by Katherine Isbell
As environmental educators, most of us are
familiar with many of the large government websites on
environmental issues. These sites contain a tremendous amount of
information we can freely use in our classrooms, and some even
provide lesson plans so that we can more easily incorporate the
materials into our instruction. However, as useful as these sites
are to educators, they are often too unwieldy for students,
especially younger ones, to use. Here are some sites that are
appropriate for K-12 teachers and students.
The mother of all government environmental websites, that of the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,1 has two sections just for
kids: Kids, for elementary age children, and Students, for middle
and high school students. Both present information on a wide
variety of environmental topics such as water, air, ecosystems
and conservation, and the Kids section also contains games,
pictures and stories. While both sections offer useful
information in a fairly straightforward manner, they make little
use of multimedia; thus students familiar with popular computer
games might find these sites very tame by comparison. In
addition, navigation on the Kids site may be tricky for younger
users because some pages lack return-to-home buttons. Links in
the Students section, on the other hand, are clearly marked.
The EPA site also has a section for teachers where you can search
for and easily download pdf files of lesson plans, readings and
exercises. Activities are cross-referenced to the activities in
the Kids and Students pages. Naturally, you may need to adapt the
materials for your group of students, but they provide ideas to
help make lesson planning go a bit faster and smoother.
At Environment Canada's large and informative site,2 classes
investigating pH or acid rain will find information on the
concept of pH and how to measure it, a chart showing the pH of
various substances, and three experiments for different age
groups. In another section of the site, students can enter a
Virtual Classroom which aims to encourage kids to explore and
express ideas about the environment. It is organized into several
units: Environmental Citizenship, Atmosphere and Climate, and
Spaces and Species being just a few examples. Each unit offers a
page of fun stuff such as puzzles, games and quizzes; an overview
of the topic; and a facts page with helpful hints on the impact
of our own actions. A list of related readings and web links
rounds out the unit. All of the support material is downloadable
and appears to be geared to grades 5 to 8.
While this is a beautiful, colorful, and well-organized site, it
lacks features such as interactivity and multimedia that would
make it a great site. Many of the materials, such as the games
and puzzles, are meant to be downloaded as pencil-and-paper
activities -- good for teachers whose students have limited
access to computers, but possibly boring for kids who are using
this site in the computer lab. The readings have few graphics to
help aid comprehension, and while the designers state that the
site was created with teachers and students in mind, there is no
special-to-the-teacher page to help instructors incorporate this
material into a lesson.
Students learning about the land Down Under may want to check the
interactive environmental quizzes developed by the Australian
Department of the Environment and Heritage. Presented at three
levels of difficulty, the quiz helps students learn about
environmental problems specific to Australia. Students can easily
access helpful information while taking the quiz. Only one
complaint: the quizzes seem overly long and may not sustain
students' interest.
Finally, at the Parks Canada Virtual Tour site,4 students of all
ages will enjoy learning about Canada's cultural and natural
features through beautiful photographs and interesting QuickTime
videos. Users may explore by province or by park, in either
French or English. Each virtual tour has at least one video clip
and four or five pictures. While the site is not specifically
designed for students, it is an excellent example of the
educational possibilities inherent in the multimedia capability
of the Web.
Please let me know if you find any of these sites helpful and
feel free to send me the URLs of sites you like. Remember:
sometimes websites move or disappear. All URLs mentioned were
active at press time.
Katharine Isbell is Assistant Professor of
English at Miyazaki International College in Miyazaki, Japan.
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Kids: www.epa.gov/kids/
Students:www.epa.gov/students/
Teachers:www.epa.gov/teachers/
2. Environment Canada
Acid Rain: www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain/kids.html
Virtual Classroom: www.on.ec.gc.ca/glimr/classroom/
3. Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage:www.environment.gov.au/portfolio/education/enviroquiz/
4. Parks Canada:
www.parkscanada.gc.ca/thesite/virtual_e.cfm