Please send us URLs and evaluations of any
web-sites you think deserve the exposure.
- WonderKorner
...the Question/Answer Place for Curious Kids - http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/school/wonder/index.html
- Usually when you see one of these know-it-all pages it only takes a few clicks before you realize that those who run are not as almost omniscient as, say, the staff at CM. But the WonderKorner isn't bad. Current questions include ``Where did Winnie the Pooh get his name?" which goes into quite a bit of detail before coming to the all-important point that the name was derived from Winnipeg. Also, an exhaustive answer to ``How are pencils made?"
Of course, kids can submit their own questions.
- The Cub Den
- http://www2.portage.net/~dmiddlet/bears/cubden.html
- This is a fun and educational site (if a little over-designed). According to its creator:
There is information on all eight bear species including grizzlies, pandas,
polar bears, black bears, asiatic black bears, sun bears, spectacled bears
and sloth bears. It is a great resource for teachers and students doing
projects related to bears and the conservation of animals.
Ten facts about bears, Amazing facts about bears, etc. And he is `` prepared to respond to e-mail
questions from students in order to create an interactive experience."
Worth it just for the roaring-bear sound-clip.
- TOUR THE SISTINE CHAPEL
- http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/0-Tour.html
- I was going to just leave it at just the title for this one, but I can't resist mentioning that a friend of mine visited the Sistine Chapel five minutes before closing, rushed in, looked around, and said, ``very, very nice."
This virtual tour is very much a Vatican endeavour, but you don't to worry about viewing hours, or, in fact, being in Rome.
- YouthCentral
- http://youthcentral.apple.com/
- This is where the youth part of Apple's eWorld went after the recent end of the eWorld. Slick and fun; the day I looked there was a photo tour of New York and moderated discussion groups on most youth-like topics. My favourite posting was:
``Yo I just read sophies world has anyone else read this?"
Sports, computers, entertainment, by and for youth. Clearly still sponsored by Apple, but not obnoxiously commercial.
- Stupid Pet Photos Page
- http://www.digital-cafe.com/~webmaster/pets00.html
- Kids like pets, and stupid things, so . . . Recent photos include, for example:
Submitted by Mickey Lasky, this is a picture of Mickey's cat, Vree, attempting to play the
Magic: The Gathering card game.
A truly stupid photo. Readers can submit their own stupid photos. If selected, they will be eligible to add a ``Proud owners of a certifiably STUPID PET!" icon to their own web pages.
Also includes a stupid pet screen-saver for windows...
- Yahooligans: The Web Guide for Kids
- http://www.yahooligans.com/
- Yahoo, of course, is the premier search engine for the WWW. Yahooligans is their new kid-friendly adjunct. It's attractive and fast. I tried searching for a few naughty words; nothing. Tried ``magic" and got, among others Hocus Pocus Palace -- a fun site featuring info about magic tricks, and links to magic sites. Clicked on the ``Random" Button and went to a home page for the Minnesota Vikings. . . .
Also has a good ``Street Smart on the Web" button that takes you to a page offering parents and children good advice about keeping the Web a safe place to visit.
- World Population Figures
- http://www1.tip.nl/users/t865190/Countries.html
- When I recall social studies, what I remember are:
- Colouring and labelling maps using pencil crayons
- Making charts involving population figures
- Trying to find out what the largest city in the world was (our antiquated references materials often listed London, currently -- I just checked on this site -- twelfth on the list)
- Having my copy of Tarzan and the Lost City of Gold ripped out of my hands by a teacher who thought I should have been paying more attention.
This site contains lots of information to help students with tasks 1-3.
- The Chesley Bonestall Gallery
- http://www.secapl.com/bonestell/Top.html
- You were waiting for this week's cool space-related site, weren't you? Chesley Bonestall was an artist whose realistic paintings of spacecraft and of other planets (rendered with painstaking astronomical correctness) not only graced the covers of innumerable science fiction books and magazines, but inspired:
discussion and debate among engineers and scientists. Was space flight feasible, or was it just a romantic adventurous dream? Were there economic benefits to be gained? Was it worth the money? While theorists argued about the possibility of rockets and spacecraft traveling to the Moon and planets, Bonestell showed what it would look like when we got there!
Bonestall's images are still the closest most of us can get to outer space.
- STOMP: SEE WHAT ALL THE NOISE IS ABOUT!
- http://www.usinteractive.com/stomp/
- This is one slick, appealing, and highly evolved site (that is, you want an up-to-date browser, a fast link, and good sound capabilities). STOMP is the the British ``Let's hit any two things together and see what sort of noise they make" percussion ensemble, and their site will appeal to adults, children, and neolithic cave-dwellers alike.
Warning: it's so popular it's hard to get to the good stuff, probably because a lot of people found out about it the same time I did. Give it a few weeks though. Has an excellent (and educational) section on kids and STOMP, with detailed activities so you can get your own students banging things together (and thus starting on the long road towards civilization).
- MLA CONFERENCE: GATEWAY TO MANY WORLDS
- http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/mla
- You might think that a news piece and a mention in the editorial would be enough promotion for this conference for one week. But any conference that has presentations by Margaret Buffie (author of The Dark Garden), Srinija Srinivasan (the head of design and maintenance for the YAHOO! Web-site), and me and Peter (talking about this magazine) is obviously really, really worthwhile. Check out this Web-site for full information, register, and come visit Winnipeg, Thursday, May 9 to Saturday, May 11. The snow will almost certainly be gone.
- Magic Show
- http://www.uelectric.com/magicshow/
- Kids like performing magic tricks because it turns the tables on an otherwise hostile universe. This online magic magazine lets readers in on some of the professional secrets to fooling people, with step-by-step instructions, video examples, and tips on where to find the really clever stuff (magicians don't really mind telling you their secrets, but you have to work for it).
- The JASON Project
- http://www.aquarius.eds.com
- ``Our JASON VII journey takes us south of the Florida Keys
and 60 feet below the water's surface. You'll join us in
exploring these depths from the comfort of the world's only
underwater research habitat - AQUARIUS. The expedition's
from April 15-26."
Okay, no space or robot stuff this time, just this highly cool submarine exploration site. Live chats with the scientists, broadcasts from the sub, virtual reality tours (if you have the bandwidth), views from the portholes at that moment and more.
- Chicago's Museum of Science And Industry
-
http://www.msichicago.org/
- Well here's something special, a museum site that doesn't use a dopey map metaphor. What it does do is give a good taste of what visiting the MSI (one of the best museums in the world) is like. See Colleen Moore's astonishing fairy-castle dollhouse; check out the ``hatching chicks" (though I always wonder what they do with them once they're done hatching); check out the ``AIDS: The War Within display"... ``Animated Industrial Gears"... lots more. But not, alas, as far as I could tell in a brief visit, their actual captured German U-Boat.
- Cockroach World
- http://www.nj.com/yucky/index.html
- You've probably heard about it. And it says `` Click here to visit the grossest family site on the Net."
Well, it's just that cool (and informative). Cockroaches wear their skeletons on the outside of their bodies was ``Today's Fun Fact" when I looked. You also get ``A Day in the Life of a Cockroach" and a test your knowledge of cockroaches, ``Cockroach World," quiz. In ``activities learn how to catch and keep cockroaches. See the sights and sounds of `Cockroach World' in the multimedia library..."
How to catch and keep them. Notice again how our perspectives completely alter as we age. . . .
- The McDougall Sound Archaeological Research Project
Virtual Slide Show
- http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/SS/ARKY/show/showintro.html
- This presentation of the University of Calgary's archaeological findings about the Dorset people of the arctic has won a bag-full of awards --- deservingly. This is the only web-site I've ever seen good enough to just click and leave running on a big monitor while students watch. Any senior classes interested in Canadian history, or archaeology should check this out. Sound-clips of Inuit thoat-singing too.
- Street Cents Online
- http://www.screen.com/streetcents.html
-
A sharp-looking site brought to you by the award-winning TV show. There's an on-line forum -- current threads include I hate Alanis Morissette (16 msgs), and Tommy Hilfiger shirts:are they really that great? (4 msgs) .
Plus, of course, weekly features --
``THIS WEEK we check out silver dimes and quarters, jobs & job opportunities available to you, what kind of money you can make selling stuff from your home, why nobody will hire you if you're 13 years old, and more."
- Canadian Writers on the Web
- http://canlit.st-john.umanitoba.ca/Canlitx/Canadian_Writers.htm
- It's ugly (yellow type on red background!) but here you'll find links to pages devoted to, and in some cases by, Canadian writers including Margaret Laurence, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Stephen Leacock, and William Gibson.
- Notable Citizens of Planet Earth Biographical Dictionary
-
http://www.tiac.net/users/parallax/
-
Normally we don't bother reviewing sites that aren't particularly good, or interesting, or something, but this site has been getting a lot of press lately. It bills itself as containing ``biographical information on over 18,000 people from ancient times to the present day," and being ``a valuable classroom resource. Students use it for research and teachers use it to plan English, Social Studies, History, and other programs." Oh brave new world, etc. Here's what you get if you search for Samuel Johnson:
Johnson, Samuel (Dr. Johnson; the Great Cham of Literature) Eng. aut., critic,
& lexicographer; wrote "Dictionary of the English Language" 1747-1755,
novel "Rasselas" 1759, 10-volume "Lives of the Poets" 1779-1781
_1709-1784
Okay, correct as far as it goes (I think; I don't even know what a Cham is), but not a lot of information on one of the greatest figures of the eighteenth century. How's it do on the Canadian portion of the quiz? A zero for Robertson Davies, and this for Wayne Gretzky:
Gretzky, Wayne Can. hockey player; holds record for career goals scored
_1961--
My desk encyclopedia did better (and was faster) on every query. Plus, it cost a lot less than an Internet connection.
- The Dinosauria
- http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/diapsids/dinosaur.html
- A good starting point for research on dinosaurs, with plenty of links to other dinosaur sites.
Has a lot of good, basic information:
The term "dinosaur" has had a long history of misrepresentation. A few simple
points must be kept in mind when discussing these animals:
Not everything big and dead is a dinosaur.
True enough. Look at progressive rock. . . . - Dave's Searchable Quote Database
- http://cornelius.cc.vanderbilt.edu/users/lilly/cgi-bin/search.cgi
- Hardly comprehensive (only about 6,500 quotes so far), but you can get a random quote, do a key-word search, or add your own. Found this under ``Churchill":
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-- Winston Churchill
- Mir Space Station
- http://www.maximov.com/Mir/mir2
.html
-
``The Maximov Web site has launched a MIR Space Station page with great
photos and a text detailing the history, design and current activities of
the station by science writer Mark W. Curtiss."
Source: Ted Resnick, Online Communications Specialist, The Magellan
Internet Directory
From the site itself:
``Mir is the culmination of the Russian space program's efforts to maintain long-duration
human presence in space. The permanently
manned space station regularly hosts 2 to 3
cosmonauts (on occasion up to 6 for shorter
periods of up to a month). At present, Mir is a
complex of different modules that have been
through many mutations; modules get added and
moved around, like a giant tinker toy in the sky"
Boy, it seems like a lot of space-program sites get reviewed here . . .
- Canadian Teacher-Librarians' Resource Page
- http://www.inforamp.net/~abrown/
- By and large we don't put sites that are devoted to listing other
sites here (someone has to put some content on this Internet
thing!), but Alan Brown's Resource Page is pretty handy. Sections on
Associations, Authors and Illustrators, Awards, Booklists, Journals and
Magazines, Newsgroups and Listservers, Publishers & Booksellers &
Wholesalers, and Reviews, among others.
Go to Titles and Series, and you'll get links that include ``The
Page at Pooh Corner." Go to Reviews and you'll come to links
like, well, gosh, us. Seems pretty well considered doesn't
it?
- Battlefields
-
http://sol.ultralab.anglia.ac.uk/pages/schools_online/schools/Hinchinbrooke
/btl/btlembark.html
-
An excellent school-produced site about the First World War:
``The pages include a record of our school trips to the Somme and to
Flanders, with photographs and diaries by our students. There are extracts
from the diary of an ex-pupil of the school who died in Flanders and
letters about the war from Belgian pupils who we contacted by e-mail. A
full itinerary of our visit is given and there are links to other WW1
sites
around the world."
- Marconi Celebration
- http://eagle.uccb
.ns.ca/steve/marconi/marconi.html
- No, not pasta; Marconi, the inventor. Historians often
overlook Canada's role in important developments like basketball, the
atomic bomb, annoying power-rock trios, and, of course, radio. This site
commemorates Marconi's pioneering work on the latter in Cape Breton.
Photographs, maps, schematics.
- From the Ground Up
- http://www.gatewest.net/~green/
- The From the Ground Up page from Green and Growing began as a
teachers' lesson guide on food, agriculture, and sustainable development
(reviewed in the last print edition of CM).
``This on-line version is divided into five lessons; The History of
Agriculture and a Description of Sustainable Development; Soil;
Agriculture and Chemicals; The Real Cost of Food;
and Everything's Connected. It's accepted as curiculum by Manitoba and
Alberta's departments of education."
It's not the prettiest site you'll see, and it but the lesson plans are
thorough, detailed, and useful, even without the accompanying video. And,
as they say, ``Everything's Connected."
- ScienceWeb (Canadian Science)
- http://scienceweb.dao.nrc.ca/can/can.html
- ScienceWeb is brought to you by the National Research Council of Canada and contains press releases and many other
links to keep you up-to-date on what's happening in Canadian Science.
- Cyber Jacques' CyberSeas Treasure Hunt
- http://www.cyberjacques.com
- Arr! This piratically themed cyberspace scavenger hunt introduces children to a variety of family-friendly web-sites (the language is salty, but not blue) on their way to winning prizes (downloadable animations). Last week's first clue required a visit to Thomas Jefferson's Home (and getting two links further in), but it's not exclusively American. Clue two was a fun U.K. page devoted to espionage.
- MayaQuest '96
-
http://www.mecc.com/MAYA/MQII.html
-
``In the spring of 1995, a team of five explorers, lead by Dan Buettner, bicycled to ruins in Mexico and Central America, met with on-site archaeologists, and attempted to unlock one of the most perplexing mysteries: the collapse of the
ancient Maya civilization....
Beginning March 4, 1996 and continuing for six weeks, the same MayaQuest team members will reassemble for MayaQuest `96, brought to you by MECC. And YOU can join the team!"
It's too late to catch the start of this project, but the account of what they're doing and finding is pretty interesting regardless.
- Stonehenge
- http://home.earthlink.net/~shadowfax/sfmain.html
- The ``cover page" of this Stonehenge site will have you thinking this is some weired neo-pagan, druidic fantasy; in fact, it gives a good, sober overview of Stonehenge and similar astronomical stone structures around the world.
- The Capt. James T. Kirk Sing-a-long Page
- http://www.ama.caltech.edu/users/mrm/kirk.html
- Come on, if you found this, you'd have to include it too. Let your students listen to William Shatner's cover-versions of ``Tambourine Man" and ``Lucy in the Sky" when the've been good, as a treat. . . .
- The Great Canadian Hairy Star Party:
A Guide to Enjoying Comet Hyakutake, the Great Comet of '96 - http://scienceweb.dao.nrc.ca/comet.html
- Okay, you must have heard about Comet Hyakutake by now, right? Finally, a comet that works, not just that blurry little snowball that was our turn at Comet Halley. This is the Hyakutake page from Canada's ScienceWeb. Best viewing is March 25, so bone up on this fast.
- Ethics in Science
-
http://www-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/scied/ethics.html
- You know, after robots and spaceships, the best part about science is the ethical quandries. (``What happens if we press this button? I dunno, let's find out!") This site may be worth several hours of Star Trek re-runs in its ethical content.
- African Primates at Home Home Page
-
http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/primates.html
- A little slow, but lovely, and --
``Where else can you *hear* a chimpanzee scream, a gorilla chest-beat, and a
mangabey whoop-gobble? Follow the trail to explore these and other
primates' East African habitats.... (brought to you by a research
scientist)"
Source: Gleason Sackman
- M.E. (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) Youth WWW Page
- http://student.uq.edu.au:80/~s336887
- Okay, now that it's made the cover of the Rolling Stone, maybe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome will finally become a hip disease. It's a serious problem, and large numbers of children have it. Point 'em here if they need information or support.
- Internet Anagram Server
(formerly known as: Inert Net Grave Near Mars) - http://www.wordsmith.org:80/awad-cgibin/anagram
- Okay, after all of that science and medicine we're rounding off this week's notable web sites with the Anagram server. I typed in my e-mail address address (cmeditor) and got a long list back, of which the most sadly appropriate seemed to be
and, just for this week,
- The Nine Planets
- http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/
- ``This is an essay about our solar system with text, pictures, sounds and an occasional movie. Each of the planets and major moons in our solar system is briefly described and illustrated with pictures from NASA spacecraft. With a few clicks, you can see images that only a few decades ago could only be dreamed of."
Actually pretty good, especially if, like me, you can never remember the name of
Jupiter's eleventh moon. (Lysithea
). Also the planets have accompanying sound-clips from Holst,
if you don't mind the download wait.
- Resources for Young Writers
-
http://www.interlog.com/~ohi/inkspot/young.html
- Part of the larger Inkspot site devoted largely to resources for writers for children, Resources for Young Writers is good for what the title promises. Contests, information on books and writing, e-zines that publish children's writing and more. The current feature,
for example, is ``Tips for Aspiring Young Screenwriters."
- CMC -- Children's Museum -- Great Adventure tour
-
http://www.cmcc.muse.digital.ca/cmc/cmceng/childeng.html
- I've held off on this one because it features a particularly dopey
floorplan interface (please get them to stop). However, it's part of Canada's Museum of Civilization and the content isn't bad.
``The Great Adventure takes children on a worldwide trip where they
encounter exciting locations, interesting people and enticing activities. From
the moment they pick up their passports, they discover one incredible
destination after another. We help them plan their trip, or they can design their
own itineraries. Whether it's a trek through the desert to a pyramid, a jaunt to
the port to help unload a cargo ship, or a stroll through the bustling market bazaar, children will encounter endless ways to learn about the world and gain an understanding of each other."
- Nessie on the Net in Scotland!
- http://www.scotnet.co.uk/highland/index.html
- ``The monster was also seen last century but the poor man who sighted the beast was so shocked he did not speak much about the incident. Throughout this century so many people have seen Nessie who seem to have no identifiable gain from telling of their sightings that it seems likely that a great unexplained mystery does exist."
Uh, yeah. Still, students have to learn to separate real-life from the X-Files sometime and this might be a good place to start. It's a fun site, which includes bits on the Highland Games, ``Megan and Katie: Two great Highland Cows! (now with sound)," and audio clips of actual sheep. All things Scottish, really.
- Space Explorer Digest
- http://nyquist.ee.ualberta.ca/~wanigar/spacelink/SpaceExplorer_digest.html
- Next to robots, space exploration is the best thing about science. This will keep budding astronauts up to date on the news from the deep beyond.
- Canoe
- http://www.canoe.ca
- Canoe is not about Canoes; it's a brand-new on-line news venture from some of Canada's biggest
media organizations -- like the Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa Suns, the Financial
Post, and Maclean's. They promise to update their stories twenty-four hours a day (as we finish production
on this issue of CM, top stories are about the band ``Rusty's" recent success at
the Junos, on Andre Agassi's engagement, and, oh, yeah, the afermath of the new Federal budget.)
- PageGen: Interactive HTML Authoring Tool
-
http://www.channel1.com/users/justinl/pagegen/pagegen.html
- Personal Web pages. The Label Makers of the 90s. Do we need them? No.
Do they make us feel like individuals? Yes. Frankly, writing HTML code isn't
brain surgery, but this page will whip one up according to your (or your students')
specifications without having to know anything.
No blinking text, but nothing's perfect.
- YES Mag-Canada's Science Magazine for Kids
- http://www.islandnet.com/~yesmag
- Listen, I'd be willing to put this in just because the address has
a tilde in it. Perhaps you have to be in the business to realise how few
people know where those are on the keyboard . . . Anyway, this is a very slick site
with science news, projects, and quizes. Sample question:
Do dolphins sleep? If so, how do they do it without drowning?
Now, that's a good question.
- Well Known Canadians
- http://physics.bu.edu/~terning/Canadians.html
- There are a lot of obvious jokes I could make here,
but really, this is kind of cool, organized by:
Actors Actresses Artists Astronauts Athletes Authors
Business Comedians Directors/Producers Entertainers
Journalists Miscellaneous Musicians Scientists etc.
Surprise: Conrad Bain. Continuing Embarassment: Jim Carrey.
- The Chronicles of Narnia Web
Page
- http://members.aol.com/makithapn2/Narnia/narnia.html
- This site is still very much under construction, but if your students don't like Narnia, consider getting a transfer.
- CyberKids
- http://www.cyberkids.c
om/CyberKidsIssues.html
- CyberKids is a magazine put out by Mountain Lake Software. So there
are a lot of little commercial hooks, but they don't try to hide it, and,
hey, we live in the late 20th century. Anyway, the magazine has reviews,
articles, and stories written by actual kids, and will take submissions.
For the older students there is the similar CyberTeens: http://www.mtlake.com/cyberteens/
- http://www.owl.on.ca/
- http://www.owl.on.ca/
- All right, launch date for this site is the same day this issue gets
published, so we haven't actually seen the finished products, but this
site from Owl Communications Inc., the publishers of Owl Books, OWL,
Chickadee, and Tree House FAMILY magazines, and the
producers of Owl
Television ought to be good. The countdown page promises ``To take you
into a cool world of science, nature, and totally radical stuff!"
Totally radical stuff. Hey, at CM we're hip to the kids'
crazy lingo too.
- LEGO Information
- http://legowww.homepages.com/
- Usually we forget about the things we were going to do when we grew
up, like eat an entire batch of un-baked cookie batter. Or ,
more to the point, building an actual working car out of
LEGO. That and lots more information and pictures about all
things LEGO.
- AskERIC
- http://ericir.syr.edu
- Recently recognised as ``the best
professional education site on the Internet by Global Network Navigator
(GNN), publisher of The Whole Internet Catalog," the AskERIC site includes
lesson plans, plenty of good links, and the AskEric service:
``Teachers, library media specialists, administrators, and others
involved in education can send a message requesting
education information to AskERIC. AskERIC information specialists,
drawing on the vast resources and expertise of the
ERIC System, will respond within 48 hours with ERIC database searches,
ERIC Digests, and Internet resources."
- Chinese Historical & Cultural Project Curriculum
- http://www.kqed
.org/fromKQED/Cell/golden/glmenu.html
- A little late for New Year's, but:
The lessons cover the Chinese Lunar Calendar (ideal resource for New Year
activities), the Abacus (a fun addition to the math class) Folktales and
Games, Puppetry, Agriculture, Railroad Building and Writing, and there's
even a lesson entitled ``Bound Feet" which encourages students to compare
our current fashions trends to those of the past.
(From the NET-HAPPENINGS list.)
- Drew's Scripts-O-Rama
- http://home.cdsnet.net/~nikko11/table.htm
- It can be hard to study film critically because you can't
slow it down -- unless you have the script. This site has links to a fair number of
interesting or impressive movie scripts, from The Little
Mermaid to The Rocky Horror Picture show. There's enough
adult material you won't want to just point your
students at it, but there are valuable resources for senior
students studying media or film.
- Voice of Hibakusha
- http://129.171.129.67/mf/hibakusha/index.html
- ``Eye-witness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima, from the video
HIROSHIMA WITNESS produced by Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK."
Those of us who were in University in the 80s remember how likely it seemed that
the world would end this way. If that shadow has receded, it's still important
to hear what the people of Hiroshima passed through.
- The Mary Rose Virtual Maritime Museum
- http://www.synergy.net/homeport.html
- The Mary Rose was a Tudor warship built on orders from Henry VIII.
Sadly for her crew, but happily for historians and archeologists, she sank accidentally
-- to be recovered in the 20th century. This site does not use a dopey map metaphor, but
tells the story of the Mary Rose and her recovery, and links you to appropriate images
and sub-topics as they arise.
- The Great Globe Gallery on the World Wide Web
- http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/glob/glob1.htm
- When I was a kid, we reduced our teacher to tears once
by putting our pencils against the globe making it spin it really fast.
This fancy, and therefore slow, site from Poland
does not offer that particular avenue of pleasure, but it has hundreds
of different views of the Earth -- climatic, geologic, and of course, the
famous NASA picture from space that some claim has changed the way we think.
- Distinguished Women of Past and Present
- http://www.netsrq.com/~dbois/index.html
- ``This site has biographies of women who contributed to our culture in many
different ways. There are writers, educators, scientists, heads of state,
politicians, civil rights crusaders, artists, entertainers and others. Some were
alive hundreds of years ago and some are living today. I'd like to acknowledge
as many as I can."
How did it do on ``Canadian stuff the editor knows about test?" well, nothing on Sheila Copps,
Nellie McClung, or Margaret Atwood, but go to Lucy Maud Montgomery and you can find out quite a
bit about P.E.I..
- The Castles of Wales
- http://www.wp.com/castlewales/home.html
- Wales has more cool castles than anywhere else in the world (just one benefit
of centuries of medieval oppression). This site is a little slow because of the
plethora of great pictures, but it covers the history and background of the castles and
their builders in some depth. A great resource for units in history, geography, or archaeology.
Plus, where else will you find The Castle of the Month? (For February, it's Criccieth Castle).
- Canadian Hockey
- http://www.cdnsport.ca/hockey/
- All right, we've lost the Nordiques and the Jets, and legions of
talented young players are now condemned to wearing a duck on their jerseys.
But Canadian Hockey is here to preserve and promote our national game at all
levels. A great resource for anyone interested in coaching. If all you care about
is the big leagues, try The NHL OPEN NET at http://www.nhl.com/.
- Welcome to The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- http://www.metmuseum.org/
- I'm confused as to why so many museum sites use a map interface . . .
you see a building plan, and little letters, and then you have to look up
in the key what clicking on the letters will do... On the other hand, this
does give you an introduction and some attractive images from the Met's
collection:
``The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and finest art museums in the world. Its
collections include more than two million works of art -- several hundred thousand of which are
on view at any given time -- spanning more than 5,000 years of world culture..."
- The WebMuseum
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/louvre/
- An excellent virtual museum, light on the dopey interface and heavy on actual
information and images. Currently they have special exhibitions of Cézanne
and medieval art...
- A Gallery of Interactive On-Line Geometry
- http://www.geom.umn.edu/apps/gallery.html
- A serious but fun interactive site. Here's a sample project:
``How are rainbows formed? Why do they only occur when the sun is behind the
observer? If the sun is low on the horizon, at what angle in the sky should we expect to
see a rainbow? This laboratory, developed as part of the University of Minnesota
Calculus Initiative, helps to answer these and other questions by examining a
mathematical model of light passing through a water droplet."
- The Tele-Garden
- http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/
- What's the best thing about science? That's right, robots. This site lets you actually manipulate a gardening robot with an attached camera in another part of the world. Get involved and they'll even let you plant seeds and water the garden.
- Writers in Electronic Residence
-
http://www.edu.yorku.ca/~WIER/
- You still have a week to get your students involved signed up for the Winter term of this program. Their work could be looked at (electronically) by an impressive list of Canadian writers. Just in the secondary school program of WIER, for example, the writers are Susan Musgrave, Trevor Ferguson, and John Gray.
- The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- http://pharos.bu.edu/Egypt/Wonders/
- This popular site is immensely well done, a great resource for history and archeology.
The final list of the Seven Wonders was compiled during the Middle Ages. The list comprised the seven most impressive monuments of the Ancient World, some of which barely survived to the Middle Ages. Others did not even co-exist. Among the oldest references to the canonical list are the engravings by the Dutch artist Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), and Johann Fischer von Erlach's History of Architecture.
The site covers the history and background of Seven Wonders individually and collectively, with plenty of hypertext links for deeper information on sub-topics. It's also well-designed, and includes attractive images of the Wonders (disclaimer: ``Note: The color painting at the top of the page is of artistic nature and does not necessarily represent an accurate reconstruction of the Wonder")
- AUFORA - UFO Information
- http://ume.med.ucalgary.ca/~watanabe/info/info.html
- AUFORA is The Alberta UFO Research Association. Okay, let's get this straight: there are no alien visitors, and X-Files is not taken from actual U.S. government reports. But there's something fun about UFOs, and AUFORA is one of the more credible kinds of groups that tries to seriously investigate the legitimate phenomenon of UFO sightings. This page has a place to report sightings, links to other UFO pages, and actual pictures of aliens, crop circles, UFOs, and so on (disclaimer: ``AUFORA can not guarantee the verity of all pictures").
- SCIENCE THEATER
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Expo/theater.html
- This site, from the University of Illinois, requires a bit of patience, but it's worth it for video clips of, for example, ``3-D Colliding Black Holes." Also the end of the universe, and more! If you get the feeling that American universities have more money than ours do, you're right; when I was at UIUC in person there were lounges with leather chairs for undergrads.
- Children's Literature Service
- http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/services/kidlinke.htm
- The Children's Literature Service of the National Library of Canada
produces an electronic products page which has links to a number of
Canadian and non-Canadian sites that pertain to children's literature.
This page would be of particular interest to those who work in the area
of children s literature -- teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators,
and editors. You can also access the site through the National Library's
homepage.
- Source: Jennifer Sullivan
- Equinox
-
http://www.equinox.ca/
- This web version of Equinox, ``Canada's Magazine of
Discovery" is slick, though not everything is hooked up yet. But it
contains gems like this:
Jurassic Poop
Fossil hunters at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum recently uncovered the
first known specimen of Tyrannosaurus Rex droppings. The palaeo pooper
scoopers found the 16-inch petrified log while excavating an adult T-Rex
skeleton. Dino doo is a valuable find, because it can tell scientists a
great deal about the creatures' diet. Early research has revealed that
this T-Rex's dinner was an unfortunate duck-billed dinosaur.
- Canadian Football League Home Page
- http://www.cfl.ca/
- I don't really have to say anything else, do I?
- MediaLink Home Page
- http://ppc.csd.sc.edu/medialink/
- Is multi-media software an important educational tool? Well, don't
get me started. But it's undeniably fun and cool. This site lets you
download MediaLink ``a hypermedia authoring tool that allows users to
develop their own multimedia lessons by assembling a variety of text
materials, sound files, digitized photos, or QuickTime movies" for free.
Currently there's only a Mac version, but a Windows version for the
operating-system challenged will be available come spring. It doesn't do
everything MacroMedia Director can, but then the price is 100%
lower.
- Survival Research Laboratories
- http://www.srl.org/
- Survival Research Laboratories is an organization which knows what do
with robots; they build, in the words of Ivan Stang, ``enormous, noisy,
and very dangerous unguided robots -- Cyclopean juggernauts armed with
flamethrowers, catapults, spiked maces, and worse -- mindless automatons
that shamble and crawl and roll in a random orgy of destruction . . .
These horrifying inventions are set loose in parking lots to do battle
with other . . . " Their site has plenty of video-clips and images of
these creations in action. If this doesn't get a student interested in
either engineering or performance art, check their pulse.
- CBC Radio and Stereo on the Internet
- http://radioworks.cbc.ca/
- Once, the true test of being Canadian was whether you could recite
the postal code for the CBC from memory. Now, just remember the URL.
Anyway, this site has almost anything you want to know about CBC radio
and stereo schedules and programming, including RealAudio clips, the
Morningside Children'
s Book Panel recommendations, and the guidelines for writing and
submitting a radio drama script, something that would make an interesting
project for a Language Arts class.
(By the way, did you know the Transcontinental was still on
the air?
- Theodore Tugboat Homepage
- http://www.cochran.com/tt.html
- If you don't know, Theodore Tugboat is to harbours what Thomas the
Tank Engine is to train-yards, and the TV show is one of Canada's more
popular exports. This is a well-done page that includes, among other
things, an actual interactive Theodore Tugboat story. Do we really want
young children reading stories on the computer? That's probably a moot
point by now. Anyway, this is a good way to understand what your kids are
watching, or, as the Tugboat people say:
``PARENTS and TEACHERS can review a synopsis of some episodes, find a
description of our characters (we have more than 30 of them) or read
about how The Big Harbour works."
- Open Government
- http://info.ic.gc.ca/opengov/
- A project of Industry Canada to provide easy access to information
about Canada's government over the Internet. There are sections for the
House of Commons, the Senate, the major political parties, the provinces,
and links to similar pages from around the world. A great resource for
student research. Also includes the lyrics to the National anthem (with
sound-clip). Handy, if you grew up before they changed the words.
- Cameras of the World
- http://lesmac.rfx.com/tompage8.htm
- You've probably heard of the fish-cam (a man, an aquarium, a
video-camera, and an Internet link ). Well, Cameras of the World has a list of other links to video
cameras from around the world that provide images that are updated at
least daily. Not surprisingly, it has a preponderance of U.S. Sites, but
there's plenty more, including one of Niagara falls and one of Tokyo -- a good resource for
social studies or geography classes.
- (Source: NBNSoft Content Awards.)
- The Internet Movie Database
- http://www.msstate.edu/Movies/
- The Internet Movie Database is one of the best things about the 'net,
with data on fifty thousand movies indexed almost anyway you could
imagine. Plot summaries, cast lists, credits for people as obscure as the
hair-dressers. And you can add information you know about the movie, or
put in your vote as to how many stars it should get. There are movies of
all kinds listed, but no pictures, so it's relatively safe. If your class
is studying films, this is pretty much indispensible.
Canada's Schoolnet
Queensland Department of
Education Virtual Library