Ideas that you have tried.

[Kirsten Holland]

I am very interested to hear what ideas, resources or activities people have implemented since the PD last week. Let us know how they are going, and what is really working.
Kirsten

[Sandy]

Great that you were able to use Google Earth in your classroom. I hope that others read this on the ning and can also find ways to perhaps use it within their UOI. It seems like the use of Google Earth could become a real hot topic so let's see others sharing their experiences so that we can all learn more .... Thanks Jane sor sharing

[Ana Santos]

Jane, I am really impressed with the depth of the lesson and learning that went on in your class by bringing technology to connect your students to the rest of the world. I guess we can say that Google Earth is a great tool to promote PYP and the sense of connectedness. I also used Google Earth with the Grade 2s when we did our Living Here, Living There unit. After a field trip to the market and filling out a survey as to where most of the food we have in Qatar comes from, we marked those countries on a world map and then used Google Earth to see those countries in relation to Qatar. We explored reasons as to why certain products came from certain countries (oranges from warmer regions, f.i.) and talked about possible ways for those products to arrive here (land, sea, air) and impact on cost and flavour of the product. It was very powerful, but the highlight was the slow zooming from a view of the whole earth to arriving at Qatar and soon we are hovering over the tented area in the Primary School. At this point the kids are so excited they actually want me to zoom through the roof to go into our classroom. As they are saying this they are looking up at the ceiling hoping to see a camera come through...
I would love to hear how others have used Google Earth as a teaching tool as well.

[Julie Lindsay]

Jane, I am thrilled to read about your adventures with Google earth! You should really start your own classroom blog and bring this out from the ning as well. Great!

[Jane Sparks]

Thanks to Kim for her suggestion about using Google
Earth in my Kindergarten class for our
International Week. Robyn has been wonderful at
supporting me and helped pin the students'
countries. We presented the information to the
kids in the lab on the big screen on Tuesday and a
few of them were familiar with Google Earth
already - mostly from older siblings! We are now
working at printing the sections and adding them
to the classbook that we are making! I didn't think beforehand about using landscape which would have been better for printing the images, as the children had done some work already for the book using portrait
orientation. This is something I will consider for
next time. At the same time we had a mini
geography lesson learning about what the different
colours on the earth represented. This was fun for
them also especially when they realized that the
white represented ice! They were interested in
how far away their friends' countries were from
each other and realized that Jordan, Iran, Qatar
and Pakistan were relatively close, in comparison
to Canada or the United States where other
students are from. One of the students drives from
Qatar to Jordan every summer so we could plot his
route. They also liked to find countries,cities in
the region that they could make connections with,
like Dubai. We tried to find Nelson's Column also
as the kids had learnt about different landmarks
in London through a story earlier in the day and
we were able to see the shadow of the column on
the screen. We then proceeded to find Hamley's
which is a place many of the students at our
school are familiar with! It was an exciting
adventure and a tool we will use again I am sure!