Category: Interactive Whiteboard

Picturing the Thirties

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What it is: Picturing the Thirties is another great virtual web activity from the Smithsonian.  This virtual museum exhibit teaches students about the 1930’s through eight exhibitions.  Students will learn about the Great Depression, The New Deal, The Country, Industry, Labor, The City, Leisure, and American People in the 1930’s.  Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum are supplemented with other primary sources such as photographs, newsreels, and artist memorabilia.  Students can explore the virtual exhibits complete with museum guides that explain each exhibit to students.  The feature presentation of the museum is a series of interviews of abstract artists describing the 1930’s.  User created documentaries can be viewed from the theater’s balcony.  Students can visit the theater’s projection booth where they can find primary access and a movie making tutorial.

How to integrate Picturing the Thirties into the classroom: I am always amazed by the virtual content that the Smithsonian has produced.  Picturing the Thirties is an incredible virtual field trip to museum exhibits that will put your students face to face with primary resources that will help them understand the events and culture of the 1930’s.  This is SO much better than learning from a textbook!  This interactive site is a great way for students to explore the 1930’s and learn at their own pace.  This site is perfect for the computer lab environment where every student has access to a computer.  You could also take a class virtual field trip to the museum using an interactive whiteboard or a projector.

Tips: Make sure that students have headphones or speakers for this website, there is quite a bit of audio content.

Related Resources: Smithsonian Virtual Museum, UPM Virtual Forest, efield Trips

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Picturing the Thirties in your classroom.

Flight Day with Google Earth

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Flight Day with Google Earth2667 views

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What it is: Every year the second grade students at CHC participate in Flight Day.  Each class ‘flies’ to a different country where they learn about the customs, architecture, and geographical landmarks of the country.  This year we spruced up flight day with Google Earth.  I created tours in Google Earth so that our students could virtually ‘fly’ from Denver International Airport to their destination (France, Germany, and Mexico).  Before landing in the destination country, we toured famous buildings, landmarks, and points of interest in the destination country.  Flight day begins with a re-arranging of the classroom.  Chairs are arranged in rows to simulate an airplane.  Desks surround the chairs and act as the airplane enclosure.  Students prepare for flight day by creating suitcases (that looks like the flag of the destination country) and passports for their travel.  Students have to go through security before they can board the plane.  There bags are searched and they have to take off their shoes and be wanded.  We have amazing parents who volunteer to act as the pilots of the plane and stewardesses on the flight.  The parents are great sports dressing the part and following a script we have written.  The Promethean boards displayed the Google Earth tour that I pre recorded for teachers.  Each flight leaves from our airport.  The features in Google Earth are incredible, using the 3D buildings option in Google Earth, students could actually see the white peaks of DIA as they waited on the tarmac.  The plane picks them up from a terminal and the flight begins.  Before flight day I had teachers create an itinerary of places they would like to see before the plane landed.   I based all tours on this itinerary.  Students flew to destinations in France such as the Eiffel Tower, Arch De Triumph, Notre Dame, Versailles, Saint Chappelle Cathedral, and the Louvre.  With the 3D buildings and Google Street view options selected, we were able to see each place in 3D and then see a real 360* panorama view of each stop.  During the flight, we provided students with in flight entertainment videos.  Our videos came from Discovery Streaming and the links were embedded right in Google Earth.  The videos were all related to the final destination country, we found some great videos of kids talking about what school is like in each country.  Students were also served an in flight meal.  Students traveling to France enjoyed a croissant, baguette with brie cheese, grapes, and sparkling lemonade.  Each meal came served in a little box topped with the flag of the destination country and a note that said “Thank you for flying Air France.”  When the flight ended, our Google Earth tour finished by landing at the airport of the destination country.  Students disembarked the plane and got their passports stamped.  Students then pretended to visit the local library and were read a story about the country.  The students who ‘traveled’ to Mexico were greeted by Spanish speakers and singers as they exited the plane (our 7th grade Spanish students came down to make the experience more authentic).  This was a very neat day for our students and is SO much better than reading about the countries they visited from a social studies text book.  Tomorrow students will create crafts of the country and sample some of the local cuisine.  They will watch some more clips from Discovery Streaming, learn a few phrases in new languages, and see some more pictures of the places they are visiting.  You can view our tour of France here:  France (To get the full effect make sure that you have turned on the 3D Buildings, Street view, Borders and Labels, and Terrain under Layers in Google Earth.)

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How to create a Google Earth Tour: Google Earth is a truly incredible tool.  If you aren’t using Google Earth in your classroom, you should be!  It is a free download here: Google Earth 5. To create a tour of your own:  Before you begin, come up with an itinerary of places you would like to visit.

1.  Open Google Earth (I worked in Google Earth 5) and create a new Folder under “Places” 2.  Under the Search type in your first destination. (Ours was DIA, our local airport).  You can search by business name, city, or specific address.  Google Earth will search for places that match your search criteria and drop place markers on the map.  When you find the place that you want to add, zoom in and click on the “add placemark button” (the yellow pushpin in the top menu).

3.  When you add a pushpin, the place will show up under your places folder as your first destination.  Continue searching and adding placemarks for each of the stops you would like to make on your journey.  You can add notes, links, etc. when you create a placemark.  Make sure that the view of the feature is exactly the way you would like students to view it when they play the tour.  In other words, if you want students to actually see the 3D model of the Eiffel tower, make sure that when you place your placemark you have zoomed into the map and adjusted the screen.

4.  Under “Layers” you can select the features you would like to show up on your map.  For our flight day I wanted students to be able to see the 3D buildings, Street View, Borders and Labels, and Terrain.  You can select as many or few layers as you would like.

5.  Finally you will play and record your tour.  To play the tour click on the video camera play button which is located directly under the Places panel.  This will automatically play your journey.  To record your tour, click on the “record” button which is located in the top menu button and looks like a video camera with a red record dot.  As I recorded, I would pause the play back of the tour and zoom in and around buildings and feature landmarks.  When you press play again, the tour continues.

6.  Play the tour for students.  When we played the tour for students we paused often so that we could talk about the different architecture and land features that we were seeing.  Pausing also gave us the opportunity to “fly” into the street view so that students could see what it would look like to actually stand on the street corner and look around.  Amazing is the only word that comes to mind!  (As a side note, the Louvre has an incredible 360* tour, be sure to check it out!)

Tips: Google Earth is preset to ‘fly’ quickly between destinations, because we wanted the students to feel like they were actually on a flight, and to get a feel for flying over the ocean to reach a destination I changed the Preferences in Google Earth.  I delayed the amount of time that it took to reach the destination and tweaked a few other settings to get the tour to run the way we needed it to.  The tours can be saved as a place and even emailed to other team teachers directly from Google Earth.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Google Earth in your classroom.

Story Cove

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Story Cove2372 views

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What it is: Story Cove- A World of Stories is an excellent collection of stories from around the world.  The folktales come from a variety of cultures and places sharing timeless lessons and universal values.  The stories are shared in two ways, as an audio story only, or as a movie.  The stories have been collected from countries around the world including: Africa, Asia, Americas, Australia, and Europe.  Students can explore the world through the stories told there.    Each story is accompanied by a variety of activities including coloring pages, mazes, printable masks, etc.  There is a teacher page where you can find lesson plans for each story that extend the story elements to explore the original story with projects and activities that encourage interaction with other students, parents, and teachers.  Each story has a lesson for students in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade.

How to integrate Story Cove- A World of Stories into the classroom: Story Cove- A World of Stories is a fun way for students to learn about other cultures and countries through the stories told there.  It provides a great tie in between geography, language arts, and social studies.  As you are teaching about other countries, use Story Cove as a way for students to understand more about the people who live there.  Because the stories have universal values, students will be able to relate them to their own lives.  Story Cove can be used with a projector or interactive whiteboard for whole class participation or set up as a story center on classroom computers.  These stories are great for building reading strategies like making connections, summarizing, synthesizing, questioning, and evaluating.  They are also helpful for language and vocabulary building.

Tips: If you can’t find a place to directly tie in Story Cove in your curriculum, consider introducing a new folktale to students each week of the school year.  Use the Story Cove story as a writing prompt for journal writing.

Related Resources: Speakaboos

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Story Cove in your classroom.

Rhyme Race

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What it is: Rhyme Race is a four player (or four team) interactive rhyming game that helps promote a better understanding of rhyming.  Players roll a die to move around the game board.  Along the way, students are asked to come up with rhyming words. If the player lands on a spot of the same color as their game piece, they are given an audio rhyming word.  A sound recording of a word is played and the player has to come up with a rhyming word.  If the player lands on a purple space they are given a picture rhyme clue.  A picture of a word is shown and the player must come up with a rhyming word.  The first player (or team) to land on an end space wins.

How to integrate Rhyme Race into the classroom: Rhyme Race is an excellent interactive game for an interactive whiteboard.  Split students into 4 teams, students in each team will rotate rolling the die and answering with a rhyme. This is also a great way for students to practice rhyming in small groups at a classroom computer as a center activity.  If you have students who are struggling with rhyming, they can play this game as a single player.

Tips: Rhyme Race is a Flash game.  Make sure that your Flash player is up-to-date before playing with students.

Related Resources: Little Animals Activity Centre, Rhymer

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Rhyme Race in your classroom.

5 Best Virtual Field Trips

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Cross posted at:

5 BEST Virtual Field Trips

Kelly Tenkely | TheApple.com

Field trips can be amazing learning experiences.   They provide students with the opportunity to actively participate in education, offering learning possibilities that aren’t readily available in the classroom.  Unfortunately, it isn’t always practical or possible to take students on field trips.  Tight budgets, location, transportation, time, and resource restrictions can keep your students school-bound.  Virtual field trips can fill this void.  Virtual field trips have come a long way from the page of links they used to be.  Now students can explore the world with simulations that are so realistic, they will believe they have left the classroom.  Below are five of the best virtual field trips on the web:

Virtual Field Trip #1:
Smithsonian Museum

Not all cities have access to an incredible natural history museum like the Smithsonian.  This virtual tour is the next best thing to taking an actual field trip to the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian Virtual Museum is truly remarkable.  Students can ‘step’ into the exhibits and take a tour through the entire museum in a 360 degree environment.  The virtual museum is made up of panoramic pictures of the actual exhibits inside the Smithsonian.  Using their mouse, students “walk” through the museum room by room. They can zoom in, look left and right, look up and down, and walk forward or backward.  Camera icons throughout the museum show students hot spots where they can get close to an exhibit panel.  As students explore the museum, they will see: the ocean hall, ancient seas, dinosaurs, early life, fossils, plants, mammals, African cultures, the Ice Age, Western cultures, reptiles, insects, butterflies, bones, geology, gems, and minerals.

Students can explore the various exhibits on individual computers in a computer lab setting or life size with an interactive whiteboard or a projector.  Split your students into groups and assign them an exhibit to explore and take notes on.  After students have explored and become the ‘expert’ on their exhibit, project the Virtual Smithsonian Museum on an interactive whiteboard/screen.  Explore the museum as a class. As you enter an exhibit, invite the group who explored the exhibit to act as tour guides.

Even if you have access to a natural history museum for field trips, the Smithsonian Virtual Museum is still incredibly useful.  Prepare for a field trip to your local history museum by visiting the virtual museum.  After the field trip, students can compare and contrast what they saw at the local museum with the Smithsonian.

Virtual Field Trip #2:
UPM Forest Life

A field trip to a forest is a wonderful way to learn about tree species, ecosystems, habitats, and animals.   The UPM Forest Life virtual field trip will have your students believing that they are actually in a forest smelling pine trees.

UPM Forest Life aims to teach about forest sustainability.  It does this by inviting students to take a virtual hike through a forest.  The forest is made up of panoramic pictures of an actual forest.  Students can zoom in, look up and down, left and right, and ‘walk’ through the forest with their mouse.  Students start their field trip with a virtual tour guide.  As students ‘hike’ through the forest, they will click on hot spots that reveal videos of forest life, pictures with information, and sounds.  Throughout the forest are opportunities for learning about forest planning, harvesting, regeneration, re-spacing, thinning, transport, recreation, training, berry picking, bird watching, hunting, fishing, natural forests, valuable habitats, deadwood, forest structure, water, native tree species, and the various animals that call a forest home.   This virtual field trip is impressive on individual computers and amazing when viewed as a whole class on an interactive whiteboard or with a projector.  Allow students to take turns acting as forest rangers. They can click on various videos, pictures, and information embedded in the forest.  Students can record their observations of the forest, trees, animals, and sounds they experience in an observation journal.

Virtual Field Trip #3:
Moon in Google Earth

The moon is no longer off limits for field trips!  Students can visit the moon virtually using Moon view in Google Earth.  Google Earth makes for excellent virtual trips around the world; in Google Earth 5.0 you can also take your students to the moon.

Moon in Google Earth makes it possible for students to take tours of Apollo missions to the moon, from takeoff to landing – all narrated by Apollo astronauts.  Students can explore 3-D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360-degree photos of astronaut footprints on the moon, watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions, and, of course, explore the surface of the moon.   Take your virtual field trip to the moon as a class with an interactive whiteboard/projector, or send students on their own mission to the moon using student computers.  Assign groups of students to an Apollo mission to explore.  When the ‘astronauts’ return to earth, they can tell other students about their mission to the moon or write a newspaper article about their journey.

Virtual Field Trip #4:
Planet in Action

Real field trips don’t allow for adventures like a helicopter ride above the Grand Canyon, an expedition to Mount St. Helens, or a helicopter tour of Manhattan or Disneyland Paris.  Planet in Action makes all of these possible with the help of Google Earth.

Planet in Action is an outstanding way to bring learning to life.  Students can take a guided tour of the Grand Canyon, Mount St. Helens, Manhattan, or Disneyland Paris or take control and explore on their own.  These journeys are incredibly lifelike on an interactive whiteboard/projector.  Take your whole class on a virtual helicopter ride above famous landmarks that they are learning about in class.  First, watch the recorded tour and discuss the different landmarks as you see them.  Then ‘hire’ a student helicopter ‘pilot’ who can navigate a trip for the class.  On individual computers, students can create postcards of their virtual field trip or create their own virtual tour that can be saved and shared with others or with Planet in Action.  As students fly above the landmarks, a Google Map will show them exactly where they are in the virtual tour.

Virtual Field Trip #5:
AR Sights

Most students probably won’t have the ability to travel to the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower for a field trip.

Augmented Reality makes it possible to see these landmarks, and more, using Google Earth in 3-D.

Augmented Reality requires a webcam, browser add-on, and a printout provided by the AR Sights website.

After a simple graphic is printed out, it is held up to a webcam.  Students will see a landmark spring to life right before their eyes on the computer screen.  As the printout is tilted, twisted, and moved the landmark moves accordingly.  Students can view the famous landmark in 360-degrees, 3-D, and up close.  It is truly incredible!

AR Sights makes it possible to view Google Earth right in a web browser and then zoom into places of interest, looking at them in 3-D with Augmented Reality.  Students can ‘fly’ around Google Earth, when they find a place of interest, they will hold the printout up to the camera and explore the landmark.  This is an amazing visual method for learning about geography and famous landmarks.  If you only have access to one webcam, use it with a computer connected to a projector or interactive whiteboard for whole class exploration.

Geography, budget, and time are no longer field trip restrictions.  With virtual field trips, students can explore the universe using a computer.  These simulations are so realistic that your students will believe they have traveled the universe, actively participating in their learning.

Geo Mysteries

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What it is: Geo-mysteries are fun interactive mysteries about rocks, fossils, and minerals from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.  Students can choose one of three Geo-mysteries to solve: The Mystery of the Floating Rock, The Mystery of the Broken Necklace, and The Mystery of the Golden Cube.  Students work to help Rex the dinosaur solve the geography mystery by watching a short video clip, and then going through simulated experiments to solve the mystery.  These are great short activities that will help your students understand properties of rocks, fossils, and minerals.  Kids will have fun working as a detective to solve the mysteries.

How to integrate Geo Mysteries into the classroom: Geo Mysteries is a fun twist to learning about rocks, minerals and fossils.  What I love about the site, is the way it makes students problem solvers and guides them through using clues and critical thinking to solve a mystery.  This is a good site to use as a center during science, two or three students could visit the center at a time working to solve a mystery.  After each group of students has been through the center, the whole class can come together and share their findings.  If you have access to a projector or an interactive whiteboard, you can complete the mystery as a whole class.  Invite students up to the board to interact with the material.   This is also a great site for students to work through individually in a computer lab setting.  In the computer lab setting, students can work through the material at their own pace.

Tips: The Geo Timeline on the Geo Mysteries site is fantastic, make sure to check it out and point it out for your students to explore.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Geo Mysteries in your classroom.

eField Trips

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on eField Trips2029 views

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What it is: eField Trips are a neat idea for students to ‘travel’ virtually to learn about the world.  These virtual eTrips are composed of 4 parts.  The first part is a pdf called the Trip Journal.  Teachers download and print out the trip journal to guide students on their journey and to give them a place to record what they are learning on their trip.  Second is the virtual visit, this is a flash video where students go on the actual trip at their own pace.  Generally trips take about 15 minutes to complete.  Third is a form where students can ask experts questions they have about the trip they took.  Actual experts will respond to the question in 1 to 2 days.  The fourth is a live chat.  These chats allow students to interact with the experts in a live session at a scheduled time.  Available eField Trips include: Pearl Harbor, bats, underwater ecosystems, brown vs. board of education, butterflies, western exploration, caves, climbing Denali, desert dwellers, Dred Scott, Earthquakes, mountains, and glaciers, fires roll in an ecosystem, Glacier Bay, Grand Tetons, invasive species, whales, renewable energy, sea turtles, mammals of Denali, manatee, reptiles and amphibians, wetlands, and more.  I would categorize eField Trips more like a webquest than a virtual field trip.  These are great webquests!

How to integrate eField Trips into the classroom: These eField Trips would be an excellent extension (or replacement) for text book reading.  Students can work through the eField Trip at their own pace in the computer lab setting.  I like the Trip Journals that guide students on their journey and keep them thinking critically about what they are encountering.  For younger students, take an eField Trip as a whole class using a projector or an interactive whiteboard.  Each student could still fill out a Trip Journal as the class goes on the journey.  Because the etrips require reading, struggling readers may be paired up with confident readers or a helper.  I really like the interaction that students get with experts after the field trip.  As students are going on their journey, they are bound to come up with additional questions.  Students always love sending and getting mail, eField Trips gives students the opportunity to do both.

Tips: One thing that I don’t love about this site, it is hard to navigate back to the homepage.  This isn’t a problem for students completing the trips, but it is a little frustrating as a teacher planning a trip.  

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using eField Trips in your classroom.

The Carbon Cycle Game

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What it is: The Carbon Cycle Game is a free online game that teaches students about how carbon cycles through the Earth system.  It is appropriate for 4th-9th grade students learning about the carbon cycle.  As students play the game, they will learn that carbon cycles naturally through living and non-living parts of the Earth system in a complex, non-linear way, that burning fossil fuels adds carbon to the cycle, the impact of additional carbon dioxide on global warming, and that carbon is essential for living things.  Students will travel around the game as a little carbon atom.  They will stop at key places on the game board and get a pop-up of information about the carbon cycle.  At any point students can click on key words in the pop-up and will be directed to a page with additional information.  Students will also land on question marks that pop-up questions testing students about what they have learned so far.  When students answer questions correctly they earn game points.

How to integrate The Carbon Cycle Game into the classroom: The Carbon Cycle Game would be best played individually in the computer lab setting or on classroom computers in groups of two.  The site says that this game is appropriate for grades 4th-9th but I found the vocabulary and reading to be a little advanced for fourth grade students.  If using the site with younger students, I would recommend visiting it in pairs of students or as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard.  If you play the Carbon Cycle Game as a whole class, split your students into two teams so that each team can take turns answering the questions in the game.  The Carbon Cycle Game is a good way for students to learn about the Carbon Cycle and the questions ensure that students are understanding the reading.

Tips: Check out the teacher section for some great lesson plan ideas using the Carbon Cycle Game.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using The Carbon Cycle Game in your classroom.

Make 5

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Make 5

What it is: Make 5 is a fun interactive tic-tac-toe type game (it actually reminds me of Connect 4) that I learned about this morning on Twitter from @annemarie80.  This game is a great way for students to practice math facts and to recognize relationships between numbers.  Students are given a target number, they choose an equation on the grid that equals the target number.  The goal of the game is to get 5 squares on the grid in a row in the least number of tries.  The game has several play options; students can play the game with one or two players, set up the game to get 5 or 3 in a row, and can play to practice addition, subtraction, or multiplication.

How to integrate Make 5 into the classroom: Make 5 is an excellent little game that students can play to practice math facts.  Use Make 5 as a math center on the classroom computers.  Students can visit the center in groups of two and play the game together.  In the computer lab setting, students can play Make 5 individually.  Make 5 would be a fun whole class game using an interactive whiteboard.  Split the math class into two teams.  Students take turns coming to the board as representatives of their team.  Give teams 30 seconds to plan their move before sending up their representative.  Make sure that every student has the opportunity to be at the board (you may have to play more than once).

Tips: Send this site home to parents, this is a great way for students to practice their math facts at home, too!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Make 5  in your classroom.

My English Images

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on My English Images3020 views
English Images
English Images

What it is: My English images is a great site that I learned about from @larryferlazzo.  This site was designed for English teachers and English teachers working with ESL and EFL students but it is a great site for any literacy classroom.  The site has images and worksheets that are available for download that can be used to catch student’s attention, spice up lessons, and illustrate difficult language concepts.  My English Images provides pictures that illustrate conversation, grammar, basic English, pronunciation, and vocabulary concepts.  New content is added to the collection monthly.

How to integrate My English Images into the classroom: This site is ideal for the ESL/EFL classroom.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is definitely the case with this site.  Students will be able to look at the pictures and understand the language concepts with the help of visuals.  The pictures can be downloaded and used in PowerPoint presentations, interactive whiteboard lessons, and any lesson that you are teaching that would benefit from visuals.  Visuals are the first thing that people associate with a concept.  They help students recall more quickly, and the concepts get stored in permanent memory because students have an easier time making connections with things they already know.  My English Images has some fantastic offline games that can be played with English language learners.  You can download and print rules and a certificate of excellence as students complete the games.  Grammar concepts are often difficult for any student learning them for the first time.  My English Images makes it easier for students to understand how the English language works.  This site should be used in any English speaking/learning literacy classroom!

Tips: Take a little time to explore My English images, it is a treasure trove of resources!  My English Images was created by English language teacher F. Michael Kloran based on what he uses with his students.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using My English Images in your classroom.