USA Landmark Google Earth Tour

Finally created my own tour in Google Earth. I've played around with the program for years, have used it in my teaching of geography, and have allowed students to explore the program. I was determined to have the students use it more this year. The first grade students kicked off their America unit this week, so I decided to take them on a tour of ten US landmarks. Starting off at our school, students visited the:

White House
Lincoln Memorial
Washington Monument
Statue of Liberty
Empire State Building
Niagara Falls
Grand Canyon
Mount Rushmore
Golden Gate Bridge
Independence Hall & The Liberty Bell

I used the Get Info feature to add interesting facts as well as a picture for each stop. I used heading 2 tags to enlarge my text and tag to add photos from my Flickr account. I used many of my own photos as well as Wikimedia and Flickr Creative Commons for others. Students read the information at each stop and answered questions about the readings. High readers were paired with lower readers as needed. The students were engaged from start to finish.

Introducing GPS and Geocaching Lesson Plan - 3rd Grade

Third grade students participated in a WebQuest to learn about GPS and geocaching. Using pre-selected Web sites, they researched GPS, learned about satellites and GPS receivers, and read about the sport of geocaching. Each student then researched and answered a specific question on a class VoiceThread.

Students also had fun putting their new GPS knowledge to work as they searched for caches around campus. Working with partners, each group was assigned a cache to locate. Once the cache was found, they used an online graphing tool, Create a Graph, to create a bar graph of the cache's contents.

Travel Bug Tip - Make Your Own

My second grade students again released a set of travel bugs. This year's group decided to keep their bugs in the United States, and I am happy to report that after two short weeks, three of them are on the move. Two arrived in Maryland after visiting the Capitol, Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, and Arlington National Cemetery. The other is on a train to NYC. Both of the geocachers who picked up our bugs have written to my students and taken lots of pictures along the way.

If you are considering sending off a travel bug, I'd like to suggest something that has worked out very well for us. Instead of finding an object to attach to the tag, make your own and include the mission of the bug with it. (Laminated tags at your local copy store work well.) Also, let people know that the bug was created by students. I truly feel having this information included with the bug has helped move all of them along so quickly. Since March 2009, our eight bugs have been in 18 states, three countries and have traveled more than 22,000 miles!

GPS and Geocaching WebQuest

I'm so excited to get started with geocaching again. This week, I am reintroducing my 3rd graders to the sport. This class of 3rd graders learned about geocaching through the travel bugs we released last year. They also spent some time geocaching on our campus. But their knowledge of GPS and how it works is superficial. I have created this quick WebQuest to give students a history about GPS and how it works. They will also review important vocabulary related to GPS and geocaching. Finally, they will be creating a VoiceThread to share what they have learned with other teachers and students.

Google Earth Intro -2nd Grade

For their first visit to the computer lab, second grade students were asked to demonstrate their present knowledge of the world by drawing their own map. Each child was given a piece of paper and asked to think about the maps they have seen before. For fifteen minutes they sketched and labeled - and when it was all done, these young cartographers learned that it is really hard to make a world map that looks like the world!

So begins their geographic journey. As they study the seven continents in their classrooms throughout the school year, they will also participate in a variety of technology experiences with tools such as online atlases, encyclopedias, hand-held GPS and Google Earth in the lab.

Today, they learned how to fly around Google Earth viewing satellite imagery, maps, and terrain. After moving form Earth > Continent > Country > State > City and seeing our school from a "bird's eye view," they flew to their own homes. (This required students writing their home address on a note card before coming to the lab.) The students were delighted to see their rooftops as well as those of their friends. This was a great introductory activity that I will definitely use again next year.

Bird's Eye View of Shorecrest

The Geomate Jr.

When I introduced geocaching to my students last year, I was flooded with parent emails about how they could geocache with their kids and what was the best unit to buy. I would show parents the unit I have, the Garmin GPS60, and then provide them links to Dr. Alice Christie's site where she compares different units by price, battery life, accuracy, etc.

If I get asked that question again this year, I will probably recommend the Geomate Jr. I logged on to my Geocaching.com site to checkout the status of my student travel bugs and came across a new hand-held GPS dubbed the "Family-Friendly Geocaching Device." Pre-programmed with 250,000 geocaches in all 50 states, it appears really easy to use. It's price tag is $69.99 and you will be able to purchase additional update kits for $19.99 to add more caches to the database. Definitely worth a look. I may be purchasing one for my own family. It would be nice not to have to fuss with downloading waypoints, etc. Just turn it on and go!

Even if you already have a unit, check out the site. There are some short videos that are great for introducing geocaching to your elementary students.

Please comment if you have used or heard about this unit! I have read some online reviews but would like to hear about it first hand.

Nugget Travel Bug Found!

In mid June, I received a log post from waterboy1277 through my Geocaching.com site that my travel bug, Nugget, had gone missing.

"I'm sorry to say that I think that this was muggled, I talked to some fellow cachers I came across in the area I left this bug and they told me the contents of that cache were everywhere. They said that the TB was not there. I went to go and see for myself and look around the area just in case it was tossed aside. I could not find it. I am sorry but I think it is MIA."

Of course, extremely disappointed, I was going to have to tell my students about Nugget's demise.

Then yesterday, six weeks after he went missing, gecoacher candum "grabbed it, got it in a different nearby cache. it was in cache called House for a Buck just a mile or so north. took it back to wyoming."

I can't tell you how excited I am that he has been found. I will be presenting at a conference about geocaching and using travel bugs in the elementary curriculum in November. His travels are an important part of that presentation. YEAH!