The World Wide Web now contains millions of pages of information. Hidden among these are many useful resources for the literacy teacher. This article picks out some of the best sites available and points you to selected locations where you can find many more.
The National Grid for Learning is intended to be a huge national resource for teachers, so that you can find lesson plans, texts, and so on without leaving your classroom. As yet, however, you have to search through an enormous amount of useless material on the Internet to find the materials you are looking for. This BBC Education Web Guide is very helpful in sifting the wheat from the chaff, and should be the first port of call for any teacher looking for useful curricular materials on the Internet. The BBC have taken their ‘public service broadcasting’ remit quite seriously, and collected an enormous number of useful web links. These are all reviewed and stored in a searchable database. So you can select a particular subject area from a long list, then select the phase: Adult, Secondary or Primary, and bring up a list of sites. Looking for ‘Primary English’ in this way produces a list of over 200. It is also possible to search for a particular word or phrase: ‘Early Years’, or ‘Shakespeare’ and gather a useful collection.
One useful rule of thumb when using the Internet is that
when you find one useful site it will usually provide links to many others.
This is because enthusiasts in any subject soon collect useful links of their
own and publish them, so that someone else has done most of the hard work for
you. This BBC site is the prime example of this.
Address: http://www.bbc.co.uk/webguide/servlet/start
Many schools have now established a presence on the Internet with their own web sites. Some school sites are little more than a prospectus on screen, with all the usual worthy but unreadable documents about curriculum and policies. This may be quite useful for prospective parents, but a site can be so much more. It is possible for a good web site to capture a great deal of the unique life and vitality of a school. Other sites have disorganised pages which the children have created but which mean little to outside visitors. Obviously the ideal site lies somewhere between these extremes: clear, professional looking and well presented, but allowing space for children to express themselves.
The site belonging to Ambleside Primary School in the Lake District is widely considered to be one of the best, and an exciting example of what is possible. It now contains more than 500 pages of material in the main school site alone, and is well worth a visit. Every class in the school has examples of work, either created on computer or scanned from pictures in the classroom. The site is given a unique flavour by the enthusiastic programming skills of the pupils, who have used resources gathered from the Internet to make their own little programs and activities. So the site is not just something to click and look at, it draws you in to valuable and involving educational activities. There is a large collection of active and interactive materials to support literacy.
One classroom has a webcam, in other words a camera linked to the computer, which currently is known as ‘Rosie’s Rotcam’ as it has been trained on a container of rotting fruit for a number of weeks. The image on your screen is updated every minute, and the pictures of the fruit decaying and mouldering over a long period of time will eventually make a little time-lapse film. The Reception class will give you a raucous rendition of the story they have written, or you can watch a video of school pets—even hearing the alleged voices of the rodents!
This site has all been developed in less than two years. Children have real ownership of spaces within the website, and have the motivating excitement of displaying their work around the whole world. Useful links with Australia and Malaysia have developed, as well as the more prosaic and predictable ‘news for parents.’ The site also includes instructional materials which the children themselves use to learn Internet skills, and these are invaluable if you are thinking of developing your own web site. The Year 6 children have their own on-line magazine, Rodent Round-up, in which they can broadcast to the world their pet-related articles and pictures. They are learning to write for a real and substantial audience around the world.
The whole site supports literacy directly, by supplying tools, documents and materials you can use with your own class: but it is also a model of the literacy children can and must develop in an age of new media and new technology. There is a real sense of the children working as autonomous and mature users of new technology to express and describe their environment and communicate with others. Obviously a site such as this represents a huge commitment on the part of the staff to learning new skills, but there are examples and materials here that any school can use and emulate. If the National Grid for Learning is going to enrich the learning experience of children, then sites like this are crucial.
Most schools now have the possibility of publishing their
own web pages, and it is a much easier process than you might expect. Children
are highly motivated by the opportunity to publish their work to the world, or
exchange it with another school.
Address: http://www.ambleside.schoolzone.co.uk/
Other selected school web sites:
All Souls, London
http://come.to/allsouls
Edleston Road, Crewe
http://come.to/edlestoncps
This Key Stage 1 site from Kent has some delightful on-screen books by
Sebastian the Swan (and young friends). The newest one of these books is a
clear and fascinating reference book about the food chain in a pond. The
pictures, some of which are drawn by the children, are clear and attractive and
the presentation is smooth. These books could be used on-screen as part of the
Literacy Hour, as the text is big enough to gather a group or even a class
around the computer. Each book has a wide range of timetabled activities to go
with it which can be printed out. There are instructions on how to download the
site to your computer to save connection costs. Children can write their own
email messages to Sebastian the Swan, and this will bring another level of
involvement and interactivity to their reading.
http://www.naturegrid.org.uk/infant/
Part of the BBC Education Resources for schools, Spywatch is an
exceptional site. It is linked with the Look and Read television programme of
the same name, but can easily be used in isolation as a reading resource. The
Internet has great potential as a medium for distributing software and
resources. This site is unusual in that it offers a whole ‘program’ for you to
use, a program which is better than many CD ROMs. You are actively encouraged
to download it to your own computer, so that you can use it as a classroom
resource without worrying about phone bills.
The Spywatch story starts in the Second World War, with a group of children being evacuated to the country. In one part of the program they hear that everybody needs to look out for spies, and decide to investigate four shady characters in the village. Each character has a hiding place for dubious goods, and you help the children find out what they are hiding by answering word puzzles. These are based on rhyme, alphabetical order and other phonic items. At each stage the user is asked to note down the clue words, and when the children go to the police to unmask the black-marketeers, all the clues are needed. Success is rewarded by the chance to download a ‘pairs’ type memory game based on the story.
All this is presented with music, sound effects, simple animation and a very professional production style: and it’s completely free. It does however require a Macromedia Flash plug-in, a small extra program adding further functions to your Internet browser: but there is a link on the screen for you to obtain this the first time you use the program.
The use of stories such as this can inspire children to
develop their own electronic books, adventure stories, information texts and so
on using multimedia software such as Hyperstudio. This is not just an ICT
project: it can be a very powerful part of learning to communicate ideas in a
literate form using new technology.
Address: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/lookandread
Other on-line stories:
Aesop’s Fables
http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/aesop/
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland (multimedia)
http://www.megabrands.com/alice/scat.html
Disney Books, Read a story
http://www.disney.com/DisneyBooks/Read story/
ArgoSphere:
a very sophisticated site containing a huge range of games and activities
organised by age-group
http://www.argosphere.co.uk/
Children’s Books Reference Sites:
Just For Kids Who
Love Books
http://www3.sympatico.ca/alanbrown/kids.htm
Treasure Island
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/treasure/setframe.htm
Stories from the Web
http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/stories/
Fairrosa Library of Children's
literature
http://www.dalton.org/libraries/fairrosa/
Children’s Literature Web Guide
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/index.html
Puffin House
http://www.puffin.co.uk/
The Flat Stanley Project
http://www.cyberenet.net/~durand/stanley.html
Writers On-line
http://www.yearofreading.org.uk
Authors sites:
Shakespeare for Kids
http://www.shakespeare4kidz.com/
Anne Frank
http://www.annefrank.com/
Betsy Byars
http://www.betsybyars.com/
C. S. Lewis
http://cslewis.drzeus.net/
One school, Sutton Primary School in Lincolnshire, has produced a very
attractive site where you can use a story starting program which they have
invented. You have a choice of several different types of story, including
ghosts, animals and adventures. You can then use pull-down menus on the key
words to make choices between different characters, actions and adjectives.
When you have chosen a title and typed in your name, the story is displayed
with your choices for you to continue, either on a printed copy or by pasting
the story into a word processor. This site does one small language activity
very well, and would be a useful resource for the Key Stage 2 Literacy Hour.
Children who stare uninspired at a blank screen or piece of paper would
probably be motivated by these refreshing ideas presented as part of a web
page. Successful and inspiring stories may be sent to the head teacher who will
publish the best of them on the web site.
http://www.sutton.lincs.sch.uk/zone/story/start.html
Other Activity sites:
Sunshine Literacy Hour planning and resources
http://www.literacyhour.co.uk
Little Explorers Picture Dictionary Site
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Dictionary.html
Word Detective spelling activities
http://www.funbrain.com/detect/index.html
Email can provide all kinds of opportunities for writing with a real
purpose and sense of audience. Projects can include linking with schools in
other countries, communicating with authors, asking for information from
‘experts’ of all kinds. It is much cheaper and faster than paper letters or
‘snail mail.’ Several web sites provide free email services, where you can
register and use folders, address books and many other facilities. This is
‘Internet based’ email which can be accessed from any computer, so is very
handy for a personal mailbox which can be visited at school or at home.
Recommended services include:
Hotmail, the Microsoft free Internet Mail
service
www.hotmail.com
Yahoo! Mail, from Yahoo! The ‘library catalogue’ search engine.
www.mail.yahoo.com or mail.yahoo.co.uk for a more local service.
©Andrew Rudd
Independent
consultant in ICT and Education.
Lecturer at
Manchester Metropolitan University and Liverpool University.
Web site: http://business.virgin.net/sound.houses/