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Reviews of websites that will intrigue, interest
and inspire pupils, parents and teachers.
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- Clear and honest appraisals of a large number of
websites that support teaching in primary science.
- Practical tips on how to integrate the websites
into your science teaching.
- Information on museums and other resources.
- Advice on how to make a webpage with your pupils
- this requires some degree of confidence, although
each step is clearly explained to ensure success.
If you are linked to the Internet you may view the
websites from this page. Please note that these website
addresses were correct at time of publication but may
change.
The Yuckiest site on the Internet
Why are children fascinated by the slimy, smelly, gross
and horrid? This attractive and simple to use site is
divided into a number of sections: Gross & Cool
Body, Yucky Fun and Games, Worm World
- find out all about worms, Roach World - find
out all about bugs and Ask Wendell - ask questions
and see if the answers appear on the site. The Gross
& Cool Body section introduces information about
the body with the somewhat unsavoury side, i.e. many
bodily functions tend to smell or make a sound. This
certainly grabs children's interest and leads them on
to an exploration of the human body. Each page contains
details written and explained in a way that children
will understand and find stimulating. The site contains
facts such as, 'If you strung all the nerves in an adult's
body end to end they would measure 47 miles!' which
lead children on to more information about the brain
and nervous system. Through the site, children are asked
questions, listen to sounds and encouraged to explore.
This site may not be to everybody's taste, but it certainly
grabs children's attention and makes science learning
fun.
http://www.yucky.com
BBC
The BBC website is huge and full of quality sites demonstrating
the Beeb's commitment to digital content. Many of the
sites play an integral part in the television programmes,
by enhancing and extending the viewing experience. Here
is a list of some of the best.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programmes/tv/blueplanet/
- The Blue Planet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/beasts/
- Walking with Beasts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/
- Walking with Dinosaurs
Channel 4
Again Channel 4 has strong digital content linked to
its television programmes. In particular its school
programmes. The ICT 4 Learning Programmes are seven
TV programmes that use ICT to develop skill in a suitable
context. Two programmes relate to science:- Our Bodies,
Our Heath and Wildlife Habitats. Our Bodies
contains two projects , healthy eating and vital statistics.
Children are asked to survey the foods they eat and
measure themselves. Their results can then be entered
onto the website where they will be able to compare
their data with other schools. Wildlife Habitats
looks at a Dandelion Survey and Penology (when animals
and plants first appear in the year), again this data
can be uploaded and compared on a national level. This
site provides an ideal opportunity for schools to engage
in ICT with children. The site provides all the material
needed to undertake the projects. They can be used without
seeing the programmes, but the video is a worthwhile
acquisition as it places the science in context.
http://www.4learning.co.uk/ict/
Another great site on the Channel 4 website is Robots,
using Shockwave plug-in, children can build and
experiment with robots. Once they have built their robot
it can be placed into different environments where children
can observe how it operates. They can then make any
changes necessary to make it work more effectively.
This is a great interactive site and well worth looking
at.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/R/robots/
Pfizer Fun Zone
A highly interactive animated site that uses the Shockwave
plug-in for your browser (available as a free download
from the site). The site is split into four areas. In
The Lab you can meet real scientists who work for
Pfizer, find out what they do and the equipment they
use. The Time Machine lets you travel back in
time and discover the effects medicine and disease have
had on history. The Discoveries area allows children
to use a virtual electron microscope, play science word
games and undertake some simple experiments. Finally,
the Explore area has a library, links to other
websites and a very interesting and informative section
about microbes. All in all this is a very slick site
and offers plenty of activities to incorporate into
science lessons.
http://www.pfizerfunzone.com/funzone/index.html
The WHY Files
The science behind the news. This American site takes
topical world news issues and looks at the science involved.
The features are well written at a level suitable for
key stage 2 pupils: for example, 'When objects vibrate,
their motions carry clues about what's going on inside.
A sea horse's whine (if it had one) would pass faster
through water than a horse's whinny passes through air.'
The main feature at the time of writing deals with the
science of solar storms. It contains facts, diagrams
and spectacular pictures about sunquakes, solar physics
and the Northern Lights. The site has other sections
including: an archive section containing articles ranging
from genetically modified four-legged chickens to finding
water on the Moon. The 'Cool Images' section has some
spectacular images where children are asked to guess
what they think they might be. They can also be downloaded
to use in the classroom as resources. The site is ideal
if you are looking for resources and ideas to cover
the elements contained within the National Curriculum's
Nature of science section.
http://www.whyfiles.org/
Beakman and Jax
Beakman and Jax is a newspaper comic strip that appears
in nearly 300 newspapers around the world. This is a
simple site that deals with the types of questions children
ask such as 'Why is the sky blue?', 'Why is poop brown?'
or 'If I have acid in my stomach why don't I melt?'
The answers are well written and suitable for Key Stage
2. The site uses animation and colourful graphics to
demonstrate ideas and concepts, with links to other
sites to give you even more information. This site is
well worth a visit. Try asking your pupils some of the
questions and see what answers they come up with; they
can then visit the site and find out for themselves.
If you have ever wondered why your teeth hurt when you
eat silver foil this site will point you in the right
direction. Beakman and Jax can be found in the ‘Brains’
section of this website.
http://www.bonus.com
Dynamo Lab
Dynamo is part of the BBC Education website and encourages
parents and children to learn together. It has a number
of interactive science activities, including games,
a quiz and things to make and do. All have reference
to the National Curriculum and have different levels
of difficulty. These activities require the Shockwave
plug-in, which the site will help you get and install.
The games are based on simple matching activities and
will help develop mouse control as well as support scientific
ideas. The 'make and do' section has instructions on
how to make things that demonstrate scientific ideas,
such as making a shadow puppet (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/dynamo/lab/shadowa.htm)
This site is ideal for key stage 1 teachers who are
keen to include the use of the Internet in their science
teaching.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/dynamo/lab/index.shtml
Search Me
The Internet has over a billion pages so searching for
information can be a ponderous if not a risky pastime.
If you are looking for a search-engine to use in schools,
try Yahooligans. Especially designed for children, it
only produces search results on sites suitable for children.
Typing the word sex will only give you information about
plant and animal reproduction.
http://www.yahooligans.com
Space may well be the final frontier, but the Internet
has brought that frontier into the classroom. Listed
here are only some of the vast number of resources that
are available for Earth and Space.
NASA - http://www.nasa.gov
This is the obvious place on the Internet to start any
work on space. This website is huge and contains a vast
amount of technical information. This URL takes you
to the main page. Here you can find all the latest up
to date news about any current space projects such as
live tracking and Virtual Tours of the Space Station
and it would be worthwhile spending more than some time
exploring this site for resources. Two areas I came
across that were of particular note are NASA for Kids
http://kids.msfc.nasa.gov/,
here children can post their own work on space and read
the work of others. More interactivity can be found
at Spacekids http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/.
Here you can find some Space Science projects. One which
sounds really exciting is where children (and teachers)
can submit their name and have it included on a disk
which will be taken to Mars on the next Rover Exploration
2003 mission. Once they have entered their name, children
can print a certificate to record the event.
Solar System Simulators
We have all tried to build models of the Solar System,
usually with Pluto being a marble placed half way down
the road. There are a number of websites that offer
animated models or ways of exploring the Solar System.
Animated Models of the Solar System can be found at
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/space/solarsystem/solarsystemjava.html,
here a simple model of the Planet and their orbits can
be explored. A more detailed model can be found at http://www.solarsystem.com.
Probably the best simulator can be found at http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/
, at this website pupils can choose any date and view
in the solar system. The website will produce a photograph
based on the options chosen.
Cosmic Calender
This is an extremely useful website that provides a
calendar of forthcoming celestial events ranging from
comets and asteroids to the phases of the moon. Just
right for planning those homework activities for Moon
Watching.
http://www.cosmicdust.co.uk/
Hubble Telescope
What transmits enough data to fill 10,000 standard computer
diskettes? Uses the same energy as 24 household light
bulbs? Is nearly the size of a large school bus and
costs $2.2 billion to build? The Hubble Telescope of
course. More facts as well as a huge collection of dazzling
images can be found at this site. It is quite easy to
navigate around the site which has a nice little interactive
games section where pupils can build there own comet
and galaxy and find where Hubble is at the present time.
http://hubble.stsci.edu/
Moon Fonts
How long have we all spent trying to make worksheets
or getting children to draw the phases of the moon.
This site has downloadable fonts, one of which makes
creating documents and worksheets about the phases of
the moon really easy.
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/dos/1232/page11dscience.html
The Earth and Moon Viewer
Teaching about day and night and the phases of the Moon
can be difficult in the primary classroom, using models
such as torches and tennis balls. This website is one
of many on the Internet that allows children to access
satellite images. At this site children see in real
time which parts of the Earth are in night and which
in day time, and can see the Earth from different viewpoints
such as from the Sun and the Moon. They can see the
'night side' of the Earth and how the lights from large
American cities can be seen from space. By accessing
the site at different times during a school day children
will 'see' how the Earth rotates, so changing which
parts of the Earth are in day or night time. Similar
images are produced of the phases of the Moon. By printing
out these images a nice timeline can be produced, modelling
the effect of the Earth's rotation in day and night,
or the phases of the Moon. These images could be simply
animated by putting them into a PowerPoint presentation
and using the animation tools to develop a moving image.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/
Planet Alert
http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/planetearth/planetearth.html
Part of the excellent discovery.com website, Planet
Alert provides daily news reports of ecological and
natural disasters. These short reports make excellent
starting points for discussion and creative writing
with a science theme. Children could produce newspaper
front pages and presentations based on these reports.
They will also prompt children to undertake further
research. A good starting point on the Internet is to
use Yahooligans: http://www.yahooligans.com/Science_and_Nature/The_Earth/Environment/
This directory has a list of child friendly websites
that deal with everything environmental.
Save the Planet
Shockwave plug-in graphics are used to produce
visually attractive pages. Its content deals with the
environment and the resources we use within it. The
site is divided into two main areas: Main Stories
which gives background and current issues under seven
different headings (water, bio-diversity, natural resources
and recycling, energy, food and farming, cars and rich
world, poor world). These sections provide details,
statistics and video describing the issues involved.
The Take Action section allows you to develop projects
within the class based on those issues. In the Natural
Resources and Recycling section pupils are encouraged
to do something, start a school project, find out more,
play games and solve puzzles. The School Project
sections allow pupils to undertake and start campaigns
and carry out surveys; feedback forms are used to upload
the survey results so that schools can compare them.
The site also provides a simple to use discussion forum,
the latest environmental news and a Teachers' Guide.
This site makes excellent use of communication technology,
encouraging off-line activity and allowing pupils the
opportunity to communicate their thoughts and ideas
to a wider audience. The problem sites such as this
face are that unless schools are making use of their
interactivity, they lose some of their functionality.
So if you have an environmental-based project and are
looking for an opportunity to use ICT, this website
would provide an ideal place to start.
http://planet.channel4.com
Six billion people
This is a small simple website containing some useful
data that children can use to make graphs. From these
they will be able to discuss the effects of an increasing
population on the planet. It uses simple numbers that
give a brief insight into births, deaths and disease.
But these figures are enough to prompt discussion and
allow children to think about the global population.
The website displays a real-time clock showing how quickly
the world population is increasing. There is a small
calculator that lets children enter their age and the
site will tell them the Earth's population at the time
they were born. Using the real-time clock they will
be able to work out by how many the population has increased
in their lifetime. The figures are quite staggering.
By graphing the results children will be able to estimate
the potential world population in 10 years' time. Lots
of numerical activities can be devised using the information
on the site. The results will lead children to further
research, discussion about ethics, how science can help
or hinder and give them a greater sense of world community.
http://www.popexpo.net/eMain.html
The Web of Life
This is a nice little interactive quiz page based on
the London Zoo's Web of Life exhibit. Children click
on an icon and are given clues. They then have to try
to guess the animal. When they are successful a detailed
photograph (which can be printed out) appears. The pages
also contain a species search; here children can look
at and find out details about the animals that are contained
on the exhibit. This site is ideal for a small-group
activity and will stimulate some interesting discussions
and debate.
http://www.weboflife.co.uk/weboflife/species_web/index.html
King of the Swingers
The Internet is full of webcams, but not many show live
footage. This Gorilla Cam from the New England Zoo gives
you insight into the lives of their gorillas. As this
is live you will need the Realplayer plug-in. When you
log on to the camera you join a list. When it is your
turn, you get 20 seconds to control the camera yourself.
There is something special about controlling a camera
from your classroom that is on the other side of the
Atlantic and being able to watch these wonderful creatures.
http://www.livewave.com/
The eSkeleton Project
Studying the skeleton can be difficult in the primary
classroom, using resources such as scale models, diagrams
and x-rays. This site lets children examine the human
skeleton in detail. It also allows them to compare the
various bones of the human skeleton with the same bone
in a gorilla or baboon. If your browser has the Quicktime
plug-in, children can view the bones as they rotate.
Using a VRML plug-in children are able to manipulate
the views for themselves. Both plug-ins are available
on the site. Areas that the children select can be printed
out for classroom use.
http://www.eskeletons.org/
Healthy Kids
Exploring the body is only a small part of this site.
It covers the usual areas, such as bones, brain and
digestive system, and children can find explanations
of the body system to read, print and e-mail to others.
However, it also provides stories and articles about
issues such as bullying, emotions and feelings. The
site is well worth a look to find resources that would
be extremely useful in the PSHE curriculum.
http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/
DNA for Dinner
Frankenstein Foods, Mutant Crops, Designer Foods - all
have made the tabloid headlines and laid the foundations
for the public's view of genetically modified foods.
This site offers children the opportunity to undertake
a WebQuest. Here children are asked to decide 'Should
genetically engineered food crops be specially labelled
for consumers and why?' The site provides information
and links to other sites to help children develop their
own ideas about this subject. The site is heavily biased
towards the US; for instance it asks the children to
e-mail Congress with their report and ideas. But this
could easily be replaced by e-mailing their local MP
or the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs,
Dr Kim Howells, e-mail: tlo.howells@tlo.dti.gov.uk.
This site offers good advice on using the vast resources
of the World Wide Web with children.
http://www.gis.net/%7Epeacewp/webquest.htm
Remember the Tamagotchi or the Furby? These 'delightful'
toys had artificial intelligence at the heart of their
microchips. But artificial intelligence or AI is not
a recent phenomena. During the 70s John Conway created
a simple game called 'Life'. This involved simple 'cells'
behaving according to simple rules. Try http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/
to see this in action. The complexity of virtual organisms
has moved on. Many websites make use of this technology
and these can be used to create interesting investigations
in the classroom.
It is easy enough to grow plants in the classroom and
there are plenty of activities to use them in investigations
such as on the SAPs website, http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/
. To have a virtual plant to work along side these
investigations download one from http://www.desksoft.com/DesktopPlant.htm
. When this trial version is installed you will have
an Azalea plant that will grow on your computer desktop.
The plant will last seven days, in that time you have
the option to vary the amount water, sunlight, temperature
and fertilizer it receives. Children can ask questions
and see the results far quicker than they would with
real plants. The outcomes of the virtual investigation
could be used to plan an investigation with real plants
to see if the results are the same.
Technosphere is a virtual world where children can
design their own virtual carnivore or herbivore and
the release it into the 'wild'. The site then sends
e-mails giving details of how well the creature is doing,
who it has eaten and bred with.
http://www.technosphere.org.uk/
The virtual fish works in a similar way, it is based
at the University of Science in Boston. The site gives
you the opportunity to create four fish and release
them into the tank. The site provide regular updates
on how your fish is doing and how it is interacting
with its environment.
http://www.virtualfishtank.com/main.html
Both these websites allow children to create different
virtual creatures and observe the effects. From these
observations children can modify their creatures, trying
to improve its chances of survival. Children will be
able to collect a large amount of data from using these
sites, which make them ideal for long term modelling
investigations.
Not quite AI, but a delightful site suitable for younger
children. In the Switchroo Zoo children are given the
opportunity to mix animals together to create a new
creature. When they have named their new creation they
can print it out. The site has lots of other activities
that encourage children to look closely at animals and
their features.
http://www.switcheroozoo.com/
My absolute favourite Virtual Creature website is http://www.virtualcreatures.com
. Here you are able to download a virtual tarantula.
This spider will then live on your desktop and act as
a screensaver. There are two types of spider to choose
from and they behave in a very realistic way. Children
will have to interact with the spider by feeding it
virtual crickets and giving it water. They can also
tickle it! Their objective is to keep it happy and healthy.
Using this simulation children will certainly discover
a lot about how tarantula behave. If tarantulas are
not your thing then why not download a Virtual Goldfish
from the same site.
This issue's WebSearch looks at 'on-line' museums.
Many museum websites provide details on how to get there
and what exhibits they contain. Others have taken advantage
of the Internet and made their Web pages part of the
exhibits they offer. The global nature of the Web allows
teachers and children to bring the resources of museums
from all over the world directly into the classroom.
So you can get all the advantages of a museum visit
without the chaos of buying pencils and rubbers in the
shop!
The Natural History Museum
The website of the Natural History Museum has details
of how to book and organise visits, forthcoming events
and outlines of current exhibitions. This currently
includes the Rhythm of Life exhibition and a
superb Wildlife Photography exhibition, as well
as links and a search feature specialising in natural
history. The on-line activities include Walking with
Woodlice, the results of an on-line survey carried
out between May and October by schools across the country.
If you are looking for secondary data to analyse with
your class then this is an ideal source. This site also
allows your class to upload their conclusions. The Quest
area has been updated; Quest II can now operate
in different languages. On-line children are able to
examine objects, measure, weigh, 'feel' and shine UV
light on them. They can also make on-line notes and
read what other people have said about the object. Their
mission is to try to explain what the object is. Finally,
in the on-line section, there is a Dinosaur database.
This can be explored on-line and all the information
is available as a downloadable Excel spreadsheet file.
This site offers a lot more than just an outline of
the Natural History Museum; like the Museum, it is well
worth a visit.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/education/online/index.html
The Exploratorium
The Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception in San
Francisco has been on-line since 1993, and was one of
the first science museums to build a site on the Web.
It has more than 10,000 web pages exploring hundreds
of different topics and hundreds of sound and video
files. The site has seven million visitors a year, nearly
seven times the number of people who visit the museum
in person. This makes it one of the most visited museum
websites in the world. So what does it have to offer?
Apart from details of how to visit the museum and a
digital library to the 10,000 web pages, the first page
has links to sections such as Origins, which
is about research at CERN with particle accelerators;
The brain explorer ; Revealing bodies; The learning
studio; Sport science; an observatory, Solar
Max, that explores solar flares; and a science radio
programme where pupils can listen to on-line discussions
broadcast using Realplayer.
This site is huge and there are some gems hidden among
the thousands of pages. It is well worth spending some
time exploring this wonderful resource.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/
Techniquest
Techniquest calls itself the UK's leading science discovery
centre. Their website has a nice little collection of
on-line activities. Find out at what temperature your
eyeballs would freeze, investigate colour and camouflage
and draw complex patterns using symmetry. In the activity
to find out how unique you are, children can enter simple
data about themselves; the website will then tell them
how many people like them have used the exhibit. All
these would be useful classroom activities.
http://www.techniquest.org/
The Internet allows teachers to bring scientific expertise
directly into the classroom, not just with websites
containing information, but a facility that allows pupils
to ask questions of real scientists. A simple search
will bring up various sites, mostly American. I struggled
to find any UK sites that offered this facility, but
here are a couple of ideas.
Mad Science Network
This website has a lot going on and may take some getting
used to. Pupils have to fill in a form to submit a question.
A question will only be answered if it has not been
asked before; the site suggests that 60-70% of questions
have been asked before, so first it is best to explore
the archives and the 'frequently asked questions'. The
most frequently asked question is, 'Why is the sky blue?'.
The answers are graded according to age suitability.
Try the random knowledge generator, to give you not
only a list of questions for your pupils to think about
and discuss, but more importantly the answers. So if
you are interested in finding out why hot wateris used
to make ice rinks, check out this site.
http://www.madsci.org
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Having access to scientists on-line is one thing, but,
as is generally the case, the real thing is better than
the virtual! The BBSRC's website offers the opportunity
for schools to link up with scientists. By contacting
Chantelle Jay, Schools and Community Links Officer,
interested schools will be put in touch with their local
co-ordinator who establishes links with the schools
and encourages school-scientist partnerships.
This site also allows teachers to download the excellent
free resources that BBSRC produces. Publications well
worth getting hold of are the Scientist in school
activity sheet pack, the Minibeast resource pack
and the Seeds and plant growth activity pack.
If you haven't already accessed it, visiting this site
is time well spent just for these resources alone.
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk
Sodaplay
This website will certainly challenge Year 6. It allows
children to build wireframe models that are linked together
with masses, joints and springs, a sort of virtual Meccano.
Once a model has been built it can be tested under different
force conditions: there are options to change the effect
of gravity, friction and the tension of the springs.
The site contains many pre-constructed models that children
can use to explore the effects of increasing, decreasing
and even reversing gravity. These models can also be
deconstructed so that children can make their own. Instructions
on how to make your own models are included on the site
and provide a comprehensive tutorial. But the best way
to make models is through trial-and-error investigation.
Completed working models can be saved on the site for
other visitors to explore. This is a strangely fascinating
site that will provide children and teachers with hours
of challenging experimentation on the effects of forces.
http://www.sodaplay.com
Paper aeroplanes
I don't know about you but I can never remember how
to make those paper 'planes I made as a kid. This site
may help. It provides a number of printable designs
for paper aeroplanes, helicopters and gliders. The instructions
are clear and concise. Children can choose their designs
from the site, build their paper 'planes and then devise
investigations. They could alter variables such as the
type of paper used or the size of the paper and then
measure/observe the effect on the 'planes' performance.
By allowing children to choose different designs to
make, comparisons can be made between them to see which
'plane will stay up in the air the longest.
http://www.paperairplanes.co.uk
Gravity
From Apples to Orbits is the title of this site
and it tells the story of gravity. It provides a comprehensive
guide to everything you need to know about gravity:
What is gravity?, Gravity and history, Small-scale effects
of gravity, Large-scale effects, and Gravity and us.
The sections are written in easy-to-understand language
accompanied by useful interactive diagrams, which explain
vocabulary and illustrate the text further. But by far
the most useful and interesting section is the 'Grav
Lab'. This provides a number of different simulation
scenarios and games that allow children to experiment
with different aspects of gravity. This site is well
worth a visit and can help explain what at times can
be a heavy subject (get it!).
http://library.thinkquest.org/27585/
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