Newspapers in Education online

[Mark Hass <Ednetnews@AOL.COM>]

Dear LM_Net readers: I thought many of you would like to see the
many recent additions to The Online Educator. The most notable is
the Newspapers in Education lesson plan, which appears in the
printed and e-mail editions of the journal, as well as on the
publication's Web site.

I've attached a current issue for your consideration and comment.

Thanks.

Mark Hass
Publisher

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The Online Educator......April 1995......(V2.N4).......Part 1 of 2

You are reading the e-mail version of The Online Educator, a
journal dedicated to making the Internet an accessible, useful
classroom tool. This month, it is in two parts. This is part one.

Subscription information is at the end of the two-part file. Send
your comments, questions, news submissions, and requests to
reproduce any portion of this publication to: ednetnews@aol.com.

In this issue:

*Using computers to expand teaching skills.
*Newspapers in Education: Exploring the "truth."
*Earth Day and unique approaches to teaching science and the
environment.
*Net Lessons: Go fly a kite.
*Ednetnews: Survey finds many schools have no classroom phone
lines. Then again, there's some good news, too.
*A reader asks: Is the Internet just hype?
_____________________________________________

***Computers: Don't think that they're just for the kids;
       Use yours to sharpen teaching skills***

In many classrooms, students are sometimes the only ones who use
the computers. Many educators don't go near the machines unless
they are teaching a specific lesson or supervising students in a
project.

Don't let that happen to you. Your online school computer isn't just
for your kids. It can do much more than serve up lessons.

It can deliver hundreds of ready-to-use lesson plans on dozens of
subjects directly to your classroom. These plans, prepared by
professional educators and scholars, are separated by grade level
and subject.

A good source for lesson plans is the Gopher server at Syracuse
University. To get there, point your Web browser at:
gopher://ericir.syr.edu:70/11/Lesson.

Your computer can also become your personal "news wire service"
to help you stay informed about current issues in education.
Subscribing to USENET newsgroups is an easy way to keep up with
the latest education news being discussed by your colleagues around
the world.

Some USENET newsgroups worth exploring: are:
alt.education.distance;  k12.chat.teacher; k12.ed.art;
k12.ed.business; k12.ed.comp.literacy; k12.ed.life-skills;
k12.ed.math; k12.ed.music; k12.ed.science; k12.ed.soc-studies;
k12.ed.special; k12.edu.life-skills (especially for school counselors);
and k12.lang.art .

Your computer can even provide you with free software to help you
be more efficient at work.  There are many programs available to
help you better manage your time in school.

A good place to look for teacher-oriented software is in the SimTel
repository at Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan. You
can get there via FTP at this address: rigel.acs.oakland.edu.

Many IBM-based programs reside in the SimTel/msdos/teaching
directory. If you have a Web browser, point it at:
http://www.acs.oakland.edu/oak/oak.html.

And, finally, your classroom computer can become your
communication link to colleagues from around the world who can
help you solve problems and even participate in distance-learning
projects. Joining listserv mailing lists is an excellent way to
communicate with like-minded educators around the world.

Some listservs of interest to educators include:

-- Cosndisc (Consortium for School Networking Discussion List).
To subscribe, send a message to: listproc@yukon.cren.org.
Leave the subject field blank. Type: subscribe cosndisc <Your
Name> in the message field.

-- Ednet. To subscribe, send a message to: listserv@nic.umass.edu.
Leave the subject field blank. Type: subscribe ednet <Your Name>
in the message field.

-- Kidsphere. To subscribe, send a message to: kidsphere-
request@vms.cis.pitt.edu. Type any message asking to be added to
the list.

-- K12admin (A list for K-12 educators interested in educational
administration). To subscribe, send a message to:
listserv@suvm.syr.edu. Leave the subject field blank. Type:
subscribe k12admin <Your Name> in the message field.

(For more information about subscribing to e-mail lists, see Online
Basics, Page 12).
_________________________________________________
NEWSPAPERS IN EDUCATION LESSON PLAN: How to use
multiple information sources in your classroom.

The Online Educator is happy this month to introduce a new regular
feature designed to help you teach a most valuable lesson. Children
will need many skills to succeed in the Knowledge Age that futurists
and educators insist is upon us. One of the most important will be
the ability to use multiple sources of information.

The Newspapers in Education Lesson Plan will teach your students
to use online resources and the daily newspaper to draw a broader
understanding of an item or an issue in the news. This week's
lesson:

***Comparative media and the O.J. Simpson trial***

Many of us have had the experience of being part of an event that is
later reported in the news. We read a story in a newspaper or watch
a television news report and say to ourselves: "That's not what
happened."

Even trained professional journalists can come away from a news
event with different versions of the "truth." We all make selections
about what we notice, what we recall and what we recount to
others. Good journalists generally make the most objective
assessments and actively try to present a balanced account of what
happened.

Still, variations take place in what reporters and editors call the
"angle" or the "play" of a story.

To illustrate that point, why not use the O.J. Simpson trial as an
example. Divide the students in your classroom (this exercise is
appropriate for students in grades six and above) into four groups:
the online group, the local newspaper group, the national newspaper
group and the television group.

Have each of the "media" groups monitor a single day of trial
coverage in their respective areas. They should summarize what
happened and be prepared to present the basic facts to their fellow
students. Who testified? What was most important about that day's
testimony?

A few days later, have the online group go to Time Inc.'s World
Wide Web site
(http://pathfinder.com/pathfinder/features/OJ/nbc/trans/latest.html)
and obtain a transcript of trial testimony for the same day. It
generally takes several days before testimony is posted. On a recent
Sunday, for example, the previous Wednesday's was the latest
transcript available.

Ask the online group to prepare a summary based on reading what
actually happened. Have all the groups present their versions of
courtroom events. Then engage your students in a discussion about
the differences they found.

Discussion questions:

-- Which version of events is correct?
-- What factors led to the creation of differing versions?
-- Which source of information do they believe is most reliable.
Someone who was there, a newspaper or television? Why?

As a follow-up, invite a reporter or editor from your local
newspaper to discuss this issue with your students.

Once your students complete this process, they will have a much
better understanding of how to assess news and information, and
they'll never read a newspaper or watch television news in quite the
same way.
_________________________________________________
NET LESSONS: Practical ideas for taking your classroom online.

***April showers may heighten interest in weather studies***

The spring season is a perfect time to introduce weather-related
projects and topics into your curriculum. This year, you can use
your school computer to bring tornadoes, rain and even satellite
weather photos into your classroom.

Connecting to the Institute for Disaster Research Gopher at Texas
Tech University is a nice (and safe!) way to get close to a tornado.
Connect by pointing your Gopher client at: gopher.ttu.edu. You'll
find a text-based resource for your students on the destructive
nature of wind.

If you're looking for weather pictures, check out Weather World on
the University of Illinois Daily Planet Web site. Point your Web
browser at: http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu. There are hundreds of
images at this site.

Your students also will enjoy the Electronic Textbook located here.
The ET allows them to point-and-click their way through lessons on
various weather-related topics. There is also a nice weather unit for
grades 2-4, which includes plans for integrating social studies, math,
drama, art and geography into units on weather.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Weather Radar Lab,
your students can learn how radar works and how to read those
moving weather maps they see on the television news. Point your
Web browser at: http://graupel.mit.edu/Radar_Lab.html to connect.

Another wonderful site for weather photos is the Purdue Weather
Processor at http://thunder.atms.purdue.edu. Choose from a
stunning variety of images for various regions, with images provided
in radar, infrared or visible light.

Your students will enjoy checking out the weather conditions
throughout the United States by clicking on an interactive map.
They also can learn about weather-related terms, such as wind-chill
and heat index from resources at this site.

If you don't have a Web browser, you can still access the text
version of this site via Gopher at: meteor.atms.purdue.edu.

----------------------------------------------------------------

***Celebrate Earth Day this year in a new way***

Many educators will be working environmental lessons into their
curriculums during April in honor of Earth Day. Online educators
will find a landfill of "green" resources available from the Internet to
help augment their lesson plans.

A great place to start your online search for environmental
information is the Environmental Education Gopher at the
University of Michigan. This Gopher, which is sponsored by the
National Consortium for Environmental Education, offers many,
many lesson plans and other resources you can use in the classroom.

To get to the Environmental Education Gopher, point your Gopher
client at: nceet.nsre.umich.edu

Once you get there, you might want to start by selecting Item #5,
Activities, Lesson Plans and Programs. Here, you'll find all kinds of
activities for your students.

Younger students are shown how to build a miniature landfill to
learn what happens to trash after we throw it away. Your kids will
get a first-hand look (and smell!) at garbage as it decomposes.

One lesson plan for older students takes them out into the
community to assess the real-world effects of waste disposal.
Another helps them study environmental hazards in their own
homes. A third demonstrates wasteful packaging practices by
showing students how to determine how much "hidden" energy is
contained in food packaging.

Other activities include units on the ozone layer, recycling and
wildlife ecology (be sure to check out the Animal Information
Database and fact sheets on endangered species.)

Organized from kindergarten to senior high school level, the lesson
plans are ready to use.

If you have access to the World Wide Web, point your Web
browser at: http://nceet.snre.umich.edu to check out this wonderful
resource, which includes pictures and sounds.

Another nice resource for educators and older students can be
found at Rachel's Environmental and Health Weekly. Point your
Gopher client at: ftp.std.com. Select  FTP, then The World's
Anonymous FTP Archive, then periodicals and then Rachel's.

You'll find more than 400 back issues of this authoritative
periodical, which is a great resource for report writing and student
projects.

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***Let the sunshine help you cook up a lesson***

Your classroom computer contains a low-cost  hands-on project to
teach your students lessons in everything from geography, ecology,
physics, recycling, economics, math, energy conservation, social
studies and cooking.

It is a fun project that your students are sure to enjoy. Perhaps best
of all, your class will get to eat the results of  the project, which is to
build a solar cooker.

Using just a cardboard box, some aluminum foil and a sheet of
plastic film, your students can harness the sun's power to cook hard-
boiled eggs or a pot of beans.

Solar Box Cookers Northwest, a Seattle, Washington, firm, recently
set up an archive of sun-powered cooking resources on the Internet.
This nice home page includes plans for building inexpensive solar
cookers, articles and letters from people who cook with solar power
and even solar recipes.

The page has an international flavor, because of the emphasis on
solar cookery in developing countries. Students accessing this site
will learn first-hand about political, social and economic situations
around the world.

A recent letter sent to the solar cooking home page by Rev.
Kgabothote Daniel Sebe from Pietersburg, South Africa, could be
used as a geography lesson, a political science lesson, an ecology
lesson and a social studies lesson.

In his letter, Rev. Sebe describes how work is divided between the
sexes (women do all the cooking and wood gathering); the political
situation ("Apartheid is over") and ecology (large areas are being
deforested because of  people cutting down trees for firewood.)

He says that although solar ovens were introduced to the local
people years ago, many residents initially resisted using them, calling
them "magic stoves." Solar ovens are starting to catch on now,
which is good for the environment, Rev. Sebe reports.

Other letters from people in Kenya, South America and elsewhere
offer similar looks at global issues.

Of course, there are also solar oven plans and recipes at this site.
There are detailed solar oven construction plans that your students
can download into your classroom computer. Most of the ovens can
be built very cheaply using easily obtained materials. (For language
students, there are plans written in Spanish and Portuguese.)

For a science lessons, have your students read about how to
"pasteurize" water and make it safe to drink using a solar oven.
They also can learn how heat kills harmful microbes when they read
about how to can fruits with a solar box cooker.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

***RECESS:  Kite flying with no strings attached***

Spring can be tough on teachers. It's the time of year when winter-
weary students find it hard to concentrate on their studies. The next
time spring fever hits and your students get too jittery to sit still, why
not tell them to go fly a kite?

Kite flying is a perfect way to sugar-coat science lessons on weather,
wind and aerodynamics. If you get your students to design their own
flying machines, you can add lessons in math (measuring the surface
area of their kites) art (kites need to be decorated, don't they?) and
even social studies (ask your students to report on the significance
kites have in Chinese culture, for example.)

Your class can tackle all that and more after visiting the Cyber-Kites
Home Page on the Internet. Maintained by Canadian kite enthusiast
Daryl Erwin, the kite page contains a wealth of information about
building, flying and collecting kites.

Your students will have no problem navigating Daryl's home page.
He has done an excellent job of organizing his online kite
information.

He starts his page with a list of kite projects he has completed. He
also lists kite projects of fellow kiter Bernhard Malle. Your students
will find well-presented plans for building various types of kites,
complete with illustrations and detailed assembly instructions.

There are listings for kite clubs, kite shops and kite books for your
students to explore. Daryl also has provided hypertext links to other
kiting home pages around the world. At the click of a button, your
students can check out kite magazines and designs from England,
France, Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

One nice touch Daryl added to his home page is a guest book. If
your students visit his page, make sure they drop him a line. After
they have completed their kites, have them share their results with
Daryl. He will enjoy hearing from your class.
_______________________________________________

Corrections & Clarifications

The March issue contained an incomplete Gopher address for Dan
Buettner's MayaQuest expedition. Updated information about
MayaQuest is posted regularly to the following Gopher site:
Informns.k12.mn.us. From the first menu, select Item #5,
Minnesota K-12 Resources, and then Item #6, Mayaquest.

________________________________________________

QUOTABLE

"Distance learning is an educational solution when you can't reach a
population - remote areas and isolated school districts. While it will
never replace face-to-face interaction, the sophisticated
two-way technology comes close. And it's such a time saver, and
once implemented, a money saver.

"Education needs these technologies to move into the future."

-- Dr. Linda Roberts, special advisor on educational technology for
the U.S. Department of Education,
_______________________________________________

This is the end of Part One of this month's e-mail version of The
Online Educator. It is continued on a second e-mail message. If you
do not have part two, please contact us at: ednetnews@aol.com.