Google Earth in my Classroom

As I mentioned in my earlier post on Google Earth, I am interested in exploring the oceans feature with my students next year. When we are studying oceans, we learn about the animals that live in some of the ocean zones. Google Earth has an animal tracking feature. On the layers sidebar, you have to click on oceans, then on animal tracking. On your map, different icons will appear that you can click on to find out more about that animal.

When I clicked on the shark, the following pop-up showed up on my screen.

I can get facts about that animal as well as tagged data. I can even swim with that animal to see what the ocean environment looks like. One way I foresee this working in my classroom would be for my students to have a list of animals that they need to find. Then they could read about the animals with the ultimate goal of classifying the zone the animal lives in.

As I was experimenting with this feature, I found that it was a little difficult to navigate around. I think my 4th graders would have trouble with this. I would either navigate around on the big screen so everyone could see at once, or create a pre-recorded tour that visited the animals that I wanted them to visit.

Another way I plan to use Google Earth in my classroom is to explore the rising and setting of the sun. There is a button that shows a sun with a cloud in the toolbar. When you click this, it is dark or light depending on the actual time of day in that location. Students could take a tour to view the rising and setting of the sun and determine time zones of specific locations. Below is a picture that shows how it is dark in one area, but lighter in another.

I am excited to explore Google Earth further and find ways to integrate it in my classroom.

flickr in the classroom

I chose to blog about flickr because I didn't really know how it could be used in the classroom. I use flickr to share personal images and to search for copyright-friendly images, but I was surprised to learn how flickr could be used in the classroom. I was especially intrigued by other web 2.0 applications that use flickr images (like phrasr, bookr, and bubblr). I wanted to see if I could use one of these with my students.

In 4th grade we teach similes and metaphors. Students often have trouble determining the meaning of a simile or metaphor. I thought phrasr could be a useful tool. Students enter in the simile or metaphor and then choose pictures to accurately describe what it means. Below is my screenshot of the phrasr site. I entered in the metaphor, "He was boiling mad."

Next, you click start and it runs an initial image search for you.

Then you can change your images. When you are happy with your selection, you enter a title and your name, then you click publish and your phrasr is added to the library.

After using this application, I would probably not use it in my 4th grade classroom. Although I liked the idea, some of the images that were provided in the search were not appropriate (a man putting up his middle finger, a person with a knife, etc.). I would probably modify the activity using flickr creative commons images and have the students insert the images into a Word document, PowerPoint, or Kidspiration.

View my completed phrasr here.

flickr

Flickr is Yahoo's online photo and video management and sharing application. Flickr allows you to upload your photos in various ways like from your desktop or phone. You can edit your pictures, organize them into sets and collections, and share your photos. There are different privacy settings so you can determine who can see your photos and videos. Once you have uploaded your photos and videos, you can make things like cards, books, etc. You can also get updates from family and friends. Flickr has a map where images can be geotagged. Using the map feature, you can share where your photos and videos were taken and see photos and videos taken near a specified location.

Flickr could be used in the classroom in many ways. It could be used for digital storytelling, creating slide shows with images from flickr, for illustrating projects (especially using the creative commons search for getting copyright friendly images), for geotagging images, for creating digital portfolios of students' work, and as a kind of virtual field trip where students search images from an area that they are studying. Flickr is also an easy way to share students' work with parents. Digital portfolios or images from school events (if allowed) could be share with school families. If the school created a group, then access could be limited to those in the group, protecting the privacy of students. Guest passes can also be issued to allow one-time access to private photos.

If students were engaged in a telecollaborative project, they could use flickr to share images and video. They could also put their images into a slide show or create a digital story to introduce themselves or to share what they have learned. Flickr allows you to set up groups and specify the privacy level (public, public invite only, or private). Teachers could easily set up a group and have their photos/videos be restricted to the members of the group. Groups even have a discussion board for communicating with others in the group. Flickr allows users to insert notes directly on the image (when you mouse over it) and comments below the images. Students could use these tools to share further information about pictures or to discuss the pictures after others view them.

Some additional uses of flickr in the classroom include

• Bubblr-a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr. You can search flickr then add the bubbles for text.
• Bookr -a tool to create and share your own photobook using flickr images.
• Phrasr-type in a phrase a phrasr will find flickr images to match your phrase. I can see this being useful with similes and metaphors or idioms.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a free satellite-based interactive map. Users start by looking at the Earth from space and then "fly" to a location that they enter. You can explore places around the world from your computer. The newest version of Google Earth lets you tour distant cities, view 3-D buildings, and view sunsets around the world. This link takes you to a video exploring the new features of Google Earth 5.0.

The Google for Educators website offers some tips for getting started using Google Earth. They also offer many suggestions for how to integrate Google Earth into the classroom. Many of the suggestions seemed geared to middle or high school. They seem a little too technical for elementary students.

One of the most obvious applications of Google Earth in elementary school is with geography. Students can visit landmarks as well as calculate distances between locations. They will reinforce their latitude and longitude skills. I currently use Google Earth to visit the Grand Canyon. We see how far the Grand Canyon is from Maryland, travel along the Colorado River, and view the landscape. This "trip" reinforces our discussion of erosion as well as ways to explore the Grand Canyon.

This link takes you to the product tour of Google Earth. It has a few videos showing how to explore using Google Earth. Watch the exploring the oceans video here. The video shows how you can explore the ocean with Sylvia Earle and Jacques Cousteau. We study these scientists in my science class and with Google Earth, you can take your students to visit some of the places that we learn about. I plan on exploring this feature in more detail so that I can do it next year with my students. The things that you can do with Google Earth and the oceans really tie into my curriculum. I think that the students would enjoy using this and learn a lot from it.

One other new feature that I think has great potential is tracking and sharing your paths with others. All you have to do is turn in the touring feature and you can record your trip. You can add a soundtrack or narration. This would be a great way for students to explore the world. Teachers could assign different students different areas to study and they could make and narrate a tour to share with the rest of their class.

Google Earth has potential for telecollaborative projects as well. Students could tour the area where their partner classes are from. They could calculate distances from their location to their partner's location as well as view landmarks in that area. They could also use the record a tour feature to teach their partners about where they are from.

Download Google Earth here.

Podcasts in my classroom

Last week, we were able to finish all of the recording of our podcasts. The recording was not hard. Audacity was very easy to use for recording and editing. Today, I used the website that I mentioned in my previous podcasting post to publish one of the podcasts to the web. The podcasting booklet was very helpful and easy to follow. Publishing should not have been very hard, but I ran into some difficulty when I was using Podomatic. For some reason, the site would not let me click to start my account. What should have taken 5 minutes took about an hour. However, I finally finished and you can listen to one of my 4th grade podcasts here. When I followed the link, I again had issues with the website, so I had to click download instead of play. Then I could listen to it.

When I do podcasts again next year, I will test Podomatic before I use it. If I have the same issues, I will find another publishing site instead. Any suggestions for other publishing sites to use would be appreciated.

The podcasting booklet had many suggestions for editing and publishing. There is so much that you can do to your podcasts like adding music, images, cleaning up the sound, and more. Since this was my first podcast, I just stuck to the basics, but I will play around with it some more before we make podcasts next year so that I can walk the students through the editing and publishing stages. I definitely think that my students will need help with these stages.

I did ask the 4th graders for feedback last week. Almost all of the students said that they enjoyed the podcasting book report more than traditional book reports. They said that it was nice to work in a group because if you were unsure of something, there were others to help clarify. They also liked speaking instead of writing. Although they did have to write the interview questions and answers; spelling, grammar, and neatness did not really matter as long as they knew what it said. They enjoyed asking questions of the main character instead of writing a traditional summary. They said that they hope to do podcasting again next year at some point. I made sure to pass this news on to the 5th grade teachers and offered my help if they needed it.

All in all, this was a positive experience that I would do again, although I will not wait until the end of the year to do it.

Glogs in my classroom

This year, my class created glogs in computer class. We study the regions of the United States in Social Studies. The computer teacher and I decided that they should create a glog on a state. I typed up a Word document of information that students should look for including basic state information, motto, state symbols, history of the state, famous people, and state fun facts. On my webpage, I created a list of websites that the students could use to gather their information. Some of the websites are Enchanted Learning, U.S. States Fast Facts and Trivia, Fifty States and Fifty Fun Facts, and Apples 4 the Teacher.

The first part of the glog creation was fact gathering. Students used the Word document and the websites to gather data for their glog. Once they had their data, they created their glog, gave it a title, and began entering information. I gave them a quick overview of how to enter the data through the edit tools. However, being digital natives, they quickly learned how the glog worked and were able to add text, pictures, links, and videos. The students uploaded video from YouTube, since that site is not blocked by our school. However, TeacherTube can also be used with Glogster EDU.

After the glogs were created, I went in as the teacher and read over the glog. The comments tool allowed me to personally contact the students with suggestions for improvement. I also let them know if they had any spelling or grammatical errors that needed to be fixed. Finally, I looked over the "finished" glog before we published them. Once the students and I were happy with the final product, we saved it as a finished private glog. We were provided with the web address for the glog, so I compiled a list to send home with my students so that their parents and families could view their hard work.

Click here to view a glog on Hawaii. Click here to view a glog on Arizona. These glogs were created by students in my class.

Once the glogs were saved as finished, students in my class could view the finished glogs of other students in my class. They were very excited to look at each other's glogs and even left comments for others.

The regions example is only one way to use glogs in the classroom. In my school this year, many teachers did glogs with their classes. Some classes reported on scientists, others researched endangered species. I think that a glog could translate to any project that involves students researching and reporting on a topic.

Glogs could easily be used for telecollaborative projects. Classrooms that are partnered together in a project could present their information to each other through a glog just as easily as through a podcast, text document, etc. I think that students in telecollaborative projects would be excited to create a glog and to share them with their partner classes. I also think the interactivity of the glog would make reading the information exciting. Students could even upload their own videos they created into the glog so that their partners could see and hear their thoughts on the topic.

Glogs

A glog is an interactive poster consisting of text, images, music, and video. Glogster EDU is built for educational uses. Glogster states that glogs are an innovative digital outlet for students that creates excitement and engages students. They also integrate diverse subject areas and allow for unique and differentiated assessments. Glogster EDU is set up by the teacher and it is a private teacher-monitored environment for students to work in safely. Glogs lend themselves well to collaborative learning.

It is relatively simple to register your class for a glog. From the main Glogster EDU page, teachers can choose to register for EDU basic (free) or EDU premium (has a cost). Teachers just enter a few basic information fields, and they are ready to go. Once you have an account, you can create your own glog as a model for your students. You also need to register your class. Each student is given a nickname, which is equivalent to your login. Teachers are emailed a password for the students. Directly from your email, you can click on the link to login to your students' profiles. Once you have logged in, you can change their password to something more user-friendly. All of this needs to be done before students start their glogs.

As the teacher, you have access to all of your students glogs. You can view their progress and leave comments for the students. Your message can be public (for all to see) or private, just for the students to see. Teachers can also delete comments left by others or block users from leaving comments if someone is being inappropriate.

When students are working on their glogs, they can save them as unfinished and private so that others can not see their works in progress. Once they finish, they save their glogs as finished, and they can no longer be edited. They are still private, but can be viewed by others in the class, or by going to the web address that you are given when you save it.

Glogster EDU also offers training and partnerships for those that are interested.

Glogster EDU has more information on their website including benefits of using glogs in the classroom.

Podcasts

A podcast is an audio file posted to the Internet for others to download and listen to on a computer or a handheld device like a phone or an iPod. Podcasts are relatively simple to create. We have explored podcasting in the classroom over the last few weeks at my school. I did not have any experience with podcasting. I used the Learning in Hand website by Tony Vincent to get an idea of how to do a podcast. Four phases of podcasting are described.

First is preproduction, which is the planning process. Students and teachers determine the topic of their podcast, the audience, the name, and do the writing of the podcast. Students need to practice what they are going to say and make sure that they check their volume, pronunciation, and speed of speech.

The second stage is recording. Tony Vincent suggests that students use a USB headset with a microphone to record to eliminate background noise. He suggests using Garageband for Macs or Audacity for Windows. I watched his video on using Audacity and then downloaded it on my school computer. He also suggests that students record short segments of the podcast at a time so that the chance for mistakes is lessened.

The third stage is postproduction. This is where the podcast is edited and music and sound effects are added. The site provides links for free podcast music. Once the podcasts sounds great, you send it to iTunes. In Garageband, you do this in the file menu; in Audacity, you export it to WAV and then open in iTunes. In iTunes, you have to fill out the Get Info from the file menu. Then you have to convert it to an MP3 and it's ready to publish. This process is described in detail in Tony Vincent's free podcasting booklet.

Stage 4 is publishing. The media file, the web page, and the web feed all need to be online. Podomatic is a free publishing service to use if your school does not have a way for you to publish your podcast. You can also publish with Blogger and Feedburner. You can submit your web address to iTunes and other podcast directories so that it will show up in their lists as well.

Podcasts can be used in many different ways in the classroom. They can be used for book reports, a classroom news broadcast, field trip documentation, reproducing lessons for absent students, recording classroom discussions, book reviews, conducting interviews, and oral presentations of reports and assignments. These are just some of the ways that I found to use podcasts in the classroom. As I thought about how to use podcasts in telecollaborative projects, I thought that they would work well for communicating with others in a project. Students could introduce themselves and their classes to each other as well as communicate about the project that they are completing. This would be especially important if schools were in different time zones where synchronous communication would be impossible.

In my school, we decided to use podcasts as an alternative for a traditional book report. Each of our 3 4th grades read a classic book. The students were then grouped with the students in the other classes that read the same book. They had to interview the main character of their book. During the preproduction phase, they wrote the questions and answers and practiced speaking. Then we tackled the recording phase, and recorded the podcasts with Audacity. Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to run out of time (this is our last week of school) to complete the postproduction and publishing stages. However, I intend to complete these and post one of the podcasts to this blog. I also intend to get the students' reactions to the podcasts as an alternative to a book report. I enjoyed the process and think that they learned a lot, and I'd like to see if they feel the same way.

The 2 other 4th grade teachers and I decided that this year's podcasts would be our experiment to see how podcasting worked in the classroom. We want to use our experiences from this year to help us create more podcasts next year.

Web 2.0

This blog is about Web 2.0 and how it can be used in the classroom.