Chapter 6 |
6 The curriculumArtIn art, as learners gather and use source materials, they build up sketchbooks of visual evidence. They learn to discriminate between works of art, comparing art, craft and design across different periods and places. For looking at art, the Internet provides unrivalled facilities. Here not only are the leading galleries offering tasters of their collections, but also new artists and new art forms are appearing. For example, the Museum of the Hellenic Civilisation has high-quality digital photographs of paintings, sculpture and pottery from Greece’s museums. In the UK, you can ‘visit’ the National Gallery and various photographic collections, including one from Kodak. The Internet will never replace real visits to galleries or confrontations with the works, but these sites, together with CD-Roms and books, can be used to prepare learners for personal visits and help them to carry out work afterwards. Images in all forms are a strong feature of the Internet. If you think of the Web as a personal publishing medium, you cannot fail to see what an intriguing outlet it is for artistic skills. A primary school in London has worked with a photographer ‘in residence’ to create visual records of their lives and families on the school Web site. Another school in Birmingham, which collects works of art from Web sites around the world and stores them for pupils on its intranet, encourages the pupils to search the Web for new artists. Intranets are particularly useful for graphics and multimedia, since large files like these tend to take a long time to download live. Web pages call for creativity and design – a simple point that will ensure for many people a career, or at least a source of income. And today’s pages offer much more than yesterday’s text and static images. There are different kinds of media to experiment with and, as with television graphics, images can appear and disappear, grow and shrink… even interact with the user. The Internet is increasingly seen as a valid space for artists to explore as a creative medium in its own right, resulting in a redefinition of 'graphic design' to include digital design skills. These are the beginnings of a new art form and there are many Web sites that exploit the technology. Contemporary artists use the Internet as their permanent gallery. Organisations invite artists to contribute works to their galleries. In addition to using their own school Web space to display work, learners can submit work to the more public on-line exhibitions. The Internet is also a place for discussion. Learners can be party to this on a world-wide scale. They can read what others are saying, make their judgements and respond. With just an electronic mail address to identify them, they can take their time assembling their ideas and be read as an equal with adults. And because the canvas material in this electronic world is so transportable, learners in different locations have an unusual opportunity to work on the same project. As learners browse the Web, finding art from other cultures, they soon realise that, subject to copyright, much of the material on view can be copied and kept. Over time, they can assemble electronic sketchbooks by copying and pasting what they find. They need not stop here, however, for there are tools on computers that allow all sorts of media to be reworked, and the Internet is a good place to buy posters, photographs and other works of art – and even to sell your own. To summarise, the Internet provides learners with opportunities to:
EnglishWhether you use electronic mail, join discussions or browse the Web, you will find the Internet is a world made up largely of words. People say that electronic mail is reviving the art of letter writing; some are even calling it the ‘best hope for literacy’. Others, however, are decrying its masses of illiterate outpourings, calling it ‘logorrhoea’. Using the Internet can heighten a learner’s awareness of audience so, here on the Internet, accuracy, good spelling and correct punctuation are no less important for effective communication than elsewhere. People tend to write short messages, and this demands precision in the use of language: conciseness is welcome where messages are frequent. Learners will inevitably receive texts from many sources, so they will need the skills of interpreting and summarising to handle them. English is the language of the Internet and many argue that its world dominance will increase because of this. The language will be developed through its use on the Internet, which will also be a means of gathering information about language use across the world. The Internet is of course a place where learners are keen to publish their work. They can publish a poem and add sounds and visuals. They can create multimedia compositions that include links to other material on the Web. Learners may find an ‘organic text’ – a publicly owned piece of writing – which they add to and leave for others to continue the work. Altogether, they will find themselves in a new medium – an intriguing mixture of desktop publishing and multimedia. What is just as important, in this democratic medium their published work can have equal status beside the work of others. A feature of some education sites is the writing workshop. Learners can post their work or questions here and receive help from, say, a ‘writer in residence’. Often, the idea of receiving help from a distant mentor is liberating and stimulating. Certainly, writing projects where learners can work with professional writers or with other learners across the world will establish themselves as an important feature of language work. Learners will also find libraries with copyright-free texts, transcripts, plays and poems. These sites, some of which are subscription services like LION (Literature OnLine), provide opportunities to conduct literary investigations and to obtain digital material. With electronic material being so versatile, subject to copyright they can edit, present and re-purpose what they find. The Internet is an important place for learner and teacher support. Web sites and discussion groups can help learners with set texts; for example, learners in different schools can read the same book and then compare responses on line. When teachers need an idea, a fact or an answer to a question, they will find somewhere to go for help. Professional associations, examination boards and teacher training institutions are already providing measures of support. Book, media and course publishers will inevitably exploit this medium, so that in time they will sell and send their wares over the Internet. Indeed, on-line book shops like Amazon are some of the Internet’s commercial success stories. To summarise, the Internet provides opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills. It is a medium for discussion, persuasion and negotiation. In practice learners can:
Design and technologyDespite the dominance of words discussed above, the Internet nevertheless provides an enormous visual resource for design and technology. Here for the taking are countless images showing the design and manufacture of thousands of objects. At design centres and company archives, learners can see the progress of projects from design right through to their realisation. At electronics giant Sony, the Wonder Technology Lab shows the breadth of the company’s activity. There is music, film and broadcast technology, as well as medical imaging and factory automation systems. The Web site at NASA has images showing aerodynamic design and the modelling they do. Closer to home, The Engineering Council offers a fascinating insight into the institution, including resource material for the classroom – in particular their excellent Technology Enhancement Programme materials. Much of this can be a starting point for design activities. But the Internet is a two-way medium. It allows learners to send as well as receive, so they might create a Web site for an imaginary company and weave a range of products into it. They can offer their ideas to design firms and effectively gain work experience anywhere in the world. They could take part in a global design-and-make competition, work with schools abroad, and gain support from experts on line. Given that documents can be transferred easily, learners could take a designer’s file (often to be found on the design software producer’s Web site) and modify it. We have already seen elements of this in projects like InterTech Europe, where learners use the Internet to exchange work, to plan and to evaluate ideas. When learners explored a vehicle manufacturer’s Web site, they adapted a car’s steering – turning its rack and pinion mechanism into adjustable coat hangers! In less formal projects, food and nutrition learners have exchanged information about local diets and cuisine. The Internet is as important to the design business as it is to the delivery of the curriculum. In design offices across the world, staff exchange plans and comments using the Internet. Learners will join a world where information technology pervades every facet of work, and where they will need to assimilate, develop, and use increasingly complex information. Perhaps with access to so much, learners will need less direct teaching, and more support in navigating information. As well as supplying information, the Internet is an excellent medium in which teachers can share work and seek answers to questions. The discussion groups and notice boards at education sites make a useful first stop. A visit to a school Web site can generate an idea or a useful e-mail contact. The sites of examination boards, curriculum authorities and professional associations may also be of help. In summary, the Internet is a focus to develop designing, planning, making, and evaluating skills. It allows learners to:
GeographyFor studying geography, the Internet can be a core resource. The growth of commerce on the World Wide Web, with its shops, airlines, travel companies and more, provides a richness that needs to be experienced. Whoever said that the Internet has ‘geography written all over it’ was surely close to the point. There are many weather sites across the world. The Meteorological Office is one. You will also find Web pages from ‘live’ weather stations, some showing an outside camera picture. The universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham offer live, regularly changing satellite images that can be stored, printed and examined. You can also find ‘weather movies’ (made by using a set of these pictures), hurricane tracking centres, and meteorology tutorials. There are relief maps and topological data for geological surveys and studies of land use. Ever-fascinating topics such as earthquakes and volcanoes get good coverage on the World Wide Web and the facts and figures are fairly accessible at secondary level. The Kobe earthquake site makes a good case study. In fact, these days when news of a natural disaster breaks, the Internet can add depth to the data normally found in the newspapers. For country-by-country information, you can look at the US census or the CIA World Factbook. Many sites will direct you to these and more. Alongside the mass of facts you can obtain, the Internet can also be seen as a place where you can collaborate with those in far-away countries. An easy starting point would be to exchange data about each other’s climate and environment, and then test to see if those actually living there agree with the information. Schools with their own weather pages can seek out the pages of others and compare notes. More than this, though, schools can obtain and publish local geographical data and be a resource for others who may in time reciprocate. Modern exploration uses amazing technology that allows learners to follow explorers’ progress from the safety of school or college. For example, the Oregon Trail, the Jason Project, Volcano World and BT’s CampusWorld enable learners to plot an expedition’s progress and even vote for where it should go next. They can see live video, ask questions and use the data the expedition collects. See the TicToc site for the archive of one such event. Education sites on the Web may also host on-line conferences on geographical topics. Discussions over the Internet can take place over days and weeks, the duration allowing learners time to research and discuss amongst themselves before they submit their opinions. In the geography curriculum, learners need to cover themes such as economic activity, land use, transport, population, settlements, environment, weather and climate. It is surprising how much of this can be enhanced by use of the Internet and how easily learners can develop a ‘sense of place’. On a practical note, here are a few more projects to consider:
HistoryThe popular notion of the Internet as a massive archive of material is an especially fitting one for work in history. Precious maps, charts and historical documents that would take a lifetime of travel and time to access personally are available from your classroom computer. Today there is good economic sense in organisations putting archives on the Internet: the cost of publishing and maintaining them is low and users can help themselves to resources without the need for an expensive enquiry service. For example, the University of Florida has an on-line exhibition with testimonies, descriptions and first-hand accounts of the Holocaust. And in Athens a wealth of Greek history is available. Learners, especially older students or teachers, can make tours of Pompeii or follow the progress of an archaeological dig. There is far more than this: the World Wide Web can take you to information on Vikings, Normans, the First World War, inventors, explorers, and the history of fashion. The education sites at BT’s CampusWorld and Research Machines ifl have pages which help you find resources at the right level. All this material is, of course, in an adaptable electronic format. There is no need to dwell on the information as you find it, as all the pictures and text can be kept on disk. Each element of a Web page can be moved into a word processor, edited and arranged to create a new piece of work. The result may also deserve a place on your Web site. Projects about local history, news and places of interest make particularly good items for publishing on the Web. An important aspect of the history curriculum – the evaluation of information sources – can also be raised here. Examples such as these can engage learners in constructing historical accounts, an imperative of any history curriculum. To summarise, learners can use the Internet to:
MathematicsWhereas to many subject specialists the Internet is a rich source of information, to the mathematician it is a rich source of real data. Given a choice between working on abstract figures or working on real and relevant data, most learners would opt for the real thing. But gathering data often involves getting out of school or college, which is time consuming – and this is where the Internet can help. Consider the idea of working with figures from the National Lottery Web site… or visiting a commercial site and using loan calculators, sales figures, investment calculators… or even plotting the spread of lava from a volcano or the progress of an Antarctic voyage. As you browse the Web, and especially its education sites, you will find the raw material for many real projects. There are other ways and opportunities to add ‘reality’. In particular, electronic mail allows you to connect with people and work with their data. You might find a partner school, swap details on body measurements and analyse others’ results. One Australian school asked many other schools for data on people’s height and weight. They set out how they wanted the data, and pooled the results they obtained from schools in the UK and elsewhere. They analysed the data, discussed them and published the findings on the school’s Web site. This sharing and collaborating is easy to do on the Internet. People often post messages on education sites asking for project partners. Here and there you will find sites with experts inviting questions from learners. You can even e-mail volunteer maths students at university for help with homework – only in this case, the students are French and the offer is aimed at French children! Teachers themselves can also benefit directly. There are teaching resources to find and, unlike a paper worksheet, they can easily be edited to suit your needs. In some education authorities, maths advisers use e-mail to keep in touch, offer advice and run projects. There are intriguing advantages to this: for example, after an in-service course, teachers could continue their discussions and report on new practices. No long letter writing was needed here – they could exchange short notes about how things were going. Discussion groups on the Internet are a place to find support. There are groups for mathematics itself, as well as those devoted to UK mathematics education. Here discussions continue all the while, but it needs only an occasional visit to pick up news and views. It can be enlightening to see how people across the world approach the same topic. Gifted learners will find things here to challenge them, as well as like minds to collaborate with. For a first tour, see the links to mathematics resources at Becta’s Web site. A link will take you to the Association of Teachers of Mathematics with their list of useful links. LanguagesThe Internet enriches learning a modern language in numerous ways. Electronic mail in particular is well established in language learning – a major step-up from activities that inevitably appear classroom-bound. As they communicate with peers abroad, learners find they have a real audience for some purposeful writing. The very nature of this broadens the kind of writing that they do and is highly motivating. You will find language projects running on CampusWorld, RM's ifl and Schools On Line. On certain days learners can share the making of a newsletter, take part in a survey or send questions to a native speaker. Schools and colleges can come together to work on e-mail projects. The project might be about pollution, local sights, home life or, for older learners, the world of work. It is helpful to agree with your e-mail partners at the outset the time scale, objectives and responsibilities for the project. Language education Web sites will help you find project partners. They may direct you for help to France à la carte, Germany’s Schulnetz and the European Schools Project. Schools have obtained European funding for some projects – the Central Bureau (020 7486 5101) has details. Useful work can be achieved without a specific partner. For advice, pen friends or contacts, the place to go is a discussion group. Teachers and learners can drop into a group, pick up tips, post questions and respond to those posted by other people. Linguanet-forum, for example, has been set up in the UK as a meeting place for those teaching languages; you can find details on the Lingu@NET site, a useful ‘one-stop shop’ for language teachers. A way to make the Internet work for you is to join a mailing list. It costs nothing, and you get messages through the electronic mail. Although it has origins in the USA, a list to join is ‘K12 Euroteachers’ (K–12 stands for kindergarten to 12th grade). Send an e-mail message to k12-euro-teachers@lists.eunet.fi to start receiving mail (but remember that sometimes you can get too much). Although it is 95% in English, the World Wide Web offers exciting resources for modern languages. Your topic might be the environment, shops, travel, culture and leisure. Older learners can use foreign newspapers, literature, poetry and pop songs. Learners are predictably motivated when asked to explore German football fanzines and French fashion catalogues. Finding the material needs the usual visit to ‘search engines’ such as Lycos or Alta Vista, but this time using the foreign language versions. You type the search word in the target language and the search engine finds the resources in the same language. Even so, it is worth rehearsing searches, or using a page of links to assessed places such as at Lingu@NET above, rather than waste lesson time experimenting. Putting language work on the World Wide Web – projects, newsletters, and pages of resources – should not be overlooked as a way to motivate learners with a real audience. The future Internet will offer even more to language learners: e-mail may be replaced by video and audio messages; ‘virtual reality’ language trips, on-line courses, translating telephones and who knows what else the future may bring. Thankfully for real life’s sake, most of all this is still years away! To summarise, using the Internet language learners can:
MusicOnly a year ago you could have imagined that, as far as music was concerned, the Internet was just a place to read about it; today that idea is no longer valid. Improvements in technology let you connect up and listen to music. With most people still using modems, however, it will not yet close the record shops. Nevertheless, this technology trend is raising the real prospect of music on demand. So back in class, when you or your learners need to hear some jazz, folk, blues, classical or world music, it may be that you will soon do so over the Internet. Even today, with a regular connection, music files that load to your computer are available over the system. With bands using the Internet as a marketing tool, there are lyrics, sound clips and live performances for the collecting. Almost every taste is catered for, and there are sites created by record companies and fans for even the most obscure artists and groups. For aspiring musicians and learners, this feature is making the World Wide Web a convenient and inexpensive outlet for their talents. Indeed, the motivation level when you suggest creating a Web site for a class band could well rise into the red zone! As a project involving researching, controlling, composing and refining music, it can easily encompass many learning imperatives. Off the main track of the Web, there are discussion groups covering every popular band and everything from classical European to Indian music. Here people post their thoughts and ask questions. It is certainly a taster of people talking, often at length, about music. As the Internet becomes a transport medium for music, the future is fascinating. Live international concerts will be a possibility. Resource banks, or archives of sounds, will be available for you to sample and experiment with. A visit to an education site or to one of the many ‘search engines’ on the Web should obtain you resources on individual bands and many types of music. The result – having access to such a wealth of material – offers learners an unusual opportunity to develop their knowledge of music. To summarise, using the Internet learners can:
Physical educationConsidering the time spent trying to get in touch with each other to arrange matches between teams, PE teachers may well be the most grateful of all users of e-mail! With sport such an important part of life, it is very often headline material on the Internet. Excitement is very apparent when important competitions such as the Olympics or World Cup are in progress. You will find World Wide Web sites covering almost every football team and major sporting event. A search using one of the Web search engines will quickly find information on sports, medicine, diet, health and more – ideal as raw material for projects. But rather than just look, there are opportunities to engage in discussion. Certain easily found parts of the Internet host discussion groups that anyone can join in. People post messages to the groups and reply to others and this builds up into the threads of on-going discussions. As you might expect, there is plenty of football team worship, but alongside this are serious discussions about diet, tactics and training methods. Here learners can share experiences and debate the finer points of sport. Some Internet providers arrange interview sessions with sports celebrities, where subscribers can e-mail questions and see the replies. You might collaborate with other schools and use electronic mail to share ideas too. Learners can discuss dance, health, or lifestyles. They can use e-mail to compare notes on an exercise programme or to plan a journey to a sporting event. In a more formal project setting, they can exchange and analyse their fitness and athletics data. As the speed of the Internet improves, video material may at last be accessible, so that film of skills training, sports events and record breakers could one day be available on demand. The Internet can help learners to:
Religious education‘Vicar gets on the Internet’ might have been a surprising headline at one time but it has now become commonplace. Today, all the major faiths have a space on the World Wide Web, recognising that this is an excellent way to disseminate ideas. It helps them to display their beliefs and values, as well as show learners how religion fits into communities, societies and cultures. Newspapers on the Web often discuss contemporary issues and many offer easy ways of searching their archives for key words. Together these may help learners to make better-informed judgements about issues around the principal religions. Discussion groups are special Internet places that you can drop into and sample the things that people are saying. Daily, they consider spiritual, moral, cultural and social issues. Coming from all over the world, they show a diversity of ideas that more than matches the plurality of beliefs in the UK. Access to this broad spread of thought may help bring down some of the barriers to understanding that have built up over centuries. But there are caveats. It is fair to say that some of the thinking here pre-empts discussion and reflection rather than respects any right to hold different beliefs. Now and then, a storm breaks out, and postings come in thick and fast. This can be worth seeing, but you may consider it wise to preview the material and select sample points of view. The Internet can help learners to:
ScienceScientists have used the Internet since its early days. Indeed, one of the reasons for its establishment was to enable an efficient information exchange in fast-moving areas of work. They used it to read journals, exchange ideas and build a community that freely shares its work. Today schools and colleges can join in and benefit from the foundations they laid. Obtaining evidence and accessing data is a vital part of science, and the Internet provides the transport medium for learners to share results, analysing and discussing them. Science work can often benefit from larger samples of data. A project measuring acid rain, or monitoring the weather or the noise level of Concorde will normally be an open-and-shut affair. However, over the Internet, people’s data can be pooled and mapped to generate some fascinating material for study. A number of ideas found at Schools On Line – an Internet project – ask learners to share data on diet, reaction times, water use and energy use. Each example presents the opportunity to work with larger, more credible data sets. Using the Web, learners can also follow real scientists working in the field. For example, the Corallia project took them through a survey of the role of plankton in a coral reef ecosystem. They could pick up atmospheric and oceanographic data from a ship and contribute to the project. This is just one example of many offers of first-hand experiences that crop up from time to time. With science so embedded in the Web, teachers and learners will find every possible topic covered. There is up-to-date data on earthquakes, cloning and BSE, and whole sites devoted to single animals. There are many popular science areas that learners can spent a lunch break exploring. At Sci-Journal they can see reports of investigations done by their peers. But the most casual browse usually yields too much information to cope with, so the less overwhelming course is to visit education sites such as CampusWorld or Internet for Learning for a short list of material more likely to be relevant. Schools On Line Science also has a rich library of links, annotated to show where they fit the curriculum. But this area is of special relevance: there are worksheets for investigations, and a place for teachers to ask about safety, experiments, exam syllabuses or whatever. During National Science Week special events took place, for example a number of celebrity scientists presented themselves for asking questions. There are indeed many science places for asking questions, some in discussion groups, some on ‘popular’ science areas. One of particular interest is ScienceNet which, in addition to answering questions by e-mail ("Why are bubbles round?"), offers news, articles, and a database of past questions that the curious will enjoy reading. In the future, as the Web speeds up, learners may contribute to world-wide science conferences; they may join in the excitement of live scientific surveys: they may control measuring devices and cameras and obtain data. Many have raised the call for text books, extensive curriculum materials, and scientific films on demand. To summarise, the Internet allows learners to:
Special educational needsFor learners, the Internet offers a rich range of resources – far more than you will find elsewhere. It can support individuals with special needs, but this should only be considered as part of their overall provision. Using e-mail, learners can communicate without their disability ever becoming apparent. They can compose their message at leisure, perfecting it in the word processor, so that whether or not they are competent at typing, spelling or writing legibly is no longer an issue. Virtual reality software has been used in a number of special needs schools to give learners experience of travelling and movement which they might never have. In a future Internet, offering these learners the ability to travel around a virtual world may be immensely liberating. The Internet can stimulate collaboration and motivate individuals. A recurring theme in using the Internet is the way it brings distant people with common interests together. People use discussion groups and electronic mail to exchange ideas over the Internet. Of course, people talk too, but in many teaching situations, a discussion group could spare a lot of people re-inventing wheels in their workplaces. If you want good and rare teaching ideas, it helps to see what other people, even far away, are doing. Considering time, travel and money, only the Internet could do this efficiently. An example is the SENCO forum, a project run by NCET (now Becta) for some 400 special needs co-ordinators. Rather than be a lone expert, unsettled by an unusual or unfamiliar or special need they could connect to the Internet and visit pages on the World Wide Web. Here they could ask questions, and share expertise. They could look back through a database of discussion, concerns, strategies and good practice.
Information skillsThe information on today’s Internet is overwhelming: academic journals, museum archives, and databases of every description. One day, maybe everything will be recorded somewhere on the Internet. As we move to an information-based world, teaching ‘how to learn’ or ‘how to find out’ will be vitally important. A information-handling task in a library, say, involves a whole series of steps. Teasing these steps out, learners have to work out what they are being asked, know where to look, and then pick out some things and reject the rest. Ultimately, they have to check whether they have been successful, and present their findings in a useful way. With a task on the Internet, there are parallels. The mechanics are inevitably slightly different, owing to the new tools that ICT provides. For example:
These steps involve information or process skills that appear throughout the curriculum – analysing, interpreting, appraising, evaluating and so on. They underpin work in nearly every subject, so acquiring them can improve students’ proficiency across the entire curriculum. Many people are saying that these skills need to be more clearly identified, some adding that our notion of ‘literacy’ needs to include information-handling and what is becoming known as ‘network literacy’.
The primary school curriculumThe early Internet was a place more for academics than primary-school pupils, but it has moved on greatly since. Among the dense tracts that challenge the highest reading skills, you will find richer pickings. Today’s trend towards a multimedia World Wide Web is making its value in primary schools more evident. Evident too is that Internet providers are keen to welcome younger learners on board: the education providers offer special areas and projects; the consumer providers offer families ‘learning zones’ and ‘kids’ places’. The easy access to newspapers, encyclopaedias, picture libraries, and art galleries across the world will certainly extend the resources of a small school. Not everything comes ready to use, though. Teachers can search and gather resources from the Web. For example, one school collected together the work of many different artists, adapted the text to make the language more appropriate and stored the pages on their intranet for children to browse. With so much ‘news’ on the World Wide Web, many schools run newspaper-making days, treating the Internet like a newswire. They make use of the fact that the raw materials of the Internet – photographs and text – are very flexible. Everything can be cut down and reworked: the final product could be on paper or even on a computer in the school foyer. Schools have built projects around cities, castles, weather, Vikings, volcanoes, Africa and the rain-forests. The Web has provided the resources. Under the heading ‘Space’, children followed a NASA mission to repair a space telescope: finding pictures of astronauts actually doing the repairs was remarked on. Added interest came from finding letters from one astronaut to his son. While they also found some highly technical information, the human angle gave many children a purchase on what was happening. Primary schools have found that the bigger Internet benefits come from e-mail. They have easily found contacts abroad, have received offers to join in projects, and have been sent endless requests for pen-pals. Some have exchanged e-mail with their local secondary schools as part of children’s preparation for school transfer; and after their move up to secondary school, children have been able to report back more easily. Other e-mail projects have involved:
A survey by NCET in early 1997 of practice in Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Kent, Birmingham, Cumbria, Brixton and North Yorkshire found the following uses of the Internet in primary schools: Teaching and learningEnriching the curriculum, producing a magazine, working with other schools on projects, home–school linking, exchange of teaching ideas, widening the audience for pupils’ art and English work, providing specialists for gifted pupils, correspondence between pupils at transfer to secondary, taking part in international curriculum projects, links with schools in contrasting areas of the UK. AdministrationUsing the Internet for electronic data exchange of pupil records on transfer to secondary. Professional support and development Closer links to the teacher centre for activities relevant to primary schools, on-line support for SEN co-ordinators from peers and agencies, technical help by e-mail, bringing in skills and experience from the wider community. The experience to date is that some primary schools are making impressive use of the Internet – often with limited resources. As with many things computer, the youngest learners are catered for last – which is paradoxical in that it is they who will live longest in the Information Age. |