Week 5 Tools

Google Earth

I can’t believe how fast time flies just exploring one tool. I first downloaded Google Earth yesterday and spent a few minutes (okay, an hour and a half) just looking at various features. I really like Google’s description of this awesome tool:

“The idea is simple. It's a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route.”

I see lots of application for Google Earth in all elementary grade levels and middle school. However, for a high school chemistry and physics teacher like myself, I don’t see Google Earth playing a huge role in my curriculum. Anything I want to reference a place on the globe or a map, Google Earth has the advantage, hands down, over the traditional globe or map. Because there is a space component of Google Earth, I see the tool being extremely utilized in an astronomy class. One way that I could incorporate Google Earth in my high school physics class would be to add a virtual tour piece into my already existing Physics Hall of Fame Project. Here students create a tab poster that includes 10 facts (underneath flaps or tabs) that are numbered and increase in detail as you go down in number. So tab #10, might say something like, “This scientist was born in Copenhagen on October 7, 1885.” While a more specific Tab#5 might say, “Recognition of this scientists work on the structure of atoms came with the award of the Nobel Prize for 1922.” I could require students to take us on a virtual field trip that follows important places in the chronological time line of their physics’ (Niels Bohr in my example) life.

Here was a resource (free download) that is “An Illustrated Guide to Creating Virtual Field Trips Using Google™ Services.” Let me know what you think.

I suppose it just takes a little brainstorming to come up with a creative way to incorporate a web tool like Google Earth. Unfortunately, not all of our students are as geeked about science as we are. So anytime you can create a lesson that incorporates other disciplines, I think you enhance the learning experience for your students.

Make a Link for Your Document

As you can see from my previous posts, I blogged about wikis and blogs in the classroom. For this I created a “Blog Self Assessment” Rubric. But when I wanted to attach my document to my blog post I only saw a button to upload an image or video. Never fear, I remembered one of my classmates raving about how easy Scribd was to use to publish a document, presentation, spreadsheet etc. Actually, I couldn’t even remember what the publishing site was called. So I researched it and Scribd rang a bell. I created a link that I embedded into my post in seriously less than 1 minute. You can see my rubric here that I created using Scribd.