www.

The Internet is a wonderful new tool for RE; as well as dedicated RE sites, it gives you the opportunity to visit web sites set up by the faith communities themselves. Some of these sites also have email facilities where you can ask questions of faith group leaders ( although not every site welcomes this - sometimes facilities are for genuine faith adherents only). A number of schools have also put RE pages on the web - they could give you ideas for your own work (set up your own pages!) or you could make contact with other schools working on the same topics as yourself.

METHOD

(a) RE Sites

There are two particularly good RE sites on the web that we have found. The first is at www.theresite.org.uk/. On this site, go through the "all RE" motif and you will find a search facility which will allow you to specify which faith you wish to find out about and the age of pupil (by key stage) that you are teaching. The search engine will select the top ten sites for you under your given parameters, and then away you go… Just as a test we keyed in "Islam 7-11" and found our way to "the Hajj Information Centre" where we were able to access photographs of the 1998 Hajj, graphical representations of the pilgrimage, instructions for fulfilling the Hajj etc etc.

The second site is the Religious Education Exchange Service at http://re-xs.ucsm.ac.uk/schools/
This offers materials on ICT, resources, book reviews, lesson plans etc. There are also faith specific information pages (we went for a browse through the pages on pilgrimages which had some beautiful photographs on them). Unfortunately we found on this one that it didn't always live up to its promises as some of the dedicated pages were disappointingly blank.

(b) Faith Sites

There are an enormous number of faith sites on the web, and it would be impossible to list them all. These sites are not always appropriate for your pupils because of the difficulty of the language used, but you will probably find them very useful for yourself to increase your own knowledge. Let's name just a few possibilities:

For Sikhism we discovered the direct line to Amritsar at www.sikhnet.com/hukam - this will give you the verses from the Guru Granth Sahib for the day in both English and Gurmurkhi. From there move on to the American site at www.sikhfoundation.org or www.sikhnet.com which we found extremely helpful.

For Islam we found www.convertstoislam.org/ a useful source, also www.ummah.org.uk/ while if you try www.alharamain.org you can get yourself a free copy of the Qur'an!

For Judaism you could perhaps start with www.judaism.miningco.com/ or http://shamash.org/trb/judaism.html

For Buddhism there is www.buddhanet.net and http://home.earthlink.net/~srama/index.html

For Hinduism try www.hinduismtoday.kauai.hi.uk/ashram/htoday.html

There are a huge number of Christian sites on the web. Several Cathedrals are now on-line and you can do virtual tours of them. Why not try our own Ely Cathedral version at www.cathedral.ely.anglican.org

There is a bank of art images of Christ at: www.clark.net/pub/webbge/jesus.htm although we would have liked to have seen some text there - it's just photographs.

If you want to think about Christianity as a world faith then you could try a site such as www.worship.co.za/dir/sites01.htm for Africa, or the Coptic Church at http://cs-www.bu.edu/faculty/best/pub/cn/Home.html

The different charity organisations have some excellent detailed pages of materials e.g. www.christian-aid.org.uk/ is particularly helpful if you are wanting to do work on Jubilee 2000.

POSSIBLE PITFALLS

Apart from the web being potentially very time consuming… only a few pupils can work on it at one time… a maze of blind alleys…

You can waste a lot of time following up website links which look interesting but are not really appropriate for your pupils because of their detail or intensive use of faith specific language. It may be best to confine their browsing initially to the RE sites found on Culham College's "The RE Site" (see above). You will almost certainly need a parent volunteer/ classroom assistant to assist all but the most ITC-wise pupils in this operation.

It is also very disappointing to find that your equipment is not up to downloading some of the more exciting sites - make sure you know what your system is capable of before you begin! We got really frustrated because we couldn't access what looked like a very exciting virtual reality tour of a Hindu mandir!

Whatever site you are using, do think about the material's provenance. If you are simply surfing the net you may unwittingly key into the website of a group or sect which would be thought of as fringe or unorthodox by other members of that faith community. Always try and cross- check any information which confuses or surprises you with sources you know to be orthodox.

RESOURCES

If you need help to get started on the web then try Byting Back by Julian Stern. This is a guide and Inservice Training Pack for RE Teachers, available from BFSS National RE Centre, Brunel University, Osterley Campus, Borough Road, Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 5DU. ISBN 1872012213

Education & Training

Supporting Schools & Parishes

Schools

Diocese Home

EDUCATION