Having Fun with Physical Geography, Climate, Culture, and Economic Development

It's always wonderful to ask for something and receive it, but it's even more wonderful when you think something would be great and one day it appears. For a long time I've suggested Social Studies teachers should use high-resolution images of unknown places (photographs of neighborhoods, web cameras in markets, etc.) and have students use their critical thinking, knowledge and sources to determine an approximate location of a place.

EarthCam has a huge selection of cameras positioned all over the world, from the bustling Times Square to a quiet ruins in Jordan. With a little careful planning, you can cover up the cameras location and from there students can use what they see to determine the cameras location. If students are clever, and they most assuredly are, they can develop tons of low-level questions and then synthesize the answers in a very high-level way.

• What is the climate like? What is the weather like? Is it day or night there?
• Is there any distinctive flora or fauna?
• Are there people? How are they dressed?
• Is there any tell-tale physical geography? Like mountains or seashore?
• Is there any writing visible? What language is it written in?
• Is this a developing nation?

There are so many other questions to ask, but they all serve the same purpose: to narrow down the location. There are many places that have palm trees, but if it's night time that means it is on the other side of the world. Many places have paved roads, but only a few drive on the left-hand side of the road. This is fun for students, but it also gets them thinking about how places are similar and different and just how many facets there are to the concept of "place."

So, for years I've been content with the aforementioned activity, but today, I learned about Geoguessr and it turns this activity into a bonafide game! Go play it. It's really fun! Basically, you're given a random image on Google Maps and asked to show (on a map of the world) where you think it is. The closer your guess (in kilometers) the higher the score. Players are given five different locations and can look all around and even go up and down the roads. Just like with EarthCam, this could be done as a whole class activity or with teams. Students could use standard classroom atlas or notes from class. As the year went on, their notes would become more and more valuable and the scores would (hopefully) get higher and higher. The only problem I have with the game is its inconsistent difficulty. Sometimes the answer is all too easy, like when I landed next to a well-marked Post Office in Texas. 

This Geoguessr had me so inspired today, I set out to find the perfect electronic atlas for students to use. This interactive map from National Geographic allows students to create their own maps with different layers, and would be the perfect tools for students playing Geoguessr or another "World Image" guessing-game.

"Oh, look there's a mosque. Let's select a layer for world religions. This image is probably from a part of the world where Islam is widely practiced. In the distance are some mountains, let's look at the map for some major mountain ranges. Judging from the cars and the condition of the road, it looks like this country is highly-developed. Let's try to find a layer that might suggest economic development or widespread infrastructure."

(One could also use GapMinder to find countries that are densely populated or highly developed, etc.)

Using this e-atlas in conjunction with EarthCam or GeoGuessr will encourage students to use their atlases, problem solving skills and other higher-order thinking to find a right answer. Even if they get the wrong answer, it's an opportunity to look for missed opportunities or to discuss how to countries can be so similar and yet so far away. 

This can also be a platform to learn vocabulary! If students are going to describe their surroundings, they should use the right terms. Many mosques have tall towers attached to them, but they have a specific name (minaret) and students should use this term. Are those mountains or foothills? What's the difference? Is this an urban or rural environment? Is this a temperate or subtropical forest? Going along with the vocabulary, is the sense of place! If a student can look at a picture and say, "that's in Latvia," they know a lot about Latvia. Or, perhaps even better, they know how to learn about a country.

Take their enthusiasm for this activity and spin it off into something else! Give them a checklist of things (mountains, lemurs, adobe buildings, etc.) and have them find a place on Earth that will satisfy as many of the checkpoints as possible or a different place for each item. This could be an opportunity for them to use relative and absolute location. They can tell you the latitude and longitude of the Street View or they can tell you that it is in San Francisco, near the TransAmerica Pyramid. Again, being creative, motivated, and focused on your learning objectives is the key! 

The beauty of this activity is that it is appropriate for all ages, but the depths to which you go can be varied to fit the students. For lower-elementary grades it might be enough to talk about how this places is similar or different from where they live. Fourth-graders could talk about specific geographic features, and sixth-graders could identify signs of industry (factories, large trucks, smokestacks). High-schoolers could identify plant species (depending on the resolution of the image) and match those plants to the climate zones. (Interdisciplinary link with science!)

There's so much potential here!

Wikipedia: Genuine Audience and Collaborative Writing

There are few things as valuable to budding writers (or as scarce) as a genuine audience. By "genuine audience" I mean somebody who wants to read their writing and will make use of what they read in some way (discuss it, use it to make an informed decision, etc.). Experts agree that the opportunity to share their writing in an authentic way encourages and engages them in the writing process.

Another important, but difficult, concept to convey to students is that knowledge is ephemeral. As Tommy Lee Jones'Agent K put it so wryly in Men in Black," 1500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the Universe. 500 years ago everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." Students often seem to think that the collective knowledge of mankind spurt out of a fountain at a university, in a laboratory, or somewhere on the East Coast, and was then placed into textbooks and shipped to them. In some ways, I think access to the Internet and a renewed focus on open-ended questions and inquiry based methods has helped students understand where "knowledge" comes from. Still, they need to recognize that what we believe and know is based on research and that it changes from time to time. This problem goes hand-in-hand with students sometimes struggling to see the value of citations and identifying sources.

Lastly, I want my students to know their writing an always be improved. It's wonderful when a student completes two or three drafts before they turn it in, and I'm not trying to foster self-deprecation, but they should understand that good writing often goes through dozens of edits with massive amounts of text added, removed, or relocated! Even after all of that there's probably some way to make it better, but you can't spend your whole life on a three-page essay.

How will we solve all of these problems? Wikipedia! No, we're not going to look up the answer on Wikipedia; we're going to research topics and improve the World's Largest Encyclopedia. There are Wikipedia pages waiting to be created, edited and improved covering every topic imaginable, from military vehicles to little-known waterfalls. 

Let's start with how to edit a Wikipedia page. You don't need to be signed-in as a member to edit Wikipedia, but it might be a good idea because it often speeds up the time from when one edits and submits to when the changes appear. It also allows students to receive some recognition for their efforts (albeit, fairly anonymous). To create an account, click the link or go to Wikipedia and look for the "create account" link in the upper right hand corner. Once you've clicked it you'll be asked for basic information (username, email, password preference) and proof that you're not a robot. If you have each student create their own account (for grading or organizational purposes), my suggestion would be to make your student username's fairly anonymous. It might be a good idea to give students a format for their username, such as Teacher's Last Name/Hour#/Initials. Thus, Jane Doe from my second hour class would be Stewart2JD. As for passwords, check with your technology department to see if they want you reusing your school password outside the school's network. 

First-time editors and those new to the Wikipedia culture might want to visit the Teahouse at Wikipedia. This is a place to ask questions (formatting, content, culture, or anything else you want to know) and receive answers from experienced editors and contributors. Remember, Wikipedia has its own Manual of Style and this should be consulted regularly to ensure content alignment. Many of the rules are quite nuanced and designed to make Wikipedia professional sounding and culturally sensitive, but there are some important rules that should be considered by all contributors. One of the most important is images. They must be in the public domain through a Creative Commons license or by some other means. Googling "Khwai River" and inserting it into a document is always unacceptable, but it's particularly bad form on a website like Wikipedia. It might be a good idea to review major guidelines with students and help acquaint them with the Manual so they can find their own information.

Now that students know how to write a Wikipedia article, it's time to find articles in need of improvement. Wikipedia identifies approved topics in need of additional information as "stubs," and they have a massive index of these stubs, organized by subject. Perhaps you want your students to work on a particular topic, such as the physical geography of Africa. If that's the case, navigate through the index to find waterfalls, rivers, forests and oases of Africa. Keep in mind that there's a reason these articles are stubs and it might be difficult to find information. My advice would be to keep the topic as general as possible, while still addressing your learning standards. If it's Social Studies and they're supposed to understand how systems of trade develop ask the students to find a stub related to trade, commerce, currency or another pre-approved topic. If it's Language Arts and you just want the students to write for a real audience, or get practice doing research, have them write about a local topic, like the local county park or a hometown hero.

The difficult part would seem to be assessing, but if you have the students complete their article or contribution on a separate document, like Google Documents, then you can grade their writing and facts. They can post to Wikipedia, share the link with their classmates, via Remind101 or Padlet, and look at each others' work. Of course, the learning isn't over when they've finished posting and reading the articles. Encourage students to revisit the page and see how it changes over time. It's almost guaranteed others will visit the page and make minor, or major, changes to the article.

*A final bonus for using Wikipedia is it helps students understand the fallibility of sources, especially ones that allow non-experts to contribute. (Personally, I think Wikipedia gets a bad wrap. It shouldn't be used for dissertations and there are definitely better websites out there for conducting research. However, too many grade-school teachers treat Wikipedia like a gateway drug to illiteracy and the decline of modern civilization. If anything, Wikipedia is bringing literacy and knowledge to billions of people and is the preeminent example of a future in which knowledge becomes egalitarian and accessible to all. But that's just my opinion!)

I would love hear your thoughts or see some links to pages your students edited!

Connecting with Families (Digitally)

Most of my posts focus on how to connect students with worthwhile learning opportunities, whether it's "flying" them over the Pyramids of Giza or turning spelling into a game. However, we've known for  a long time parent involvement is one of the most important factors in determining students' academic success, and the evidence continues to mount. Thankfully, there are many different technological tools available to help teachers, parents and their students connect, even if their lives are busy and hectic. By making connections (digitally or otherwise), parents can share how those subjects are relevant in their lives, provide enriching activities, and support the teacher from home by ensuring projects are completed. The ways in which parent involvement matter could crash this blog's server! In every case it's probably better to check the technology out for yourself. Here we go:

Remind 101: Cell phones and email are ubiquitous; almost everybody has one (or both). Remind 101 allows teachers to send mass text messages or emails to parents, study hall teachers and anybody else who signs up. The beautiful thing about Remind 101 is that it is easy to set up, easy to send out, and teachers and parents don't directly swap phone numbers or emails. Instead, Remind 101 is the intermediary. Teachers set up an account and are given a code. That code can the be shared publicly and parents can sign up by texting or emailing the code to a six digit number. When the teacher sends out a message via e-mail or text, it is routed through Remind 101 and then delivered to all of the subscribers. It's free and there are no advertisements of any kind. On my seventh-grade team, we send our daily agenda to the math teacher, who enters it all into an e-mail, and hits send. All of the seventh-grade teachers are signed up for Remind 101 and it's great because we know what's going on in the other classes. We can help our Connections/advisory students stay on track, make cross-curricular connections and avoid having three projects or tests on the same day. Parents like it too because it's delivered directly to them and doesn't involve logging on or wondering if the electronic grade book is up-to-date. If parents are "too busy" to sign-up, ask them for their information and sign them up. It will only take you ten seconds, but could make a lifetime of difference for your student. One final advantage of Remind 101 is that it spans the Digital Divide. Not all families have internet access at home, but while almost all adults (especially between 18 and 65) have cell-phones.

Twitter: Twitter is concise and abuzz. You can share short blurbs of text and pictures. Want to let parents know how the mini-ecosystem project went? Send out a picture. Want to share today's or tomorrow's essential question? Tweet it. Maybe direct that essential question towards a respected expert in that field. You never know they just might respond! If your latest project has a rubric, you can upload it on to Google Drive, share it publicly on the web, shorten the share URL, and send it out. I don't promote my Twitter feed enough, but I have some really great followers, including the local chamber of commerce. From that, several other local leaders have started following me and now they know what's going on in their school. Maybe they have a sibling visiting from Monterey who happens to be an expert in marine eco-systems. Now you've got yourself an expert to speak to the class. The possibilities are endless! Here are some tips for getting started with Twitter, including how to use hashtags to organize the noise. The only tip I would urge you to disregard is the one about maintaining a ratio of followers to following. There's nothing wrong with following more than you're followed. In education, a diverse collection of interests (as evidenced by who you follow) only reinforces that you're a lifelong learner and that your class or subject extends far beyond the walls of the classroom.

TodaysMeet: Almost every presentation or posting on educational technology talks about TodaysMeet. It's very simple; combining the brevity of Twitter with the structure of a comment forum or chat-room. Setting one up takes about fifteen seconds. Then, using the URL or a QR code, students can visit the chatroom, enter their name, and post on the page 140 characters at a time. This is a great tool for exit slips! I also like to share these pages with parents via Twitter or my blog. This allows parents to see what their student is doing in class and allows them the opportunity to partake in the process of informal assessment. My exit slip questions are often something like, "what was the most surprising thing you learned today?" When a parent can look up their student's answer, it gives them a place to start a conversation. "Hey son, I noticed that you were surprised by the ending of the third Hunger Games book. It surprised me too!" Bam! Now the family is talking about what happened at school and forming a positive bond. 

Google Drive: Sharing is an important part of being a family, right? So, why not share digitally? When students are working on an essay or presentation in Google Drive, ask them to share it with you and their families. This allows the student, teacher, parents, grandparents, etc. to communicate and collaborate! It's very simple, just have the student click the blue "share" button and enter an e-mail address. My grading is done via Google Drive, and this allows parents to see specifically how their students paper was graded and gives them a far clearer picture of the student's abilities than a simple letter grade or comment. Remember that this "sharing" can be done with anything on Google Drive (Spreadsheet, Draw, etc.), including notes or PDFs saved into Google!

Blogger: There are lots of different options when it comes to blogging and that link will explain the pros and cons of the different options. My preference for Blogger/Blogspot is based solely on their integration with Google. It's part of Google and if you use Google Drive or Gmail, you're already signed up! There are also some slick first- and third-party add-ons that interact well with other Google products and will help tailor the blog to your needs. So, how does a blog help you connect with parents? Twitter and Remind 101 are designed to share sentences and phrases worth of information. If you want to share pages or paragraphs of information then a blog is a free way to do that. One common misconception is that blogs must be a lengthy, one-page beast that requires a frustrating amount of scrolling. Blogger, and most other blogging platforms, allow the user to add tabs. This is my classroom blog and you can see that there are two tabs: one with general information about what is going on and another for resources. The first tab is primarily used to communicate with parents and they can sign-up to receive updates in their e-mail. The second tab is aimed at students, with a number of websites or slideshows aimed at supporting or furthering learning at home. Sometimes parents don't understand what is being taught at school or don't remember exactly how to use commas in a list of adjectives. This blog gives them a resource to support their children's learning. Using a blog in conjunction with Twitter is a great way to share information. This allows you to send out a concise message about what is new on your blog and provide a link back to it. 

QR Codes: This sort of mixes no-tech with high-tech, but in the print industry QR codes have a proven record for success. link QR codes to your blog, your email, a rubric on Google Drive, a TodaysMeet.com page or a third-party website of relevance and attach the QR to student's take-home folders, report cards, or newsletters. If it works for advertising agencies, it will work for you!

The Educational Websites You're Already Using: Edmodo, Classroom Dojo and most other purpose-built educational websites have features designed to connect parents and families with the digital-ether of the modern classroom. Check these out and use them. 

Remember, families want their children to succeed, even if the tangible evidence is sometimes frustratingly absent. Often times parents don't understand how important their role is, or are simply modeling what their parents did. Whether it is high-tech or no-tech, make sure you connect with families!

One final note: the reliance on educational technology has removed the tangible evidence of learning from many households. Students no longer bring home a textbook and worksheet, leaving parents a little confused about what exactly is happening in the classroom. For involved parents this is frustrating and even disconcerting. Thus, it is more important than ever to find ways to share the teaching and learning with families. If there's something you're doing or using with great success, please share it in the comments. As Red (from Red Green) used to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together."

Fantasy Geopolitics

If you're a frequent reader of this blog you've noticed that I am a big believer in "gamification." There's a reason (actually reasons) people enjoy playing sports, Nintendo and board games. It's exciting to find ways to bring the thrill and challenge of a game and apply it to learning. Fantasy Geopolitics crossed my radar several weeks ago, but it wasn't until today that I finally had time to log-on and try it out. 

What is it? There's a video on their website (and above) that does a great job of explaining it. Essentially, it combines fantasy sports with, you guessed it, geopolitics. Students "draft" countries and receive points each time the country is mentioned in the New York Times. To succeed, students must research carefully and choose wisely.

It's free and very easy to set up. All you need is an e-mail address and a few minutes. Navigating the website is very easy. Once you've signed up, it is time to create a league. You can create multiple leagues, which will be handy if you want each class or grade to have their own league. As you set up the league you'll be asked to decide how long the season will be and how many countries players add to their roster. I chose the maximum (five) but you can opt for only one per player. Remember you will need to multiply the number of choices by the number of students in your class. If you have twenty-five students in a league and their rosters will all have five countries, you're talking about 125 different choices. That's going to take time, but it's also going to mean students do more research. Finding a balance is up to you!

In order to succeed in this game, students need to pay attention to trends and current events. Four weeks ago, Malaysia would, unfortunately, be a good choice because the media coverage of Malaysia 370 was intense. As the search winds down and the World Cup in Brazil approaches, it becomes increasingly likely that Brazil will net points on a regular basis. If the season started in February, Russia would've been a spectacular draft. The Olympics wracked up points on a daily basis for two weeks, and this was followed by the events in Crimea. To aid students in their research, Fantasy Politics provides links and resources. These include video clips of NBC Nightly News, indexes at the State Department, and a global development activity. The website automatically tabulates scores on a daily basis and displays maps of which countries are trending. The best way to understand the genius of this activity is to sign-up and explore!

The need for research and attention to current events doesn't stop after the draft, because students can edit their roster. If they determine a country is no longer likely to produce points, it can be swapped for another country. However, you can't draft a country that has already been chosen by another player.

This game has value beyond simply encouraging an interest in Geopolitics. It is also a valuable way to generate discussion about information sources. How does the Times' location (in New York and America) effect its publishing decisions? How does its global audience effect publishing decisions? What information sources did the winners use and did those sources matter? 

Track how long events stay in the headlines. What stays in the headlines longer: a famine or a global summit? A visit from a foreign dignitary or an international wire-tapping scandal? Does the amount of attention granted align with its importance? What is important? Why is it important? What's the most important thing to happen during the Fantasy season? Why is there so much conflict in one region? Why are some countries present at every international event? Why are some countries consistent point-producers? Why do others produce massive stats for a week and then go dormant? Is there a relationship between GDP and column inches? Is population a predictor of point-generating ability? Tying in math, how could we determine the ratio? When it's all over, students can discuss their successes and short-comings. The opportunity to explore deep questions, cross curricular lines, and develop complex answers is, ultimately, the appeal of this activity.

My guess is that students will try to find information sources beyond those at Fantasy Geopolitics in an effort to get an edge on the competition. This could lead to relevant, engaging lessons on how to use search engines effectively and how to identify credible sources. Students will ask more questions when victory is on the line. 

Many students will appreciate Fantasy Geopolitics similarity to a sporting event. If you're familiar with sports video games, then you've probably seen the All-Packers Team or All-Dodgers team. What would be the ultimate roster from the 1960s? What was Saudi Arabia's best year, in regards to Fantasy Geopolitics? It would be very difficult to find out what the right answer is, but that means students need to make their writing convincing and based on sources, especially primary sources. Have students develop and explain their roster, randomly choose three front pages from that year, and conduct a close reading, and score the rosters. Teachers could find semi-objective answers using Google N-Gram. Just remember that some countries have changed borders or names (ex. Congo). Maybe the person with the best "All-Star Team" wins the first draft pick?

All in all, Fantasy Geopolitics has tremendous potential for Social Studies and cross-curricular minded Language Arts teachers. This activity could become the foundation of a massive, year-long World Geography class or a tiny part of a week-long unit on using sources and search engines.

  

Using Video Games to Memorize Maps, Systems and Other Ordered Objects.

Students playing games on their iPads, instead of listening to directions or completing class work is a frequent complaint of teachers in 1:1 classrooms. It's not surprising that students choose a game over a lecture or worksheet, but their love of games can be leveraged to provide a platform for learning.

If you ever had a favorite video game, you can probably remember exactly what it looked like. You remember every turn and obstacle of Mario Kart's best race tracks; the rooms and equipment in GoldenEye; the shapes of the Tetris pieces; or the levels of Sonic the Hedgehog. Nobody told us to memorize these rooms and objects, but we did because it was a necessary and unavoidable part of improving and winning. (There's an entire field dedicated to applying game structure to learning, and I would encourage you to seek out experts and their research findings. Brian Houssand presented at the National Association for Gifted Children Conference in Denver (2012) and his presentation did a great job of summarizing the research.)

The digestive tract, the ancient Silk Road, order of mathematical operations, layout of the planets, and a timeline of European art history can all be turned into a map, course, or maze. In fact, students construct, memorize, play and replay these maps and courses until they've (inadvertently) memorized them.

FreeRiderHD

At the moment, my students' favorite game is FreeRiderHD and it's a relatively simple game in terms of controls, graphics and strategy. The player attempts to navigate a bicyclist through a course by controlling pitch. If your rider hits the ground at the wrong angle and they'll flip over. What's really cool about this game is that players can draw, save, play and share their own custom courses all from the iPad.

The best way to learn how to use this program is to visit the website and create your own map, but there are three features to make sure you understand. First, there are two kinds of drawing tools. One of the drawing tools allows you to draw track and forms the shape of your playing surface. The other drawing tool is for creating scenery and background. The players will see this background, but it won't alter gameplay. You (or hopefully, your students) will have to balance creating a playable track with one that conveys the concepts to learn. If it is a perfect representation of Parisian icons, but completely impassable, your students won't play it for very long. Alternatively, they won't learn much if it is merely a series of bumps with some Presidents' faces in the background. 

Of course, creating the track shouldn't be the only part of this project. Students should research what it should like and what should be included. If they are creating a race track that follows a molecule of oxygen through the respiratory tract, then they should do some research on what they will encounter. They should probably plan the course on a "storyboard" and explain what they've included and excluded and why.

Minecraft

If you've ever groaned because your students have never heard of Elvis or Casablanca, then you had better learn about Minecraft, because every person under the age of 20 knows exactly what it is. When it comes to Minecraft, everything you ever assumed about the current generation and their video games is wrong. The game has graphics on par with PacMan and about as much violence. It isn't a game of destruction, in fact, it is all about construction and that is why the game is such a powerful tool for learning.

Minecraft is essentially a giant, digital Lego set. You construct things using blocks of various materials and colors and the results are astounding.  Many of your students have accounts and this game can be played on multiple devices (computers, tablets, video game consoles). Ask them to create a model of Camp Green Lake from HOLES and they'll probably turn it in two days early. Give them the option to create a miniature map of Asia and they'll probably add buildings representing the architecture of the various nations. 

It is an amazing tool and it begs to be explored further!

FreeCiv

In my opinion, Sid Meier's Civilization is the greatest educational game ever created. No two games are ever the same, it can be played infinitely, and when students have started to master the game it means they have a firm understanding of geopolitics, economics, governments, and technological advances ranging from writing to jet propulsion. You can tell your students "the British Empire relied on its huge navy" as many times as you want, but give them Civilization and they'll learn for themselves why islands and other nations in close quarters often expand overseas, develop colonies, and sometimes displace other nations. They will also understand why it is so difficult to maintain control of people on the other side of the planet, why living in close proximity to other nations leads to more trade and why trade leads to rapid technological development.

Civilization II

FreeCiv

FreeCiv is not the same game because it isn't played in turns, and that is a major difference. However, it is the same in every other way, and you can construct your own maps and scenarios. Would you like your student to understand why the Union had an advantage over the Confederacy? Have them play the game on a difficult setting and they will struggle (pitifully) to defeat a more industrialized opponent. 

If you can afford Civilization (II is fantastic, even if the graphics aren't) then get it, but if you can't, FreeCiv is a decent alternative. In a future date I am going to blog about all of the awesome stuff you can do with Civilization!

Adjusting Assessment for the Age of Google

It's no secret that technology is changing the world, and this change includes education. However, I am frequently astounded at how little our methods of assessment have changed. Visit Yahoo Answers or a similar site and you will find students getting the answers to their essay questions and math problems. Is this cheating? Probably, but if it works, which it does, isn't it just a crowd-sourced calculator?

In previous posts I have alluded to my "Google Axiom," which states that if the question can be answered quickly by Google, one must evaluate whether it is worth teaching to mastery. The answer isn't always "no," because many skills are foundational. Students need to memorize math facts and how to spell many words. However, recognizing allegory in Steinbeck's novels or triggers to a civilization's collapse aren't foundational, unless you're writing a dissertation. It's more important that students are capable of explaining allegory or identifying contributing factors to the destruction of the Incan empire. If you're simply asking them to list three allegories or circle "Western diseases," you're wasting their time, because Google can answer that question for them and in the real world it will. In so many cases, our assessments can and should be designed so they can't be completed by a Google Search. This means using Project Based Learning. Coincidentally, Google can be used to find answers for how to best teach and assess. Want a project for fractions? Ask the Internet! 

Want students to learn about the political, cultural and physical geography of Africa? Have them use maps, graphs, charts and news articles to redraw borders using political, cultural, and physical features. Discuss how the random, haphazard division by colonial powers led to the instability and frequent clashes we see today. Explore some of the continents languages, cultures and political systems. Students can't Google: How do I divide up an entire continent? Please provide sources. This isn't just a better way to assess, it's a better way to learn!

There are many advantages to Project Based Learning, the least of which is the difficulty of "cheating." PBL allows students to express their knowledge and understanding in a medium of their choice; it allows them to express their ideas and creativity. In short, "Google-proofing" your assessment is best practice.

One final thought: What if the power goes out? Without gadgets and electricity, how will students know the atomic mass of uranium? This is a reasonable question, but the answer is pretty simple: if the power goes out for any sustained period of time and we return to the stone age, skills learned at summer camp (making fire with sticks, leather craft, etc.) are going to be far more important than atomic mass.

Obviously, this is all opinion. I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Please, comment below!

Quick, Easy and Educational Ways to Visit Websites with Students

You've found the perfect website to (explain mitosis / learn about adobe's amazing thermal properties / etc.). Unfortunately, when the students file into the computer lab or pick up their iPads they can't get the web address right. Here are some strategies and tools for eliminating this problem:

1) QR Codes: It seems like every blog post includes some reference to QR codes. They're fantastic and if you don't know how to use them, you can learn all about them here (#1 explains how to use them for accessing websites efficiently). Take note: you need a tablet, phone or some other device with a camera and the right software. Desktops, laptops, ultrabooks and other computers don't usually have the ability to scan a QR code. That brings us to...

2) URL Shorteners: If you've ever used Twitter to follow Naomi Harm or Edutopia, you've probably noticed that the links are really short and kind of unusual. They usually end in things like ".ly" instead of ".com." That's because Tweeters use a URL shortener to economize their 140 characters. The value of a URL shortener is that it turns www.website123.com/index/subindex/documents/doc19/ref=7%8# into a far more manageable goo.gl/ABC123. There are many different URL shorteners, but I prefer goo.gl, since I use GMail, Google Drive and many other parts of the Google suite. Simply copy the URL of whatever website you want your students to visit, paste it on the goo.gl page, hit "shorten url" and write it on the whiteboard for your students to copy. This is the perfect solution for when you visit the computer lab.

3) Learn to use a Search Engine: It's really important for students (and everybody) to learn how to use a search engine effectively. One of my favorite ways to reinforce the skill is to find a webpage that I want them to visit, put it up on the digital projector and have them use their own search engine skills to find it. You can adjust this activity to suit your students abilities. If they're advanced search engine users they already know to type in the title of the page, a line of text in quotation marks, or the publishing date. For novice students who need more support you can write "Site: USA TODAY"; "Article Title: Stocks Soar..."; "Date Published" and other useful information onto the board. Maybe your students are somewhere between advanced and novice. In that case, close read the webpage as a group and ask them to point out useful traits and information.

4) HTML to PDF Conversion: Sometimes you want students to access a fantastic (but online) chart, article or picture during a field trip or a nature walk, but there's no internet. Maybe you found a great webpage, but there are a million distracting ads. Perhaps you've found the perfect article for a professional development seminar, but don't want to make lots of paper copies. If any of those situations are familiar to you, then the HTML to PDF converter will be very helpful. These converters can be found with a simple internet search and they allow you to enter the web address of a site, hit convert, download as a PDF and share with students and colleagues. My favorite is http://pdfmyurl.com/ because it loads quickly and has a clean user interface. It takes less than a minute to complete this process and when you're finished students can mark up their documents anywhere using Notability.

Complex Texts and Technology

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and 1-to1 initiatives are, in my opinion, positive changes. However, it's sometimes difficult to know which way is up with these two major changes taking place concurrently.

One of the major changes of the CCSS is the move towards complex texts and literacy skills. Instead of having students read one leveled text after another, the students will read more difficult, high-quality texts. While this change receives the most attention from administrators and Language Arts teachers it is important to remember that reading and writing skills should be developed in all content areas.

When it comes to reading complex texts, technology can be a great ally to teachers and students. Today's post focuses on some free technologies that can be used to make reading fun (and assessment easy).

Notability: If you don't have this app, go and buy it. It is hands-down the best deal in educational apps. It's the Cadillac of note taking apps and it works seamlessly with Google Drive, Dropbox, PDFs and many other formats (regrettably, not Kindle). Anyways, it's awesome for close reading a text (there are tons of good PDFs out there and you can always make your own) and annotating because it allows students to do everything they would with paper. They can underline, highlight, add sticky notes, draw charts, and add pictures. Let's put those features into context.

This quarter we are reading Crispin: Cross of Lead and it's the story of a recently orphaned peasant in medieval England. It's a fantastic piece of historical fiction and explores the complicated (and completely unfair) social and political structure. One of the book's minor's characters, John Ball, was a real person and was executed for his role in the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. To help students understand the connection between Crispin and the Peasant's Revolt, we read this PDF about the revolt. So, what did we do with these two texts and Notability?

• Text-to-text connections:  There were lots of connections to be made between Crispin  and the PDF. Students could photograph sections from the book that were connected and place those photographs right into the PDF. Sometimes there wasn't a single passage that connected to the PDF, and then they could add sticky notes and text boxes to explain the connections. 
• Shared our Ideas: Because Notability is such a well-connected app, students could share their annotations with me and with their classmates at a central location. In this case, it was a communal Google Drive folder.

What else could we do?

• Text-to-world connections: We've talked about the social, economic and political structure of Medieval England as it relates to Crispin. Students used information from the text to determine where various characters would fall on a a social pyramid. The PDF references many different people and groups and these too could be placed on a social hierarchy. These in turn could be compared to other social, political, and economic structures.
• Cause and Effect: There were several causes of the Peasants' Revolt, first and foremost was the mistreatment and oppression of peasants by the upper classes and nobility. The iniquity is central to Crispin's plot and the book is set four years before the revolt, so students could easily make cause-and-effect connections using the PDF to study effects and Crispin and the PDF to study causes.

Grid Lens: Grid Lens is an app that allows the user to construct a photo collage by adding photographs to various frames. This app can be used in a variety of ways. For example, graphing out the beginning, middle and end of a story. Photographing important text features, like thesis statements, titles, sub-headings, graphs, maps and pictures. It can also be used by students to highlight what they believe are the most important parts of a text. By using the zoom and screenshot or camera features, students can select the three, four, five, etc. most important paragraphs or sentences from a text. Then they can use Grid Shot to easily put the images together and share it with the teacher. Summarizing is an important skill, and being able to point out the most important parts of a text can be tedious, dull work. However, we all know that good readers look back on a text and ask, "what do I need to take away from this article." With Grid Shot they can put this all together and then email it to their teachers. It isn't glamorous, but it's an easy way for students to say, "this is what stood out to me."

Using Google Presentations as a Textbook

The most valuable aspect of a 1:1 program is the technologies ability to assist with differentiation. iPads and Chromebooks allow for a dynamic learning experience that can change and react to the student's needs. As time goes by this capability is going to become more sophisticated, but that's a topic for another time.

One of my favorite ways to customize the learning to student's various needs is to use Google Presentation (it's like Powerpoint) to create an interactive textbook. The interactivity isn't fancy; there aren't any ancient Roman artifacts  that can be manipulated in three-dimensions. What it does do is allow students to work at their own speed and, in most cases, learn in a variety of ways (read it, hear it, watch it, share it, etc.). Using Google Presentation means that students can access this material from any web-connected device and I can make changes to it depending on student needs. If students don't understand the difference between a subject and object it is very easy to add another page of examples, link to another website, embed a video, or post on a classroom discussion board.most importantly, it answers the easy questions (what's an adjective, etc.) and frees me up to work 1-on-1 and in small groups to improve the difficult things (voice, word choice, etc.).

Here are some examples. As you look through them you will notice there are some websites I link frequently. For instance, TodaysMeet.com gets used almost every week as a formative learning assessment. There are often links to Purdue's Online Writing Lab or other websites that might help reinforce a concept.

Unit 1: Science Fiction
Week 1 and 2: Complete Sentences
https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/1pD69ymQI_1ZkY2MIhJqPjF_MR6JuGGNmw-eSkDBMoK4/edit#slide=id.g10483fe87_0135
Week 3 and 4: Building Science Fiction
https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/1fYqDtkYk4RStqhLwoc4cd3Ftj6vzmpHFPTM91lCfCNE/edit#slide=id.g106c04f09_053

Week 5 & 6: We reviewed some concepts from 1-4, took a field trip on Friday, and got caught up on missing work. Look for Week 7 & 8 soon!

Week 7 & 8: Creating Your Science Fiction Story: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eUo7iEV4GOUPALrqN7dkFcwRKAwlV3_HogvaPbqUtl8/edit?usp=sharing

Unit 2: Business World
Slideshow 1: https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/1LZ-98WOJ-hvJ_TBp--7A6mF0zi-S8NrCIlv9eMLV3ec/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p

Unit 3: Medieval Europe
Etymology Project: https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/1NJGMrwT_H37qh8HwK4HVi_fVY4h9CxtPgxFAe13SQEY/edit#slide=id.g2b5f71dbf_111  

Similes and Metaphors: https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/1XSWLs89VyP49UFzrJhzyBF6RxZHl_FX_wo-zC9gnny4/edit#slide=id.g1c7b6216c_015 

Imagery: https://docs.google.com/a/spooner.k12.wi.us/presentation/d/11W1l-j9s6AW4WlFPFBQdQNojuKC0j1ljO4MYI-ItlOc/edit#slide=id.g2c2e2072e_011