Post 15

I was so happy during this class to have some great discussions, demonstrations and explore new technology tools.  It was wonderful to see my classmate use Google Drive and really see the power and advantage in using it.  We even started Google Drive in our science class, confusing our professor by sending him links to our documents instead of attachments.  At our district I still struggle to show some teachers how powerful and useful Google Apps can be.  Many teachers are afraid to try and get scared off once technology doesn't work for them one time.  As educators we cannot be afraid to fail and need to press ahead and try new tools that can be used to engage our students.

Post 14

In class we looked at two different sites: ePals Global Community and Persistent Issues in History Network.

I was mostly drawn to the ePals Global Community.  I love the idea of finding a classroom or project to join other classes in a global community.  There were many other librarians all over the country and world looking for others to pen-pal with.  Partnering with another group from a different place could be a great opportunity for students to really get a global view of the world.

I also loved all the resources that were on the site.  I especially like the Learning  Centers: Global Citizens and In2Books Clubhouse.  With student accounts that you can set up, they could explore all the different topics and activities on the site by themselves.

Post 13

Active learning is a new term for me that came out of this chapter.  Active learning requires that students be active in the pursuit of knowledge.  This seems to be very close to the ideas behind using inquiry for the classroom as well.  You want to engage the students and be partners in the pursuit of knowledge.  I like the statement form the book, when students produce something the experiences are even more active.  The assessment piece for students  can be formal or informal on the task that the students are completing.  I think that authentic and active learning should always be the goal.

Post 12

Last night we had our multicultural night with eighth grade students from Fond Du Lac middle schools.  I felt a bit badly for them since they had to get to know us and it was the end of the day and they seemed a bit worn out.  Aida had a play a few games and I thought all of them could be applied in a classroom setting.  I have played circle name games before but I thought adding the action verb to your name, while acting it out was a great touch.  The Shape War went OK with the eighth grade students but I think it would have gone better with a bigger group.  I liked the Elephant story and it reminded me of a picture book in my library with a similar slant. Looking at the rest of the agenda for the students it seems like a great opportunity to visit a university setting and learn something along the way.

Field Trip Take Two - Virtual

The virtual tour I explored was the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Panoramic Virtual Tour.  It can be found at:  http://www.mnh.si.edu/panoramas/. As the site states, this virtual tour allows students using a desktop computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) to take a virtual, self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum. You can even browse a list of past exhibits, which is included on the ground floor map (see upper right map buttons).  The visitor can navigate from room to room by clicking map locations or by following the blue arrows on the floor that connect the rooms. The desktop version is the best and includes numerous camera icons to indicate hot-spots where the visitor can get a close-up view of a particular object or exhibit panel.   

From looking at other museum virtual tours I thought the best part about this virtual tour was the availability across different devices and the ability for the user to click on the camera icons for close up views.  The quality of all the images and the panorama was exemplary.  I also really liked the user-friendly navigation within the panoramic views of the museum.  It was very easy to tell where you were within the museum as well as access the past exhibits.  As a teacher I think I would use a scavenger hunt or some other assignment to give the exploration of this site some purpose and I wish there more of the captions to exhibits could be seen, but overall this was one of the best quality museum virtual tours I saw and I would recommend it to teachers.

Post 11

While I do love Google and Google Apps there can be things that are a bummer about the Google world.  The slide show Google for Teachers mentioned using the Google Search Wonder Wheel.  I loved the Wonder Wheel and I know a lot of school librarians would work it into their research lessons.  But sadly Google got rid of the Wonder Wheel.

School librarians used to be able to teach students how to get to the advanced search setting while Google Searching with one click, not it takes two.  Another bummer.

Our district uses Gmail and Google Apps for Education.  This morning, seemingly random users could not access their Gmail.  Of course this dispurpts our students' and staff's days.  Last time this happened, I was able to find a useful site on Twitter: http://www.google.com/appsstatus.  This site lets me know if Google is having issues with their apps and are working on it.

Post 10

Since I love Google Apps for Education I got the chance to use Google Drawing with my TCH 602 lesson.
 

With Google drawings you can easily create, share, and edit drawings online. Here are a few specific things you can do:

• Edit drawings online in real time with anyone you choose, and invite others to view your edits in real time.
• Chat with others who are editing your drawing, from within the drawings editor.
• Publish drawings online to the world as images, or download them in standard formats.
• Insert text, shapes, arrows, scribbles, and images from your hard drive or from the Web.
• Lay out drawings precisely with alignment guides, snap to grid, and auto distribution.
• Insert drawings into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations using the web clipboard, then tweak them online.

I think this would be a great tool to utilize for many social studies lessons. In my lesson we used Google Drawing to create time lines.  The students loved being able to create their own timeline.  With the Research tool we were able to easily insert applicable pictures.  The app could also be used to create mind mapping tools.
 
Instructions to use Google Drawing can be found here: http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=179740

Great video tutorial: http://vimeo.com/50797313