transportation – iLearn Technology

ASCEville- Engineering Just for Fun

November 17, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2618 views

What it is: ASCEville is a good place for students to try their hand at civil engineering through online games, offline activities, videos, and contests. In ASCEville, students can explore civil engineering history and where civil engineering is found in our daily lives. Online resources for kindergarten through 12th grade will help you find just the right activity for your classroom!

How to integrate ASCEville into the classroom: ASCEville is easy to use in any classroom. With activity ideas and games for every age level, this is an easy site to use and integrate into the math or science class seamlessly. Students will appreciate the hands-on nature of the site, and the ability to see what all of that math they are learning gets applied to. The activities on ASCEville will give your students a tangible connection point to math and science concepts that they are learning.

Create a mini engineering fair in your classroom. Invite each student to independently choose an offline activity in the Just for Fun section of the site. Students can choose to build a gumdrop dome, build a globe-shaped clubhouse, stack a tower of cups, test out pressure on paper, design a paper table, build a high-rise tower, or build a paper bridge. Students should approach each activity expecting failure (love that!). Ask your students to record their successes and failures as they build through drawings, pictures, and notes. What tweaks made a difference? Why? On the day of the “fair” students can set up their final projects and include a small collection of observations they made and their pictures/notes along the way. Ask students to share with each other the challenges they faced, what they tried, and if they were able to overcome the challenge.

This site is a great resource for students inquiring into civil engineering, how buildings and cities are designed and built, or how engineering can be used to keep us safe during natural disasters. There is enough information on the site to spark new lines of inquiry and some great ways for students to use design thinking to further explore engineering concepts.

Tips: Don’t forget to check out the Educators section for some great additional resources, lessons, and ideas! Thanks to Anastasis parent Paul for sending us this great site!

What do you think? How will you use ASCEville in your classroom?

Oddizzi: where the world comes to life

October 17, 2011Kelly Tenkely5 Comments3355 views

What it is: I love those serendipitous moments in life where the stars seem to align and everything that comes your way is tailor made to meet your needs. This resource filled those needs for me this week! At Anastasis, our primary students are working on an inquiry unit about how transportation has changed over time and how transportation is used in different locations in the world. What should appear in my inbox than a little note from the people over at Oddizzi inviting me to take a look at their content. Serendipitous I tell you. Oddizzi is a paid-for service but they have sample content on their site to give you a taste of what you can expect. That sample content is free and has made my day. It may make yours too, you should head over and have a look! Oddizzi brings the world to life in a way I have seen few other resources pull off. Students have access to their very own interactive map where they can view places, physical features, global features, places of interest, my story and class pals. Students can click on each feature on the map to learn more in popup bubble. The content below the map is rich including student-friendly text, videos, “secret” facts, images and more. Oddizzi is a great way to teach about geography, global issues, math, citizenship and multicultural topics. One feature that I have found to be really useful is the “Sneak-a-Peak” option which condenses a page of content down to one page of easy to read sentences. Perfect for differentiating for your different reading levels while maintaining a topic thread for the whole class. Odd and Izzi are fun characters that lead students through the site revealing hidden secrets as they go.

How to integrate Oddizzi into the classroom: Oddizzi is a fantastic way for students to explore geography and culture. Use Oddizzi sample content to introduce a lesson or unit, as a place for students to gather research, or as a center activity on classroom computers. In the Sample Content you will find information on Egypt, transportation in India, Rivers and Games (flags from around the world and a game about Egypt).

Oddizzi is a great place to spur interest in geography and encourages students to learn more. We will use the Transport in India content to help students think about questions they can ask about how transportation is used in other countries.

Geography is a subject that is often overlooked in schools in the United States. Oddizzi helps bridge the gap between geography and other disciplines such as reading, writing, communicating, math, social studies, history, etc. No excuses!

Use Oddizzi as a starting point for students to gather facts, information and gain a general understanding of geography and culture. Students can use that information to create a poem about the country or location. At Anastasis, @leadingwlove did an incredible project with students where they each chose a country they wanted to learn more about. After learning about the country, they wrote a poem. Each made a large thumbprint on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and inside the thumbprint left a negative space of the outline of the country. They wrote their poems on the lines of the fingerprint. The result was incredible! Students learned a lot, practiced writing poetry and created a masterpiece to boot! Since our students are in a one-to-one iPad environment, they took this a step further and took pictures of their finished products and added special photo effects to make a one-of-a-kind digital masterpiece for their e-portfolios. SO awesome! You can see the beginning of one of these poems below…

Tips: In the subscription version of Oddizzi, you can connect with other classes around the globe in a secure learning environment. This allows your students to send online postcards to other students around the world so that they can learn first hand what life is like around the globe. Neat! A curriculum zone offers teachers resources for integrating Oddizzi across multiple disciplines for transdiciplinary learning. In addition, the subscription version has “Over to you” where students can contribute content to the site. If you are interested in testing out these additional features, request a free trial of Oddizzi for your class here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Oddizzi in your classroom!

Solar Car Racing: Try Engineering

April 13, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments2630 views

What it is: Solar Car Racing is a great game and challenge from Try Engineering. On the Solar Car Racing games students will virtually design and race a solar car. Students begin by choosing the components for their car that will optimize the performance. Next they test out their car in a desert and on a racetrack environment to find out how it performs. Students can observe the performance and then modify their design based on feedback and race again.

How to integrate the Solar Car Racing game into the classroom: Try Engineering has some really fantastic interactive games for students. I like Solar Car Racing because it goes beyond just building and testing, and encourages students to learn from their mistakes to modify their design. Too often games created for students have a defined end point that doesn’t encourage students to continue tinkering and experimenting. Solar Car Racing would make a good “experiment” center on classroom computers. Students can stop by the “lab” area as they are learning about solar energy to test out the principles they are learning.

Ideally, students would each have access to the site. This would allow each student to create and test a solar car design. Let students discuss observations of what designs work best and why. Students can “sell” their solar car design to each other. Expand this activity by asking students to create a sales brochure for their solar car. Students can include researched information about solar cars, tout unique elements of their design and practice persuasive writing and design.

If students don’t have access to their own computers, make this a class activity using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Give each student the opportunity to tweak and test the design, discussing adjustments and possible outcomes as a class.

If you have the resources, perfect the solar car design using the Solar Car Racing game and follow-up by creating an actual working model size version.

Tips: Be sure to check out the fantastic list of related links at the bottom of the Try Engineering Solar Car Racing page.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Solar Car Racing in your classroom!