Primary Computing January 1997
The National In formation Technology in Education Centre (NI TEC) was set up in 1987 to foster the use 01 new technologies in Irish schools, primary and secondary It carries out this role by collecting and disseminating information, and by establishing links with educational bodies. NITEC's activities include the NITEC schools network, educational projects/support, and software distribution. NITEC's on-line sen'ices are currently used by over 400 schools, and the number is growing rapidly
World Wide Web Site
Recently, NITEC has established its presence on the World Wide Web. Its
new site, The Irish Education Web (URL: http://kola.dcu.ie/~iednet/) is
a comprehensive web site containing information on a wide range of education-related
topics, as well as links to other education sites in Ireland and worldwide.
The following categories are covered:
o Schools (primary
and post-primary schools' home
pages
o Educational Projects (e.g. Globe, Young Reporters
for the Environment, Viking Project, Spice Islands Project,
etc)
o Subject Areas (e.g. Maths, Physics, Languages, etc)
o Careers
o Kids
o Education Links
o UnIversities and other Third Level Colleges
o Software
o Youth Information
o The Environment
o Aduft Education
o Special Education
To access this site, simply enter the above address (URL) on your Internet
connection software. (You will need to be registered with NITEC to access
certain parts of this web site). Other NITEC facilities include a Primary
News noticeboard, a Courses Database (information on all courses run by
all third level institutions in Ireland), and an Environment Database
(information on a range of topics relating to the environment e.g. waste
disposal, water/air pollution, etc).
Free Web Site for Schools
In conjunction with Microsoft, NITEC is offering a free Web Site to all
schools who register with NITEC. Schools will be allowed three Web pages
(consisting of a Home Page and two linked pages, plus one graphic such
as a picture/logo). Up to 500Kb of space will be available per school
initially, and this may be increased at a later stage. Further information
is available on the Irish Education Web site, or from NITEC tel: 01-704
5560.
Projects
Projects currently on the Irish Education Web site include the
Globe project, and the Spice islands Voyage project.
The Globe Project (http:llkola.dcu.ie/-nitec/globe.htm) Pupils and teachers from over 3000 schools in 43 countries are working with research scientists to learn more about planet earth, and the global environment. Participating pupils make a core set of environmental observations (e.g. air temperature, precipitation, water termperature and pH, etc.) at or near their schools, and report their measurements to the GLOBE Student Data Archive, via the Internet. Scientists then use this data in their research; they also providefeedback to the pupils involved, to enrich their science education. GLOBE aims to increase the environmental awareness of all individuals, while increasing our scientific understanding of the earth. GLOBE also aims to help participating pupils achieve higher levels of achievement in science and in mathematics.
This is a schools curriculum project which follows the journey of navigator/explorer Tim Severin as he retraces the steps of famous explorer Alfred Russell Wallace in the Spice Islands of Indonesia. The project is co-ordinated by the University of Limerick, and has received financial assistance from the Department of Education, and from Bord na Gaeilge. The involvement of one Irish primary school (Coolderry NS.) in the project, is described elsewhere in this issue~
Software
This category provides links to Shareware.com (a means of locating shareware on the Internet) and to the ZD Net Software -top rated shareware on the Internet, for the PC and Macintosh. Links are also given for Internet Security Software programs (Cybersitter, Net Nanny, and Cyber Patrol) which protect children by restricting access to undesirable Internet sites. With Cyber Patrol for example, you can restrict Internet access to certain times of the day, limit the total time spent on line per day and per week, block access to specific Internet resources/sites by content, block or allow specific Internet resources and sites according to your own preferences, control access to major on-line services and other applications such as games, and allow unrestricted access through use of a password.
Special Education
This category gives information on a Special Education project coordinated
by Pat 0' Neili of the Curriculum Development Centre in
Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. In addition, there is a link to
CRC (the Central Remedial Clinic) and to the Blind Children's
Centre, an excellent US. site for visually handicapped children.
The Environment
Within this category, NITEC hosts the home page for ENFO, the Irish public
information service on information matters. ENFO provides information
on a wide range of environment-related topics (e.g. Recycling in Ireland,
Waste Disposal, The Greenhouse Effect, Hedgerows, Making a Garden Pond,
Farming and Wildlife, etc.) and is an excellent resource for the teaching
of Social and Environmental Studies. Featured here too is An Taisce's
Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) project, an annual project in
which students compete on a national or an international level, by investigating
and reporting on environmental issues in their own localities.
Education Links
This is a particularly useful category for primary teachers. It includes
links to the Department of Education's Home Page (part of the Irish Government's
new WWW information service), EdNet Ireland (a comprehensive education
web site, containing a wide range of educational resources, and links
to Irish schools on the Internet), CESI (the Computer Education Society
of Ireland, a voluntary organisation run by teachers for teachers), RTE
Education Programmes, and Campus World (BT's superb education web site
in the UK).
The highly-rated
Teachers' Network (URL: http:// www.teachnet.org/) is also directly accessible
from this category. This US site boasts '500 of the best teacher-designed,
pupil-centred, award-winning classroom projects (covering all subject
areas) that work, and are available to all teachers to use immediately
in their classrooms'. In mathematics for example, there are some 40 projects
available.
One of these,
Problem Solving (for pupils from 4th-6th class), gives teaching strategies
for solving maths problems stated in language form.This
strategy is applied progressively to increasingly more difficult everyday
problems involving whole numbers, decimals, ratio, fractions, percentages,
probability, etc. Pupils are challenged to solve graded everyday problems
in a way designed to boost their skill, confidence, and feeling of achievement.
Kids
This category contains links to sites which are of educational benefit
to children. They include:
o Uncle Bob's
Home Page
o The Electronic Zoo
o EduWeb (U.K. Primary Schools on-line)
o Kidlink (On-line Discussion Groups)
(Note: See article on Internet Sites for Children elsewhere in this issue)