Week 7: Google Street View

If you haven't checked out Google Street View yet, the time has come. You’d be surprised where you and your class can go. Reading a book set in Iowa? Might as well “drive” down Temple Ave. in Shell Rock so that students can get a glimpse of the vast terrain. Or maybe “drive” by the Guggenheim on 5th Ave. in New York City. Or if those options are too luxurious for you, you can also walk to Starbucks from Lake Wilderness. It’s easy—just visit Google Maps, plug in an address or just zoom in on an area you wish to “visit.” Look for the little yellow guy (Pegman) and drag him over to one of the street views that are available in that area (available streets will be highlighted in blue).



This week, tell us how you might use Google Street View in your classroom. Be creative! OR If there isn't a way you could use Street View, visit the Google for Educators page or the Google blog (side note: it's really amazing what Google offers beyond search) to learn about some of the other great resources Google offers that might be useful to you and your students. Let us know what you find and how you might use it.

Week 6: Halfway There!

Well, we're at the halfway point. How is it going? For this week's assignment, I'm asking you to do three things:

1. Provide a little bit of information about your experience so far by answering these questions:

On average how much time do you spend on the assignments?

Do you check back after you post your comment to read other comments?

2. Revisit the previous blog posts (find access to the archived posts in the lower right corner hand of this page), and read through the comments. Find at least one thing to comment on and "reply" to that comment by clicking "reply" and leaving an insight, answer, or suggestion to that comment. One of the benefits of blogging is the conversation it allows for. Imagine if we had done this class via email. I could have sent you each week's post in an email and you could have responded to me with a reply to that email. However, notice how much richer it is to see and respond to each other's thinking using the blog instead.

3. Leave a comment to this post with your "mid-term" reflection. Anything you want to share is fine, but here a few questions you might want to consider: How is this set up working for you? How does learning this way stack up next to more traditional ways of learning? Have you learned anything about the way you learn that might impact how you teach? Any suggestions for the second half of the class? Remember--commenting on someone else's post counts.

Week 5-Why Reinvent the Wheel?

Hello Bloggers,

There are times when I come to a lesson and think one of two things: 1) How can I make this lesson more relevant for this year's group of students or 2) I have taught this lesson roughly five million times and I want to change it up a little. In an attempt to remedy one, or both, of these dilemmas I often get on the web and open up Google. I always think I can quickly search the web for a simple addition to a lesson plan, but more often than not this consumes much more time than originally planned. This leads us to the focus for this week.

Teachers First is a teacher resource site that can eliminate the pain and agony of investing a great deal of time trying to figure out how to spice up a lesson. The resources found on this site are endless; from entire grade and subject-specific lesson plans to the "websites of the week" section. This is a website that should be on your favorites list.


Your assignment for this week is to check out the website and post about a tool, lesson plan or idea from the site you found useful or that you could possibly use in the future.

Week 4-Seek and Ye Shall Find (a Threaded Discussion Add-on for Your Blog)

Some of you may be using the discussion feature on your SWIFT site to communicate with parents and/or students. (If you want to learn more about using the discussion feature of SWIFT, see page nine of the SWIFT User Guide.) However, one of the limitations of the SWIFT discussion feature is that the discussions aren’t threaded. This means that as parents/students post comments, the comments simply appear in chronological order, making it difficult for the teacher to respond to a particular comment that may have appeared early on in the discussion. Threaded discussions allow people to respond to particular comments; they allow the conversation to branch off into different directions. Specifically, your reply to a particular comment appears directly below that comment, tabbed over.

Unfortunately, Blogger (the tool we’re using for this class/blog) also doesn’t offer threaded discussions, making it difficult for me (or you) to reply directly to someone’s comment. (See image on top right) However, a solution was found! Last year, Kimberly added a program to the blog that allowed for threaded commenting. (See image on bottom right.) We are using it this year. (If during our class you see someone else’s comment you’d like to comment on, go ahead—that can count as your comment.)

So this week’s lesson has two themes (see below). Chose one to comment on this week (each theme has two prompts to choose from).

Theme 1: Using online discussions (SWIFT or other tool) with students or parents
a. If you have experience with online discussions, what tips do you have to share? What have been the benefits?
OR
b. What might be some ways you could incorporate online discussions into your class? If you’re new to this tool, what questions do you have for those who already use it?

Theme 2: If you believe it should be possible, it probably is—all you have to do is look.
(Back story: Kimberly knew Blogger didn’t offer threaded discussions, but she figured that she was not the only person who wished it did, so she Googled “adding threaded discussion to Blogger.” That led her to a blog post about third party applications she could add to the blog to increase interactivity. That’s where she learned about Intense Debate—the application we're using to provide threaded discussion for our class on this blog.)

There is a solution out there for most of our challenges if we look and are willing to invest in a little risk taking. If Kimberly had seen this issue as a problem, she may have just accepted it (no threaded commenting) and would not have investigated further. However, she felt comfortable taking matters into her own hands and did some self-directed learning—something I think we (and our students) are going to be expected to do more and more of in this new digital world. In my role (as a teacher, TTTL and now as a tech coach), I am confronted by this day after day. I can't tell you how many times I have started a Google search with "How do I..." With that said...

a. Share a time you went online with a question/challenge and “taught” yourself how to do something new.
OR
b. Do it now . . . what’s a question/challenge you have in your class right now? Go online and look for your solution. How did it go?

Week 3-What's Better Than a Field Trip? A Virtual Field Trip!

A virtual field trip is a guided exploration through the web that organizes a collection of pre-screened, thematically based web pages into a structured online learning experience. It is an inter-related collection of images, supporting text and/or other media, delivered electronically via the World Wide Web, in a format that can be professionally presented to relate the essence of a visit to a time or place. The virtual experience becomes a unique part of the participants' life experience. (Nix, 1999)

It's always easier to use someone else's definition than to come up with one of your own. We have been hearing the importance of incorporating technology into lessons in order to make them more engaging for students. However, this can prove to be a difficult, time-consuming task, often leaving one foaming at the mouth shouting expletive deleteds at the computer. Virtual field trips can help curb this anger.

Virtual field trips can look quite different, depending on their creator. There are virtual field trips that create a 360 degree atmosphere where you can navigate the page, almost like you are walking on the Great Wall of China. Then there are virtual field trips that are several pages, much like a powerpoint presentation, that incorprate pictures, words, sounds and/or videos.


The assignment for this week is to take a look at one or all three of these websites (http://oops.bizland.com/vtours.htm http://toursfromabove.com/ www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html). These websites contain several virtual field trips.

Your blog post for this week should answer the following questions: How easy/difficult would it be for you to incorporate a virtual field trip into one of your units/lessons? Did you find a particular virtual field trip that you might use in the future?