The BBC's spectacular Walking With Dinosaurs succeeds Jurassic Park
in bringing us another round of dino-mania.
Not surprisingly, Walking With Dinosaurs (7.00pm on TV One) comes with
its own Diplodocus-sized Internet presence (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/).
The site was developed with children in mind and contains a gallery
of readers’ pictures and stories. The front page’s dynamic
timeline covering same ages as the series clicks through
to concise summaries of the geological background and life forms of
each era. Being the site of the series, it combines brilliant illustration
with hard science (and seems to avoid the series’ more controversial
assumptions on dinosaur behaviour).
PBS's Curse of T Rex series, which has not screened here, also has
a companion web site (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/trex/).
The teachers' resource makes reference to the series, but stands alone
well enough to offer interesting questions on paleontology (the study
of the history of life on Earth) and law.
Zoom Dinosaur Site, at http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/index.html,
is a hypertext book about dinosaurs, designed for students of all levels.
Zoom contains masses of information and is intricately hyperlinked,
which could seem a little intimidating at first, but becomes clear with
exploration. The site features masses of information, games and puzzles.
At http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/dinolinks.html,
the site has a large section of imaginatively arranged links (including
"Dinosaur Art and Models" and "Not Really Dinosaurs But Still Worth
A Mention").
The Natural History museum, London (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/interactive/science-casebooks/amber/index.html)
is an excellent site for teachers of Year 5 students and older. The online
learning multimedia presentations 'Recreating Dinosaurs-Fact or Fiction' consider
whether it is scientifically possible to recreate dinosaurs from fossilised
DNA.
New Zealand Curriculum
- Science in the New Zealand Curriculum's Making Sense Of The Living
World, Level 3 asks students to consider how dinosaurs became extinct
(http://www.tki.org.nz/e/science/).
- Level 2 asks students to "understand that Earth is very old and
that animals and plants in past times were very different" (http://www.tki.org.nz/e/science/).
Please note: These links were valid when this page was posted. However the Web is very volatile, and TKI has no control over outside websites. Please let us know if you find anything inappropriate, if you find a broken link, or if you have an update for a link by emailing links@tki.org.nz. Te Kete Ipurangi recommends that teachers view all websites we link to before using them with students.
