A Whole New World in Google Earth

To the best of my recollection, this was my first time using Google Earth.  However, I am confident that this is a site that I will begin to frequent.  I choose to watch a few of the atomic learning lessons to help me best navigate the capabilities of this site.

I had the most fun playing with the layers that one can choose from.  The hyperlinks embedded on this virtual globe is an educational gem mine for all age students.  Whether they choose to watch a time elapsed construction of a city or just review climate differences.  This site can aid teaching all key subject areas.

After viewing both the elementary and middle school idea sheets.  I found lesson ideas on everything from geography to lessons exploration of America.  So often when we teach in a classroom, students have very little comprehension of the vast world that they live in.  Many have often never left their region or state.  Google Earth allows (especially less privileged children) world travel.    The hands on exercises will provide kinestetic, visual and auditory learning opportunities.

The Google Gallery/ Tours option is a bit like having your own tour guide.  This would be a handy tool for planning school trips or even classroom field trips.  The blogspot was also interesting .  I found tools for charting forest fires and floods.  With all of the apparent natural disasters that have occurred in the recent years, this feature brings current events into the classroom.

I look forward to continuing exploring the World in my classroom through Google Earth.

Google maps

I was fairly familiar with Google maps before tonight.  As my husband is a world traveler, I often look up his locations and search out webcams in his area.  I will confess that I am often disturbed by the satellite imagery that I find when he is on our military posts/bases in unfriendly territory.  This easily accessible information is a definite breach to our security, as it is to many public figures who face "stalking" and threats from unstable followers.

I hadn't noticed the ability to read the imbedded Wikipedia links now on the maps.  I do think that this is a helpful addition and can even be more useful in the education setting.

Aisling's Math Tour is an interesting site to show students how math fits into our everyday lives.
A tour of the places that shows my "travel" around the globe, while figuring out problems about these places in my math book is the claim made about this site.  While I didn't really discover any problems, per say, the numerical data reported on this site at different travel destinations was interesting.

My favorite find was googletreks.  I think that this will offer the most opportunity for incorporating map with subjects other than social studies into the classroom.  For example, the detail map below was one of the best I found.

"Mrs. Clark's World Landmark Math

This map is designed to challenge students in grades three through five,with mathematical problems related to tourist attractions around the world. Students will choose landmarks and math problems,to add to this site over the next three months."

Time Zones is often another difficult task for students to master, so Google Maps offers an interesting graphic way to show and teach this material.

frustration on the site

I attempted to create a website for my Wednesday night girls Bible Class that I teach all school year.  The problem with this was when I originally selected my template I chose the classroom option.  Very bad decision on my party.   I assumed that modifying it for a church Bible class would be quite easy.  It was not.  Everything from trying to link my church's homepage to posting a scripture verse of the week became a laborious task that could not be accomplished in 1/2 hour.  I was having to override every topic heading and even the default selection heading of link.  After working on this for about 30 minutes and not getting very far, I came to the conclusion that deleting this site and recreating a new one would be a much quicker option.  However, when trying to do this, I was told that the site that I had created would be held in storage for 60 days, so I would lose my site name if I started over.

I then tried and tried to find a way to alter my web template, but had no success.  So I concede to resign my site name and start from scratch.  I looked for a fitting templete, but church didn't fit, family didn't quite fit.  I think organization may be the closest match.

 My class is dedicating to training girls to grow into the Proverbs 31 woman that God would have them be.  I teach the girls cooking, sewing, handicrafts and many other attributes from Proverbs 31.  So I think that it would make an awesome website.

For what it is worth, since very little was accomplished  here is the link. 

https://sites.google.com/site/jewelclass/home

Life's a Picnik

Picasa touts that Picnik is "Photo-editing awesomeness", indeed it is.  While the premium version offers some mega-awesomeness, I could easily make for fun times with the free version.

 While searching for some negative reviews of Picasa the most common seemed to be the claim that it is difficult to use and that the frequent upgrades make it even more difficult.  Although I haven't used it enough to discover this for myself, I did find the atomic learning site on picasa training to be very thorough.  My first response to entering the site was a bit overwhelming, but this was largely due to fact that I didn't have any photos stored on my host computer and very few online for me to access.

The two features that grabbed my attention were the label and star system.  With them,  not only could I view Christmas photos, but also photos of each of my daughters with different searches.    I also have the ability to rate the quality of a photo and then can choose to sort for only those with a certain star rating. 

A second productive feature is the digital scrapbooking.  With this feature, photos can be arranged in a collage and captions can be added.  When Dr. Krug mentioned the ability to commercially print on their site, I expected to find a very small number of advertised supporting photo printers.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to 15 different service providers: free enterprise-friendly.   I like to give personalized gifts with photos on things such as mugs, water bottles and even cakes, so I think the picasa/picnik package with be a great combo to continue to help me in the is area.

Internet Hide and Seek

Tonight I learned some basic to complex search tools to use with Google search engine.  To begin with I learned about a simple subtraction method (-).  When placing a minus in front of an item, google will exclude this option as it searches.  The site used the example of a jaguar.  If a person wanted to find out about the animal jaguar, they might choose to type -cars to limit the search results.

I also learned that you can adjust your search results to be based on reading levels.  This could be a handy tool for an elementary teacher to use when helping her students find usable research for their age-appropriate level.

A more advanced tool was the wonder wheel search option.  I could have used this option this year while homeschooling my daughter as she prepared her research paper.  When I queried her on her topic, she said "basketball."  I tried to explain how that topic was too broad.  How neat it would have been to show her how to think about a more specific topic using the wonder wheel.  I can use this same method in teaching my students research methods and topic selection.  As they move from wheel to wheel the options of research become more refined.

Another exciting find was the advanced image search option.  Being able to specify size, colors, file type can greatly enhance presentations and documents.

Lastly, I enjoyed playing with the Google squared search tool.  I personally tried to compare hotel choices for our family vacation, but I play around with other searches like "Christian nations" and a broad comparison of at least 25 countries was listed.  This would make a nice comparative research tool for students

Google Drawing

I attempted to use Google Drawing a bit tonight.  Unfortunately, my lack of artist skills and little know how of using Drawing left me a bit short.  I tried to find an atomic learning link to better explain the capabilities, but again came up short.  I then clicked on the help key within google drawing only to be disappointed once again.  The option of watching a video introduction was not specific to Drawing, instead it was a general video of the advantages of using Google documents.   I look forward to more tutorials being developed as this application ages.

I can see how children would thoroughly enjoy the art abilities available in this application offers.  Each year my daughter's school hosts a technology fair (similar to science and social studies fairs).  Each student is required to produce one technology based project.  Most of the work for this project is done during technology class time, however, the projects are sent home on discs for the children who wish to enhance their projects on their own time.  Most of the projects are age appropriate with many at the elementary grade doing a pictorial book report.  In the past, most of this work has been done on PowerPoint.  However, I would like to recommend that they better utilize Google apps.  The student can use both presentation and Drawing for these projects.

iPad Apps

I explored 3 iPad apps tonight. 
The first two were "Matematics" :) apps that appeared to be similar in function, yet one was far superior in utility.

1.  McGraw-Hill's Beat the Computer, Multiplication was the weaker of the two math apps that I played with.    In this game, the user completes 20 single-digit multiplication problems and attempts to answer within the allotted 20 sec time the computer affords the user.  How long the user takes to answer is then tallied at the bottom of the screen with the higher scores being better.  This would be a great tutorial for students needing assistance on speed and accuracy of multiplication, but I would prefer to use the Math Drill Lite app described next.  I found two-digit responses a little difficult to type in and often the first digit wouldn't register and I would miss the problem. 

2.  Math Drills Lite had a much greater usability.  It offered addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and mixed options.  The user was also able to choose between the review or practice (time) portion of the application.  This program hosts a setting tab where the user can adapt the keypad for left handed users or change the display screen colors to red/green for visual enhancement.   Upon completion of the timed practice the user is given a MPH speedometer on their screen and told what the duration of their trip was and how many pit stops that they had to make--making the app very visually stimulating and fun to use.  The app does offer a full-version for $1.99 which allows 10 student to personalize their setting .  It will keep a score/test history and when retesting will emphasize those problem previously missed or slow responses.  In addition progress for all students can be tracked with graphs.  What an incredible skill tutoring option for teachers!!

3.  The brainstorming application that I chose to work with was Idea Sketch.  I think this would be a great tool for Language/Arts.  This would help students with developing their writing skills when faced with a writing prompt.  Furthermore, creative writing teaching can be enhanced with this app.  To use it, an individual enters a topic.  Then they name an idea and choose a shape and color to represent their idea.  The idea then shows up in a visual format.  Once several ideas are determined, the user can click on an icon to put the visual in outline form.  They are then able to organize their ideas and move the order of the their ideas, thus creating the beginning to an essay.  Another neat option is the ability to add a description and notes to each individual idea.  This great visual tool can help many writing deficient students.