Explore the world with GeoGuessr

Geoguessr is a site that makes geography into a game. You can select from a variety of game options. You can also select to to play as a single player or challenge mode. In challenge mode, GeoGuessr will give you a an URL link to share with a friend.

Once you make you selection let the fun begin. You and your students will have 5 rounds to explore the world. You will be given an image. You can scroll around the image as in Google Street View. Using your sleuth skills you must make a guess on the map in the corner where you think the image is from.

It will then show you how close to the actual point you were and award you points. This is a fun and engaging way to gamify geography for students.

I particularly love the USA ones to have the students use their knowledge of the different geography across the US. What part has flat lands, where are the drier climates that are reflected in some images and so forth. Have fun with geography!

2016 Election Candidates & Where They Stand

ProCon.org has great resources for students to examine controversial topics in a balanced way. They have taken this approach and have curated a variety of resources for students for the upcoming 2016 election. They plan to continue to update the site with resources and data through October 2016. ProCon.org is a great place to have students explore past elections, take a candidate quiz to see with whom their ideas match up, examine campaign finances and more.

On their home page, students can select an issue and get an overall quick view on who is pro or con, as well as read about what the candidate has stated on the issue in their own words and view the sourcing of the statements. This is a great model for sourcing information and evaluating information from multiple sources. They also have a chart comparing candidates on a variety of topics. A possible inquiry activity would be to have students examine an article or candidate statement about an opponent and complete their own fact checking to practice being an informed citizen in the digital information age.

Analyze Political Cartoons with Google Drawing

Google Drive has a variety of tools. Personally, I tend to use and have my students use Docs, Slides, and Forms. One that I have not used is Google Drawing. I just saw the power of Google Drawing unleashed yesterday at San Diego CUE by Derek J Marshall and Raymond Lopez.

It was genius how they have their students use it to analyze cartoons. They have their students upload a political cartoon into the drawing as an image. Next, have the students draw the cartoon into quadrants. Then, break down the cartoon by quadrant using the drawing tools and comment/text boxes.

This would also be a great collaboration activity to have pair or a table group of four work on together.

Here are a couple of pics of the the samples that they shared with us in their session.

Below are the steps to using Google Drawing. You can also click HERE for a link to the steps to share with your students and peers.

 Get drawing!

Listen to Current Events with Listen Current

Sometimes getting students to read about current events takes some encouraging. Many would rather listen to their earphones. Alternatively, some may have reading difficulties or be auditory learners. Here is where Listen Current comes to the rescue.  Listen Current utilizes public radio broadcasts of current events and stories related to History, ELA, and Science to help build students' listening skills. This is right in line with the Common Core. They also provide discussion questions that can be utilized as extension activities. There are a variety of topics available at the middle school and high school level to engage your students with.

Another great feature of Listen Current are there pre-made Socrative quizzes. (Socrative is a free data gathering tool that you can sign up for) You can check for understanding with your students quickly by having students go on to their electronic device whether it is a computer, tablet, or cell phone and take the quiz.

Let's get our students working on their listening and discussion skills and fostering their civic skills.

The process is rather simple to utilize the Listen Current quizzes. Just follow these steps:

Copy the code for the desired quiz and go to your Socrative account.

Go to the Manage Quizzes tab and select Create Quiz

Paste in the SOC- # in the Import a Socrative quiz from another teacher box

You can select the quiz settings to control the pace as the teacher or allow the students, as well as whether to display student names and randomize the question order.

Go to your Dashboard tab and select Start a Quiz

Have your students log in as students and give them you classroom number to have them take the quiz.

Tell Your Story with Smore

                                               

We aren’t talking about the campfire treat. Smore is an online newsletter web creator that you can print out or share electronically. They have a variety of templates available and it is super easy to use. One of the great Smore features is that you can hyperlink to other sites and make your newsletter interactive. You can choose to share your newsletter on your social networks or via a mailing list. Your first five Smores are free. After that, they offer an educator license for $59 annually. This is a great way to share information. You can also have students create a newsletter to demonstrate mastery of content. So get cozy around the fire and check out your Smore.

Sample Smore on Getting Started with Twitter

Vines to Document Your Classroom

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Social media is becoming an ever growing part of our students lives. Why not show students how to you social media responsibly as digital citizens and with an educational purpose? My students are getting more and more into Vine. I took the plunge and had a student show me how to use the app. Then I had to think- what did I want to document? How can I find a purposeful way for students to use the tool? I often take pictures of our class and post them to our class Twitter and Instagram to document our growth and provide an opportunity for the parents to peek into our classroom. Vine allows me to share brief 6 second videos. In a Twitter chat a participant also mentioned having students create them for vocabulary. You can asks students a brief question to respond to. Another possibility is to have students record their analysis of a political cartoon. Get creative.

Once you have your students create them on their iPhone or Android phone, you can collect them using Google Forms. Another option is to have your students post them to their ePortfolios by embedding it onto their site  if they have them. You will need to get the embed code and embed it on a computer or Chromebook. The process does not work on the smart phones or ipads to embed Vines.

Check out this Prohibition exhibit Vine from the National Constitution Center.  

Proper Pic Attribution with Photos for Class

Last weekend I attended Edsurge in Los Angeles, where teachers can explore emerging educational technologies. While waiting for the event to start, I had a chance to catch up and chat with Jen Roberts. Roberts is a rockstar middle school English teacher in San Diego. In our discussion, I brought up researching and getting students to properly attribute sources when she shared Photos for Class. This site is FABULOUS.

Photos for Class is a free database of Creative Commons G rated images that you can download WITH proper attribution included at the bottom of the image. Let me say this is golden. I have stressed with my students the needs to give proper attribution in their work including images. Too often teachers have students just grab an image off of Google. This is wrong. We must teach our students to search for Creative Commons images to utilize and give proper attribution. See last month's Fair Use blog post for more information on the topic.

Photos for class is easy to use. Just type in the topic in the search window. My students and I found that you may need to include the general topic and a specific aspect to narrow your search to be more productive. For example, when a student was looking for images related to the fall of China to communism we entered "Communism China." Once you find an image you like, select download. You will now have a Creative Commons photo with proper attribution to use in your task. This serves as a great way to teach digital citizenship and for students to see the proper way to attribute photos that are not there own.