Thing #13 - Online Interactive Learning Tools

Google Earth

This morning I took a trip to Ontario, Canada while using Google Earth. Below is a screen shot of the Google Earth location for Jordan Heritage Reformed Church. The address that I used to locate the church was: 4171 Fifteenth St., Jordan, Ontario. Google Earth was slightly off with the location for some reason so I had to scroll up a little to find the actual church.

Another location that I visited using Google Earth was Goat Island at Niagara Falls. I added a placemark to this location as well so that I would quickly be able to locate it again while using Google Earth. The screen shot of Goat Island at Niagara Falls is shown below. Maybe I will visit this place while in Canada the Lord willing this summer.

Google Earth is enjoyable to use and there is so much more about the program that I would like to learn. I trust my students will enjoy taking "field trips" around the world through using this tool.



Quizlet

Today I was introduced to Quizlet for the first time. This website not only provides countless already made flashcards, but also allows you to make your own digital flashcards. My 6th grade students have a social studies test on the Great War scheduled for this Friday and so I made a set of flashcards on the vocabulary that they are required to know. I hope to introduce them to the set of flashcards tomorrow and demonstrate to them the interactive games provided by Quizlet that they could use while studying these terms. In order to help my students easily find my set of flashcards, I included a link to the flashcards on my "Face of the Classroom" website that I made using Weebly. The link to the flash cards are on the social studies page of my Weebly site: http://gvbzone.weebly.com/social-studies.html

You can also view my set of flash cards by following the link below directly to Quizlet:
Flashcards: Social Studies Chapter 18 - The Great War

I introduced my students to my Quizlet flashcards and many of them were impressed with them. A few of my students went on to the site during their own time and review for the test with the flashcards. I had hoped more of them would have made use of the flashcards from home, but I trust it was helpful for the few who did. One student came back and informed me that he beat my high score for one of the games. The nice thing about Quizlet is that once I have my flashcards made, I can link to them from my "Face of the Classroom" website and in this way make them available to whoever might profit from them. 

Content Standards:

Aligned to NETS-T: 1.a, 1.b, 1.c, 1.d, 2.a, 2.b, 2.c, 2.d
Connections to Marzano Strategies: Reinforce Effort and Provide Recognition; Interactive Games; Non-Linguistic Representations; Generating and Testing Hypothesis