Using the Internet to teach science

(TES 1994) It's massive and growing fast - the Internet - huge banks of information and strange new ways of communicating. As a case study of exponential growth this is a stunning one.

No, it's not time to down data loggers and your CD-Roms. It is time to wonder when or how - as yet another vision of the microchip age starts to take shape.

The attraction grabber on the Internet is the `Web' where you can read, watch and interact with pages on the screen. You can go to a search page, type in `Wildlife' and find nearly a hundred pages. Or you can find a `home' or menu page and browse through other people's selections. You will easily find the `Nine Planets' pages - with not just legions of data and pictures about say, Saturn but about its moon Titan and so on.

"It's like a book isn't it?" I said to Jo Quinton-Tulluck at the Science Museum. "It's not just A book" she answered, "it's more like a book you've chosen from all the libraries in the world."

Silly question, because it's more than this: more like owning a pile of CD-Rom discs, with regular deliveries of today's sun spots, Kobe seismograph or news before it hits the TV. CD-Rom systems could even become redundant when they've built a `Superhighway' - a new Internet with much more bandwidth (information carrying ability). If that happens, you might interview scientists live, watch a nature reserve, access a you-wannit, you've-got-it world resource.

But with today's Internet, you can start at Research Machines' pages by typing a little `voodoo' (See panel) into the computer. Then you click on the human body project where you'll see slices through a real one. Click on space telescopes and the image from the Hubble telescope. Click on botany, chemistry, physics...you'll find masses. You don't have to pay RM to browse here, though if you do, you can post your own pages or projects and gain an international audience overnight.

The BBC science page is good starter too - there's not masses but I'd give it an award for writing something about each reference. From here you can get to San Francisco's Exploratorium to see some optical illusions (juniors), and from there to other sites providing daily seismographs, weather and space data. Stop off at the Franklin Institute and take a tour round the heart.

Museum pages are everywhere, the Natural History Museum has on-line exhibits and also links to other museums. You will find rare information on wildlife diets or The Froggy page and a button that goes `gribbit' or the advanced level `mini-encyclopaedia' in Washington.

If you want to see some real, if bizarre, measuring and control you can visit the bath and refrigerator connected to the Internet. You can see if the fridge light is on, whether the door is open and what the temperature is. You can check temperature of the bath or even wave, using a robot arm, to the cat. You get to choose the kind of wave too - a royal wave, a tidal wave, or a sine wave!

This is a breezy tour - some things to do with a new toy. In real life, the toy is certainly good for finding things out and it's great as a stimulus for further work. The place to start is a search or a good topic index if you find one. Mind you, as fast as you find interesting stuff, there's dull or differently interesting stuff too - some university people seem to be emptying their heads into the computer for the helluvit.

There are other ways of using the `net - using communication channels like `mail' and `chat'. How about getting the pupils to simulate a space shuttle launch? Robert Morgan at University School, Ohio will even launch one for you. He chooses a date and then invites schools everywhere to sign up.

The pupils could become the mission control, a docking station or be in the shuttle itself. He then feeds everyone with news or problems which the children have to solve. The pupils can even feed the system with their own emergencies.

In the run-up to the big launch, children might train as astronauts, investigate disorientation (using a spinning office chair) or be interviewed by the `press'. During the mission they do experiments, check their blood pressure or make a freeze-dried meal. They even "chat" live with the other schools on the mission. And there are curriculum spin-offs, where they study geotropism in plants, or check the risk of solar flares before a space walk.

Pupil can get satellite pictures from space and check the conditions before a launch. They can read a report on why the Challenger shuttle went wrong. They can take a look through the telescope at Bradford, search through its library of pictures or ask the telescope people to look at something they want.

As Robert Morgan says, "Many of the concepts children struggle with disappear when they see a practical application of it. Newton Laws of Motion come "alive" when they try to dock with a satellite in orbit".

Space, you come to realise, is the big thing in the US curriculum. That it's done to excess is to be expected. But the imagination and scope here is good. See the reference below to get on the next flight or pick up some worksheets.

Till now, Campus 2000, the schools on-line service, has been the medium for our own collaborative projects such as The National Environmental Database. Schools gather environmental data, send it in and used the collected effort to study the national picture. This could go world-wide next term when Campus starts an Internet service, promising more for science as well as safer surfing for schools.

The daily buzz of the Internet is in the discussion or news groups. There are thousands on offer, misc.education.science is one of the places you might post a question or answer or just `find things'. News groups are anarchic and unpredictable. Sometimes it's like Christmas television and sometimes it's like Mondays - and there's no TV Times to help. But there are teachers sharing work they've tried, and as chance would have it, there is often someone thinking the same thing as you, or more usefully they're a think or two ahead.

More anarchic still is the rec.pyrotechnics news group. Here is the fascinating applied science of fireworks, ballistics, pipe bombs and nerve gas. It's one of many places to brush up on your chemistry but it's 100% `don't try this at school' stuff - some people here as unstable as the chemicals they talk about. And born-again safety officers will not like the answer to, "How can I send an oil drum into orbit" so be warned.

Stephen Baines of Long Eaton School, Nottingham found surer things in the sci.chem group. "There were useful contacts and a superb experiment to measure the caffeine in tea (by precipitation) - I turned that into a class investigation." He even set up a more school-focussed group, where teachers might ask "How can I assess..." or "Any ideas for my science club". Such is the magic of the system that by day two he had over 50 subscribers.

It's too early to say, to everyone `get on this'. And it can be fiddly to connect (See p. ) - I could recommend CompuServe for a pretty excellent starter kit if you try this from home.

The Internet is a thrill and there are marvels to come. For some, it's probably a headache and another IT thing not to do. The nice thing is that the debate about `the issue' - how it's used in school can begin anytime you like. Just connect up to the DfE or NCET right now, with an answer to the question: "Superhighways in school: bandwidth, bandwagon or bull?"

Practical Tips - updated

You need a modern computer, a modem and a subscription to a 'service provider'. In money, £200 buys the modem and £120 buys a year's subscription. You ought to budget for, and tell the head (while seated or better, over a drink) about the likely effect on the phone bill. Just an hour's connection a day will add around £500 over the year but if your Internet service provider is more than a local call away, you need to double that.

At around £120, the faster modems are worth considering: they are faster than the half-the-price modems. In theory they should save your phone bill, in practice they make browsing the internet easier - so you will probably use the system, and the phone more.

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