Google Earth Brings Literature to Life

I am so excited that people are actually looking at my blog. I especially want to thank the people at Promethean for giving this new blogger such positive feedback.

On to today’s topic:

Google Earth is a free program you can download that works great with the interactivity of an interactive white boards like the Activboard. Using the mouse, pen, or your finger you can travel the world. You will need to stop at your school and each child’s home first. Once you have gotten that out of the way the teaching opportunities are endless.
My favorite use of Google Earth is being able to bring books to life for the students.

When reading nonfiction books about an historical event you can find the city and view images. You can even read about a ship that sank and then find the wreckage. Once you find the location of the wreckage you can double click on the ship and you will get more information and some links. The link connected to the Titanic shipwreck will give you a video of the ship on the bottom of the ocean. Look to the right in the media gallery to find the clip.


While reading fiction it is fascinating to watch the student’s eyes get as large as saucers as they see places in their story come to life. Students find it amazing that authors use real places as the settings for their stories. While reading Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, we were able to find the University School and the general area where Calder and Petra lived. What really wowed the students was when we went to the street view and they saw Podwell’s bookstore. The personal connection to the story heightens interest, which improves the reader’s comprehension.

All of this makes Google Earth a truly useful tool that is both fun and educationally sound. To get Google Earth for your classroom down load it from: http://earth.google.com/

ActivInspire is Inspiring:I love my Activboard

One of the biggest influences for change in my teaching is the interactive white board. We have 2 different brands in our building. I was one of the fortunate ones to be trained in how to use both. I liked the Promethean Activboard. I have been using Activstudio and Activprimary all school year. I favor the Activstudio and even my second grade students can with move easily through the tools and activities.

Recently Promethean has released a beta version of their next upgrade; ActivInspire. I love that Promethean works to continuously update their products. I read the prometheanplanet forum regularly and have seen many of the requested changes addressed in the Inspire software.

I thought I might walk you through some of the changes and encourage you to try the program yourself.

ActivStudio V3

ActivInspire

The first change that I see and like is the size of the images in the library. It is much easier to see exactly what the image is and you can now read the labels.

The next change was having many browsers to help you quickly build a flippage. The library is not just a library anymore. You can use the browser to help you do a variety of tasks that would take many clicks through menus, but now only takes one or two clicks.

The browser helps with pages, layers, teacher
notes, properties, actions, and voters.

The two browsers that I have found most helpful have been the layer browser and the property browser. These to browsers alone have saved me hours of time and most likely a case of Carpal Tunnel.

The facts that all the pieces that you need to work with are right there for you to see. I no longer need to click through four or five steps to get an object the way I want it. The layering browser has helped me get objects in to the correct layer so that tools like the Magic Ink will work correctly. Before I was always guessing and

hoping that I had the object in the correct layer.

One more plus to the Inspire software is that you can control what tools are available on the objects. You could not do this with v3. It is great to be able to put your most used icons on the screen. My younger students feel very empowered when they do not need my help to change the look of an object.

I also like how the actions turn on and off. You can click an object with a hide action and it disappears. You click the object again and it reappears. I also like how you can now move an object with an action. This saves a lot of time when you are creating a flipchart.

I have found a few things that I do not like very much.

The first change that I noticed that I did not like was that the library no longer has icons showing the different types of images. My younger students relied on the icons to find the files that they wanted to use. The library in Inspire is just the files and word labels. This makes finding a picture much more difficult for young students. There is also no search for items in the library. Both the students and I like to use the search mode to find just the right picture to go with concept we are trying to share.

Another problem is the teaser Promethean has put in this version of software. The duel pen function is shown. The problem is that it will not work. To use the duel pen function you will need special pens and special filmware to get it to work. I am pretty sure that my district will not spend any more money for my classroom when so many other teachers are still using overhead projectors.

I use actions a lot in my flipcharts. I have had a hard time finding many of my favorite actions. Several of the actions’ names have changed a little. I was eventually able to find what I needed. I do like the alphabetical order of the actions. I have been frustrated with one particular action. When I want to use the action “another page” I have to guess what page I want. I would like to be able to see a picture of the pages just like we can see pictures of the object, groups, and text.

I have been going back and forth between both V3 and Inspire. I do not like that anything I save in Inspire will not work in V3. I worry that come March I will have flipcharts that will not work because the demo will run out and the new version will not be made available as a free upgrade. I hope this will not be the case. I would like to use Inspire full time. Of course, I would like some of the glitches worked out.

As you can tell from this very long post I have turned into an active geek in a very short period of time. My students are benefiting from my love of the new technology and are eager to do the activities that I have created or downloaded from Prometheanplanet. They are also starting to create their own flip charts.

You can get your chance to try out ActivInspire by going to http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.16615
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Why Start a Blog?

I have been teaching for just less than twenty years. During those years, I have been searching for the one thing in education that I could be passionate about, specialize in and excel at. Obviously the use of the English language was not going to be my strength. Over the years I have explored many different possibilities. Nothing really worked for me until computers entered my classroom. I knew I had an understanding of their power to engage students. While computers sat in many rooms unused my students clamored and begged for more activities.

That was 10 years ago. With the age of interactive boards and web 2.0, I think I have found my area of specialization. Teachers are more motivated then ever to learn about and integrate technology into the classroom. I am more than eager to show what can be accomplished with technology.

I am so excited about all of the technology available to my students and me that I am driving my fellow teachers crazy. They asked for a little help on a small project they are trying and I try to share it all. I need a new outlet for all my ideas. Teachers in the building in which I work need me to share less. Something hard to do when you are so excited about the possibilities.

So…
Using some of the tools I have learned about in training, I will expand my voice beyond the walls of my school building. Hopefully there is someone who will read this blog. Hopefully there is someone who will make use of its information and be as excited as I am about technology in the classroom.

Stay tuned for tech tips from the classroom.