I have lesson plans, tech tips, great websites to integrate technology into your curriculum, the most popular apps you'll find useful with your iPads, and current trends in tech ed. Drop in to my class wikis, blog, our internet start pages. I'll answer your questions about how to teach tech, what to teach when, where the best virtual sites are. Need more--let's chat about issues of importance in tech ed.
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You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.
What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible. I’ve pulled out five I think are the best starters, but you can decide: (more…)
This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:
…and start the week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.
I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.
Learn Google Earth with the Google Earth Board
Students select from a list of Wonders of the World (or locations put together in conjunction with the classroom teacher). They do brief research on it, locate it using Google Earth and make a short presentation to the class about it.
This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:
…and start the week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.
I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.
Explore the Wonders of Google Earth
Students create their own tour on Google Earth using locations selected by the classroom teacher. They add the locations to Google Earth, add a fact about it and turn it into a tour.
Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.
Use Google Earth to drive a ship
This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:
…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.
I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.
Intro to Google Earth
Google Earth can be used for so many classroom activities. It is a favorite of even my kindergartners. I start by showing them how to pan in and out, drag to move the globe, change the perspective of the earth’s surface, use the built in tour or one I add on Calif. Missions or the solar system. I have fifth graders create a tour that the youngers then watch as a tie in. I also let them type in their address and visit their home, including street view.
Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.
Use Google Earth to play with the planet
Students find their country of origin on Google Earth and grab a screen shot of it. Save to their computer. Import it into KidPix and add the country flag and student name. Students learn about importing data from one program to another with this project.
Use Google Earth in Second Grade
–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom. Preview available on Amazon.com and Scribd.com (more…)
You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.
What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible. I’ve pulled out five I think are the best starters, but you can decide: (more…)
Use the research done for #40. Use a guidesheet to lay out what is on each slides, i.e., a cover, table of contents, what makes a geographic locations amazing (discuss this as a group), a map, and three locations from #40. Teach PowerPoint skills such as adding slides and text and pictures, animation, transitions, auto-forward, personalized backgrounds, adding music to multiple slides. Third graders may not be able to complete all skills.
Students find their country of origin on Google Earth and grab a screen shot of it. Save to their computer. Import it into KidPix and add the country flag and student name. Students learn about importing data from one program to another with this project.
Lesson plan using technology
As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!
Q: I can’t find enough detail about a particular area of the world that we’re studying in class. Any suggestions?
A: That’s a lot easier to do today than it used to be, thanks to Google Street View. Students love walking down the street that they just read about in a book or seeing their home on the internet. It’s also a valuable research tool for writing. What better way to add details to a setting than to go see it?
(more…)
Students find their country of origin on Google Earth and grab a screen shot of it. Save to their computer. Import it into KidPix and add the country flag and student name. Students learn about importing data from one program to another with this project.
Lesson plan for 2nd grade with Google Earth
Locate the major latitudes and longitudes on Google Earth. Locate cities, countries along the same latitude/longitude. Zoom in to see how exact lats and longs get. Students also find their own house by lat and long. I also give students a lat and long and see if they can figure out where it is on the globe.
Students create their own tour on Google Earth using locations selected by the classroom teacher. They add the locations to Google Earth, add a fact about it and turn it into a tour.
Google Earth can be used for so many classroom activities. It is a favorite of even my kindergartners. I start by showing them how to pan in and out, drag to move the globe, change the perspective of the earth’s surface, use the built in tour or one I add on Calif. Missions or the solar system. I have fifth graders create a tour that the youngers then watch as a tie in. I also let them type in their address and visit their home, including street view.
Click on pages for a full size alternative. (more…)
I had a reader ask about this, so I’m posting this wonderfully fun lesson.
Students select from a list of Wonders of the World (or locations put together in conjunction with the classroom teacher). They do brief research on it, locate it using Google Earth and make a short presentation to the class about it.
Click on them for a full size alternative. (more…)
It is for sale, but if you sign up for an RSS feed to my blog, I’ll send you one of the five for free. Good deal! Here are the five projects:
Are you here for a lesson plan… Tech tips… Humor? Click the category on the sidebar and you’re there.
I notice lots of readers are clicking on the pictures, hoping it’s a link to a category. I have to confess: I was unable to get the pictures to act as links. I don’t think WordPress can do that. I spent quite a while trying. I can do it if I put each picture in separately (rather than as a two-column album), but it’s difficult to maneuver. Until I solve that you’ll have to visit the Categories section on the sidebar. You’ll get a group of projects on that topic, mixed ages:
Anyone know how to make the pictures in a picture gallery act as links? Hmmm….
Schools and kids love field trips, but they take a lot of time, money and extra adult supervision that may or may not be available. Thanks to the internet, there are now alternatives that are only as far away as your technology lab.
Here are some of the best available across the wild web of the internet:
To:
Want a quick tour right now, via YouTube. This is Mars, complements of Google Earth:
Only have a few minutes? Try one of these Learnz Virtual Field Trips via YouTube:
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything and Technology in Education. Currently, she’s working on a techno-thriller that should be ready this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
This project uses the free downloadable software, Google Earth. It introduces latitudes and longitudes to the depth you require for your classroom, shows students how to take a tour (you can create one of your own–say, California Missions–or use the free installed world tool Google provides), and lets students use the ruler tool to find distances around the world.
Grade Level: 3-5 (or whichever grade you start latitudes and longitudes)
Background: None. This is a starter for Google Earth
Vocabulary: latitude, longitude, degrees, minutes, seconds, grids, toolbars, tour
Time: About 30 minutes
Overview: Use Google Earth as a visual way of teaching how latitudes and longitudes can be used to identify every location on our planet
Steps:
Community, or create your own that is meaningful to students. Have them take this tour, noticing its latitudes and longitudes.
Grade Level: 3-5 (or whichever grade you start latitudes and longitudes)
Display grids on Google Earth
Background: None. This is a starter for Google Earth
Vocabulary: latitude, longitude, grids, toolbars, tour, names of prominent lats and longs
Time: About 30 minutes
Overview: Use Google Earth as a visual way of teaching how latitudes and longitudes cover the globe and cross every location on our planet
Steps:
Taken from the 3rd grade Structured Learning workbook
from the Structured Learning Technology series for K-5
GE showing lats and longs
Grade Level: 3-5
Background: None. This is an intro to Google Earth
Vocabulary: Google Earth, latitudes, longitudes, Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, equator, Prime Meridian, international date line, Arctic Circle, Antarctic,
Time: About 30 minutes
Steps:
Students can work in pairs.Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything and Technology in Education. Currently, she’s working on a techno-thriller that should be ready this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
There are four great methods that you may not know about–all Free and ready-to-use in classroom inquiry into our Universe:
This is a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy to a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that’s not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.
Google teamed up with astronomers at some of the largest observatories in the world to bring you a new view of the sky. This tool provides an exciting way to browse and explore the universe. You can find the positions of the planets and constellations on the sky and even watching the birth of distant galaxies as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. You can view it online or as a free download with Google Earth.
Developed in conjunction with NASA and JAXA, you can view take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronaut, view 3D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts’ footprints, and watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions. You can also access Google Moon via Google Earth with a download
Internet-based exploration of Mars. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, Google created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made. You can view regions of Mars, spacecraft, Mars stories. You can also view Mars via Google Earth with a quick download.
Map from Google Earth; flag from KidPix
Here’s a great project using the popular Google Earth and KidPix. It’s geared for K-2, but older’s OK too, especially during summer. It uses Google Earth and KidPix and takes about thirty minutes: (more…)
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