Home PublicationsL&LIssuesVolume 27 (1999-2000) October (No. 2)

With the millennium quickly approaching, there are many resources to which teachers and students may turn for information and as springboards for discussion. The following are some millennium-oriented Web sites, books, and software. Some are geared specifically toward students, while others discuss the millennium in a general fashion. Many focus on global, “big picture” implications of the millennium.

Web Sites
Note. These Web sites were valid when this issue of L&L went to press. We have no control over these sites, though, and the Web is very volatile. Please let us know if you find a broken link, and we’ll do our best to update it.

Center for Millennial Studies
This site contains a countdown to the millennium, information on how to contact the organization, the mission of the center, and frequently asked questions. It also contains links to a glossary on millennium terms, a section on the Y2K bug, projects and articles, a journal, a bibliography, and information on the millennium as it pertains to various religious groups and prophecies. Teachers can use this site for writing prompts, personal research, authentic spelling lists, and project ideas. Students can react to any of the diverse perspectives represented on the site, and they may also opt to use these ideas as a springboard for interviews with family, neighbors, seniors, and college students. They can use the glossary to author millennium fiction stories. Students can also generate their own questions about the millennium or review a journal article.

Earth Changes Report
This page, a link from the Center for Millenial Studies sites, is updated almost daily. It contains news devoted to Earth changes and their implications in relation to the millennium. Students can use it as a springboard for a science fiction/fact story or article. Teachers can create motivational—Truth or Dare Millennium Quizzes to inspire research.

Millennium Institute
With several links, this site includes such information as when the millennium starts and the institute’s mission. To use systems of thinking and the turn of the millennium to catalyze a redirection of human civilization toward a peaceful, just, and sustainable future. Millennium events, projects, and community-based suggestions are also included. Students can author essays, poetry, graphic and text presentations, multimedia presentations, or fine art visions of a just and sustainable future. They can also survey peers, members of their school communities, scientists, business people, and neighbors to compile data on their respective visions of a just and sustainable future.

White House Millennium Project
This site contains a countdown clock, information about the council, and events revolving around the millennium, including Millennium Evenings. Millennium Evenings are lectures hosted by the U.S. President and First Lady and featuring such prominent people as Stephen Hawking. Information about downlink sites for people to interact in discussion on these Millennium Evenings is also included. Students can generate questions or issues for these evenings as well as “cover” them for class reporting. They can be online commentators. Teachers can use the lecture formats as a model for a classroom panel featuring a scientist’s, doctor’s, or technology specialist’s perspective on the millennium.

M321
Self-described as “The Official Web Site of the New Millennium6Y” was created to provide an open, intelligent, and entertaining forum for historical, contemporary, and millennium-related thoughts and ideas from individuals and organizations around the world. As a living, interactive, ever-expanding online community, M321 is an optimistic journey celebrating progress, awareness, and the human spirit. This interactive official Web site of the millennium contains many interesting links. Pop-up descriptions to links appear as a mouse pointer moves to the name of a link. Users can send postcards from the future, enter their pinions into polls, and enter into chats with other site visitors. They read profiles and observations from well-known people in the Arts and Entertainment section. In class, students can create their own hand-drawn or graphic art millennium postcards. There is also an M321 Kids link with polls and kids’ predictions, art, and questions. There are also categories for fun and games, toys and videos, and arts, including books and a worldwide art gallery. Under the category Learning Adventures there are links to the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and Family Education. Students can “upload” insights they gather from their own interviews, surveys, and research, or they can write reviews of the links. Teachers may want to do this as well. Teachers can use the site to inspire students to research and generate their own millennium catalogs and profiles/observations pieces.

Books 

D. Cohen. (1997). The millennium. New York: Pocket Books.
This young adult book will help students find out everything about the subject everyone is talking about. It offers a global view with stories about how the millennium will be celebrated in different ways in different places around the world. Students can research their own cultural backgrounds to develop their own personalized follow ups to the book.

J. Coates, J. Mahafie, A. Hines, & J. Conte. (1996). 2025: Scenarios of U.S. and global societies reshaped by science and technology. Greensboro, NC: Oakhill Press.
This book contains 15 scenarios of what life will be like for affluent and less affluent countries.

B. Bader, T. West, & B. Teare. (1996). Countdown to 2000: A kids’ guide to the new millennium. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith.
This illustrated guide is geared toward children ages 9 to 12.

A. Love, J. Drake, & B. Slavin. (1998). Kids guide to the millennium. Kids Can Press.
Geared toward children ages 9 to 12, this book contains ideas for millennium-themed activities, including making t-shirts, writing in code, and writing diaries. Other activities including having a millennium party and experiments marking time. Information includes the correct date of the beginning of the millennium and Web sites. Students and teachers can use this book to inspire their own millennium expos and to collaborate with community groups in millennium activities.

Life millennium. (1998). New York: Bulfinch.
This book contains pictorial highlights from the last one thousand years. It includes such highlights as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and the invention of flush toilets. This book can serve as inspiration and a starting point for envisioning pictorials of the next millennium.

Software

SimCity 2000
This game allows players to create cities, including a futuristic city. Players must make decisions about where to place different structures so as to care for the cities in the wake of natural disasters and human forces.

Lego Mindstorms
This is a robotics invention system. This kit includes touch sensors and light sensors, an infrared transmitter, and Lego pieces. The kit is used in conjunction with a microcomputer and can be expanded with other kits.

Students can use these software titles to inspire designs. Beyond students and teachers mining existing millennium-focused Web sites, books, and software, these multimedia online and print resources can serve as catalysts to student proactive millennium citizenship projects.

Copyright © 1999, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.