United Nations CyberSchoolBus

http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/

Authors/Editors

The United Nations Cyberschoolbus was created in 1996 as the online education component of the Global Teaching and Learning Project, whose mission is to promote education about international issues and the United Nations. The Global Teaching and Learning Project produces high quality teaching materials and activities designed for educational use (at primary, intermediate and secondary school level) and for training teachers.The vision of this Project is to provide exceptional educational resources (both online and in print) to students growing up in a world undergoing increased globalisation. The Global Teaching and Learning Project is part of the Outreach Division of the United Nations Department of Public Information.

Due to its outstanding quality, the website received numerous awards from all over the world.

Description of Contents

The Cyberschoolbus covers a variety of areas with one focus being the United Nations System (see left column of its homepage above). We, however, will concentrate on the section "curriculum" where teaching materials for peace education, human rights, ethnic discrimination and so on are provided.

Using the cyberschoolbus' "curriculum"

Let's have a look at how to use the materials provided, taking the module about Peace Education as an example. Start clicking on the link "Peace Education" and on the following side click the chapter heading "Peace Education" in the middle of the window which is also a link and will lead you to the homepage of the Peace Education section. Now in the upper right corner of the window you can see four links

• teacher as learner,

• about peace education,

• learner as teacher,

• links and resources,

which enable you to jump to the 4 main sub-sections.

"Teacher as learner" provides background information for teachers, especially about the contents and methods of peace education. "About peace education" contains chapters about origins, framework and rationale of peace education. "Links and resources" gives a summary of relevant documents and links and also contains a very comprehensive bibliography.

"Learner as Teacher" finally - as can be seen on the screenshot - comprises five elaborated teaching units for direct use in the classroom which all are of high quality and will turnout as real time-savers when it comes to preparing your lessons!

The structure of the section "Peace Education" being really convincing (understandable for the user, easy to navigate etc.), one would expect all the other sections having a similar structure. This, unfortunately, isn't the case. They differ strongly (structure, design, layout, navigation etc.) from the section "Peace Education" as well as between each other thus unnecessarily complicating the use of the "curriculum" of the Cyberschoolbus website.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that it belongs to the kind of Internet sources for teachers of EDC, which are really worthwhile visiting.