Web-tools, Lobster, and Richard

What in the world do those three things have to do with each other you ask?  Well, they all have to do with my recent trip to Portland, Maine to attend Practical Ed Tech (PET) Camp with Richard Byrne.  Now it makes sense!  If you don't follow him on twitter, pinterest, or his blogs, you should!  He's got great tutorials and advice that I've found to be priceless as I set forth on my tech-journey.

I spent two full days with Richard exploring different web-tools, apps, and programs to use in my classroom.  Each day I walked out of the conference room with my head filled with ideas and new "toys" to try in my room next year.  My head literally hurt from all the thinking I had done for 8 hours!

So, I'm sure you're now thinking, what things are you going to use?  Well, sit back and I'll tell you a few.

One thing I'm really looking forward to using more this coming year is Google Maps and Google Earth.  I want to use Google Maps to pin the different places in New Zealand that our school will be "visiting" this year for Global Awareness Day (GAD).  Jim Lewis (friend/former colleague of Richard's) came in and did an incredible presentation on using Maps/Earth in different ways in our class. While texting with my dear friend Sheila, we were lead to the idea that we should do this for our classes to further illustrate the country.  The GAD idea was inspired from one of the activities that he had us do, and the texting...got to love collaborative thinking/planning with colleagues in different states.  I can't wait to do the tour with my classes, I hope it's as exciting for them as much as it was for me!

I'm also looking forward to using it with my social studies topics.  I want to teach my kiddos how to use the maps and place pins on specific locations.  They can then put tidbits of info with their pin and share it with others.  I thought that might be something a little more fun than just looking at the maps of Egypt, Rome, and Greece in our textbooks.  We can use the different layers on the maps to explore more than just their physical location.  Layers like terrain and street view aren't something that you can see on an old fashioned map.  Then there are pics that people have taken that you can view, so it brings a whole different vision to the place.  The class can create a tour of their locations and tell you how far it would be to walk it! Can you tell I'm excited to get started with Maps?  Here's the link to the map I created on the left.  I put a few pins on it and found the distance between the pyramids I pinned.  It's too much fun!

I'm thinking I'll use Google Earth as a whole class presentation tool since it sucks up a lot of bandwidth and I don't want to crash the system.  I manage to break enough stuff without trying so I don't want to do something that I know I might be bad!

Richard also spent some time on blogging.  I sat up straight and was extra diligent for this part!  Did you notice that I embedded the Google Map into my post?  I even changed the width and height so it fit in my template better. Yup, learned how to do all that and I feel pretty good knowing I could make it work!  Here's a video I use with my kiddos that I'm going to embed, just because I know how to do it!  :)  Knowledge is a powerful thing!

I love School House Rock, don't you?  This is one of my favs.  The kids in my class sing it for weeks afterwards...of course I sing along with them. (Sometimes I'm the one who starts it!)

Well, I've rattled on for long enough.  I need to keep some of my new things to try for another post!  This one's long enough for today.

Happy blogging and keep it techy!
Stephanie