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- Subject Expertise
- The Internet can be a great way to improve your own subject knowledge. The amount of
information which is there for the taking is staggering, and it’s always being updated.
When students ask you that awkward question you can just search for it on the web, put
the site with the answer into the walled garden,
and let the students find it for themselves.
- At the bottom of this page you will find a ‘Links’ button which will take you to categories of
sites which I have found useful in my teaching. Under the individual religions I have only
listed one or two sites - if you visit these sites you’ll find that they have ample links to
similar sites, so I didn’t feel it necessary to list them all here. See my disclaimer about the content of linked sites.
- You’ll find whole texts of books available on the web - usually ones which are no longer
copyright, including all the major world religions’ holy books and some which are not so
major. There are also lesson plans, lectures, and lecture notes from around the world, all
of which can help you learn yourself and then teach your students.
- A couple of years ago I changed our A-Level syllabus to include a Philosophy of Religion
paper. Using the syllabus I searched for relevant sites on the web and discovered a
plethora of useful explanations, definitions, arguments, and discussions, (which explains
why the Links page contains so many philosophy sites).
- I don’t think I could have taught the paper without the web - books are fine, but sometimes
it’s difficult to find just the right ones, and you may only want the odd chapter, rather than
fork out lots of money for the whole book.
- I’d like to record here, publicly, my thanks to Wes Morriston at the University of Colorado,
whose well resourced and designed site was of the greatest help in teaching A-Level.
- Communicating with students
- With the setting up of networks in school and E-mail, it becomes much easier to set work,
web resources, or receive information from students.
- If students have access at home or at school, they can send you questions and ask for
advice to which you can respond with specific written help. I was once even sent an essay
to mark via e-mail from a student who in the lesson said she had ‘left the printed copy at
home’ (and I hadn’t believed her!)
- Teachers can provide documents containing relevant information for a piece of work, which
can be placed into a class folder on the school’s network. Students could then access this
in a lesson and use it to enhance their work. Their completed assignments - word
processed or desk top published - can be left in their own folder for the teacher to assess.
And the rainforest heaves a sigh of relief!
- Communicating with teachers
- We can send each other ideas, questions, worksheets, lesson plans, tasks which worked,
and those which didn’t, and generally share good practice with one another.
The ‘Interact’ section of the RE-XS site at the University College of St. Martin, Lancaster is
great for this. There’s a Bulletin Board for asking and answering questions, Web Chat,
Discussions, a pinboard for anouncements of events, an E-mail directory (they can’t spell
my name!), Faith to Faith contacts, and World Contacts - some of the sections are still
under construction.
- I have had a number of requests for contact between schools in other countries, which
could prove useful. Most of these have been from America, but I did get one teacher from
Switzerland asking about our education system. Such contacts might be useful for
broadening students’ view of the world - particularly perhaps in obtaining different ethical
views. Schools could maintain contacts with other individual students - see my Barmitzvah
suggestions under Intranet below. Who knows,
these kinds of contacts might even result in an exchange visit.
Here’s my e-mail address emphyr@globalnet.co.uk - I’d be interested in feedback on the
course.
- Worksheets
- Textbooks are never enough, and never precisely what we want, so we make worksheets
to supplement them. I expect most teachers are now at least word processing them, so at
least they’re legible (not like the hand written Banda spirit duplicator sheets I remember
getting at school - I can smell them now!). Worksheets can be unbelievably boring - so
freshen them up with some appropriate pictures from the web. A graphics package allows
you to lighten them or turn them into black and white for photocopying if necessary. Here
are some of the ones I’ve used (in no particular order):
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- Intranet
- This is really where I see the future of IT in teaching. The intranet is a network of
computers linked together locally, and not necessarily on-line to the internet.
You are currently viewing these pages from my website at Globalnet ISP, but you needn’t
be - you could access these pages locally if they were installed on your school’s network.
You might think that the file-size of the pages would be too big to transport on a disk, for
example. You’d be surprised, all of these pages, including the pictures, will fit on a 1.44
megabyte disk.
- So you could write your own series of pages (it’s really
very easy!) and let students browse them, connect to your chosen sites in the walled
garden, and produce their own work from them - a voyage of discovery! And if you don’t
feel up to writing your own, you can always download another teacher’s onto your school’s
network. A good (rather large - 6.06mb zipped) example on pilgrimage can be obtained at
the RE-XS site - browse it
on-line or download it as a zip file.
- Something I am planning to use in this way is a Barmitzvah site. The difference here is
that it’s not just about factual information, but real people. When looking for Barmitzvah
information on the web I discovered that a number of Bar and Bat Mitzvah teenagers put
up web pages as part of their preparation for the big day. It occurred to me that students
would be able to get right under the skin of the topic by studying these pages.
- These are real young people with real names and real families - some of their pages are
good, some less so. Some concentrate more on the practical arrangements and festivities,
some on the more spiritual aspects. Some even have music, and one site allows you to
hear the boy reciting part of his Torah portion.
- Students could be set the task of placing the sites into religious and non-religious
categories, with their justifications.
- They could evaluate which of the pages expresses the meaning of Bar/Bat Mitzvah
best.
- They could even send a class e-mail, explaining the work they’re doing, and ask a Bar
Mitzvah boy questions - the excitement of a prospective reply might help to enliven even
the most disinterested of students!
- There are also wonderful photographs of these young men and women and their families -
and because the web is constantly changing, unlike textbooks, there are new sites
appearing every year. Here’s a list of just some of the sites I found - have a look yourself
by clicking on Mazeltov - think of the possibilities!
- It might be possible to construct similar sites for other religious activities - I wonder if there
are any Confirmation pages, for example? Let me know if you find any.
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