skills http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/6/cu11.html
"Perhaps most importantly
in today's information age, thinking skills are viewed as crucial for
educated persons to cope with a rapidly changing world. Many
educators believe that specific knowledge will not be as important to
tomorrow's workers and citizens as the ability to learn and make sense
of new information"
Deborah Gough. |
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All Learn http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/
This web site presents an
extensive library of free online resources with interactive
components. Created in a partnership between Oxford, Stanford and
Yale universities, the resources here are excellent and provide a
wonderful resource for teachers creating multimedia resources for
students to use in order to answer clever, fertile, open, higher-order
thinking questions. |
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Health & Wellbeing |
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The American Council on Exercise: FitKids http://www.acefitness.org/ofk/index.cfm
Teachers will find an
excellent collection of youth and fitness links available from this
web site as well as a youth outreach program encouraging young people
to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a reasonable level of fitness.
With obesity rapidly becoming one of the main childhood/youth issues,
this site contains a wealth of information. With about 15 percent of
children aged 6-19 years being seriously overweight, this is becoming
a major focal point for educators. |
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Mary/Bob Quits! http://www.maryquits.com http://www.bobquits.com
Mary/Bob started smoking
in school and was soon hooked into the habit of smoking. The focus of
this web site is in following Mary/Bob as they attempt to quit the
habit forever. The web site deals with real people and what is a
little bit different here is that the site follows the impact of both
these people’s smoking not only on their own health and well-being but
also the impact on their friends and family. |
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LifeWorks http://science.education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
This web site focuses on
health and medical science careers. With over 100 different career
descriptions (which are fully searchable), this web site provides an
excellent resource for students looking for "real life" case studies.
Each career is seen through the eyes of someone who is actually
involved in that career. Careers include physical therapy, and
medical assistance, surgeon, epidemiologist, biomedical engineer . . .
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The Food Timeline http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food.html
Have you ever wondered
what the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the New World? Or
how about how Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? Or who invented
the potato chip and why? And did Peking duck originate in Peking?
This excellent Food Timline places the discoveries and the
developments of food items into a format that is easily readable and
absolutely fascinating. Who would have thought that fried chicken
(1st century) preceded the development of guacamole (14th century)!
Fascinating. |
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Violence in Sport http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/vt/vt4.html This Australian research paper investigates one of the major shortcomings of sporting activity: violence. Australia is renowned for sporting prowess, and on a per capita basis would have easily won the last two Olympic Games events. The drive to succeed and the intensity of the environments can often lead to violence on the sports field, the court, the track or the pool. This excellent paper addresses the concerns over violence, presents possible causes and issues as well as anger management strategies that would help reduce violence in the sporting arena. Ideal for year levels 7-12 RRRR |
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Games & Icebreakers http://www.thesourcefym.com/games
If you are looking for
games and icebreakers for camps, youth group, activities or just to
break up the day then you'll find an excellent collection here. |
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The National Deaf Education Centre: Learning Resources http://www.clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/MSSDLRC/index.htm
As well as the centre’s
physical resources, there is also an excellent collection of online
resources for anyone involved in either having a deaf or partially
deaf student in their classroom. These students present profound
challenges and the resources here will assist teachers in ensuring
that their learning and the learning of the rest of the class is not
hampered by lack of knowledge of what resources are available.
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The International ICT Education Conference Calendar http://www.theconferencecalendar.com/default.cfm
International conference
attendance for teachers has changed the way that teachers teach and
how schools are managed primarily through the cross-pollination of
ideas across the globe. In order to find out what is happening where
as far as conferences are concerned then this is an excellent
repository. Another excellent source for ICT Education conferences
can be found at
http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/ |
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MS Office Clipart Media Homepage http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us
If you are looking for
additional clipart to upload into your Office program then you'll find
a huge collection here based around over 50 different themes. |
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The Recall Toolbar http://www.recalltoolbar.com
Recall Toolbar is a
personal search engine that helps you instantly find the needle that
you're trying to find in the haystack of other pages you've already
visited. This Toolbar creates a local index of pages on your hard
drive once you visit them and then allows you to search these pages
simply and easily rather than having to remember the day you visited
that site when using the page history capability in the browser. An
excellent and very user-friendly free download. |
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TechWorld http://www.techworld.com/
This site is described as
United Kingdom's infrastructure and network knowledge centre and
rightly so. There are articles galore here dealing with all aspects
of networking and infrastructure developments, future possibilities
and present-day issues in terms of security, management and delivery
of new technologies. |
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Designing e-Learning Environments, Resources & Pedagogy http://www.e-learningcentre.ac.uk/eclipse/Resources/designing.htm DEAD LINK These resources are concerned with designing e-learning solutions; both formal, informal, synchronous and asynchronous. The articles also discuss issues ranging from ease of application, design principles, instructional strategies and deployment. Ideal for teachers RRRRR |
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Voice & Data Integration for School Networks http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/reports/integration/ Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is having an increasing impact on school systems around the world. The reason for this is that schools can use their broadband Internet connectivity to place phone calls globally without having to pay a telecoms supplier. It also means that schools can make use of software based phone systems rather than traditionally expensive electronic/mechanical systems. This paper deals with the issues associated with using this technology. Ideal for teachers RRRRR |
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Data Rich BUT Information Poor http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/reports/datamgmtandnclb/index.cfm In spite of the computer revolution, too many schools remain data rich and information poor. The prime reason for this is that schools can’t easily get at the data they need, in order to interrogate it because many of the Information Systems simply cannot talk to each other. Interoperability of student management systems, intranets, knowledge NET’s and additional student database information is critical in order to avoid duplication of entry and so that the data can be interrogated in order to maximise its usefulness. Ideal for educators RRRRR |
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Jet Links http://www.manfred-dahlhoff.de/JetLinks/download
Jet Links is a free
download which allows you to make available to students their
bookmarks from a range of four different browsers. Very useful.
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| Mathematics |
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WIS-WEB: Mathematics Applets http://www.fi.uu.nl/wisweb/welcome_en.html
The Freudenthal Institute
for Secondary Education presents here a wide range of excellent
mathematics applets. The focus of these applets is using mathematics
in real-life contexts. There is everything here from 3-D object
viewers, three-dimensional objects, estimation, flowcharts, fractions,
geometric algebra . . . . . An excellent source of resources for
mathematics teachers to use on the Intranet or knowledge NET. |
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N-Rich: Mathematical Problems, Games & Articles http://www.nrich.maths.org/ Students and teachers will find an excellent collection of mathematical problems, games and articles wrapped up and hanging in the branches and waiting to be picked off! These are excellent activities that can be used to extend mathematics students across numerous topics and themes. Each month students will find a new collection of challenges and all the past issues are archived, providing an excellent resource base for teachers and students. Ideal for year levels 6-10 RRRRR |
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Wizz Kids Maths http://www.wizzkids.com/maths.htm DEAD LINK
This web site contains a
collection of graded mathematical problems for students, with
activities including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,
statistics, fractions, symmetry . . . There are problem sets for all
age groups available from the site. |
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Count-On http://www.counton.org/
Mathematics makes much
more sense when you can visualise the concept that is being taught.
This web site contains an excellent collection of online adventures,
activities, games and curiosities which is updated monthly. Developed
in the United Kingdom, these activities are well researched and would
provide endless ideas and stimulation for students developing
conceptual frameworks in mathematics. |
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Mighty Mouthwatering Mathematics http://mighty-mm-math.caffeinated.org/
What used to be M & M’s
(until the Mars Co. reminded them that it was their trademark), is now
Mighty Mouthwatering Mathematics (M& M& M). Students and teachers
will find a tremendous collection of mathematics activities based
around fractions and percentages using M&M’s (candy covered chocolate
pieces), which makes the activity all more fascinating to students.
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Buying a Dream Car http://www.microsoft.com/education/dreamcar.aspx
This practical
spreadsheet lesson offers easy answers to life’s perplexing maths
problems like: "How much will my Dream Car really cost after
financing?
"Students can
calculate the
cost
of purchasing
of
their own Lamborghini
sports car and determine if the price is really worth the investment.
This is an excellent activity for students that have some basic
knowledge of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and can browse the web.
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Ole Miss: Problems of the Week http://www.olemiss.edu/mathed/brain/
Each week a collection of
mathematical problems are placed on a web site for students to
complete and submit. There are also many past problems and links to
additional questions and contests. The questions tend to be one is
that will extend capable maths students. |
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All Experts: Mathematics http://www.allexperts.com/browse.asp?Meta=8
This is an excellent free
question-and-answer service dealing with algebra, calculus,
differential equations, geometry, number theory, probability and
statistics, topology and word problems. |
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Make Movies http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stan.hayward/makemovies/
This web site presents an
excellent collection of animation lessons which investigates movement
studies and an entire animation curriculum looking at techniques,
equipment and materials. The site also contains background
information on animation scriptwriting and the skill sets required in
order to use the tools of animation. |
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Seattle Children's Theatre –Story Drama http://www.sct.org/new_tickets/drama_in_your_Classroom.pdf Drama is
different to theatre. There is often a fine line drawn between the
two. Creative drama may be crafted into a piece of theatre and the
very elements of characters and conflict and interpersonal
relationships are the same in both. But DRAMA focuses on the process
of dramatic activity as an educational tool while THEATRE focuses on
the product of performance and a technical skill in which not all
students will excel. |
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Songs for Teaching http://www.songsforteaching.com/
Creative
teachers can use music to teach content across the curriculum to
students of all ages. A host of educational experts bring you tested
ideas for using the magic of music in your lesson plans. Educational
songs from popular artists are presented by subject. |
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Oboes for idgets http://www.oboesforidgets.com/
This
website is designed with the "oboe-challenged" in mind. Hopefully you
will find some helpful hints and resources. Sections here deal with
Tips 1(repairs, bad
habits, reeds);
Tips 2 (more
repairs, bad habits, reeds);
Links(to other oboe
pages, info);
Suggested Repertoire
(methods, solos) . .
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music in the classroom http://www.advancedbrain.com/resource_center/articles/Article_Music_in_Classroom.pdf.
Can music in the classroom make a
difference? Welsh science teacher Anne Savan couldn't believe the
difference it made in her chemistry lab. When the government insisted
that all children complete the standard National Curriculum, Savan
became concerned. For some reason her new group of pupils in the mid
1990's was the most challenging ever. |
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Free play music http://www.freeplaymusic.com/
The
Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End
Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres,
available for download either
on-line
or for
purchase on CD.
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Using drama texts in the classroom http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/literature/drama_texts.shtml
In this
article, Henry
Robinson
defines
what he means by language learning through drama/theatre texts,
outlines some of the benefits it can bring to the language learning
classroom and some of the differing methods and approaches that can be
utilised to fully exploit the potential of drama and theatre texts.
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Creative Teaching through Drama http://www.angelfire.com/ego/edp303/
This page is designed to
provide the groundwork for teachers looking to deepen the educational
experience in their classroom, and to help teachers who are looking
for new ways to reach their students in mainstream subjects. The focus
of this site is to provide a basic understanding of the mechanics of
classroom drama and how to apply it to your classroom. |
| Science |
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The Foliage Network: Autumn/Fall http://www.foliagenetwork.com/
Although focused
primarily on the United States, this is an excellent web site for
students from all countries when looking at the transition from summer
growth through to the bare branches of winter. This network provides
accurate foliage information for various locations across the United
States. |
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First Science http://www.firstscience.com/site/home.asp First Science is a collection of science articles, science news and even some science poetry. The articles tend to deal with emerging scientific discove |