Tag: google

Webspiration Wednesday: Sleedo

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Webspiration Wednesday: Sleedo3958 views

Today, I am doing something a little different for Webspiration Wednesday.  As a staff, we still gathered for Webspiration Wednesday finishing the Guy Doud video from last week.  Since I have already summed that up in this post, I thought I would write about a webspirational website instead.  Sleedo is a great Webspiration Wednesday website.

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What it is: Sleedo is a search engine that I learned about from @cspiezio today on Twitter.  This is a search engine with a mission to better the world with each and every search.  Every time you search using Sleedo, 10 grains of rice will be donated to help feed the poor.  Sleedo is a Google powered search engine.  Sleedo makes money through advertisements and donates that money to the World Food Programme, feeding those in need.  So, for every search you do, you are helping improve the lives of people around the world.  Pretty cool right?

How to integrate Sleedo into the classroom: Set up Sleedo as your homepage on classroom computers.  When students perform searches, they can be doing double duty: searching and helping the hungry around the world.  Sites like Sleedo are wonderful vehicles for teaching students about empathy, world issues, and compassion.  Have your students dig in and learn more about how the World Food Programme operates or take a closer look at how website advertising works.

Tips: I have found that students are passionate about websites with a cause (Free Rice, Free Corn, Aid to Children, Free Kibble, Free Kibblekat). Often students feel helpless to do something important that makes an impact on this world.  Sites like Sleedo help students enact real change that they can feel proud of.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Sleedo in your classroom.

Google Search Stories Video Creator

Kelly Tenkely11 Comments on Google Search Stories Video Creator10358 views

What it is: Do you remember Google’s advertisement at the 2010 Superbowl?  It was called Google Search Stories and showed a story of Parsian Love  through a series of Google searches. Brilliant.  Now you and your students can create your very own Google Search story with Google Search Stories Video Creator.  There are three steps to creating your own Google Story: 1. Write the story, 2. Add Music, 3. Preview and Upload.  As you write your story,  you can choose to search by web, blog, images, maps, news, product search, and books.  

How to integrate Google Search Stories Video Creator into the classroom: Google Search story is an innovative way for students to display understanding or tell a story.  This tool teaches students to get to the heart of the story and tell it in a new, creative way.  Students can demonstrate their understanding of history, current events, a book that they have read, or a math sequence.

First, students come up with 7 events to search, paying close attention to story structure.  They should consider mixing web, images, maps, and blogs.  This will make the story more interesting.  Next, students choose music to fit the theme of their story.  It can be comedic, dramatic, romantic, country, horror, family, or sci-fi.  Finally, students can preview their story and share it with the world.

Think about sharing the life of a historical figure, or the story of Romeo and Juliet, or the scientific method in an experiment, or the story of their digital footprint,  or a fictional story that the student created.  Instead of writing out a traditional outline for a story, why not turn it into a Google Story?  The possibilities of this tool are nearly endless!  If you are introducing new information or learning to your class, consider doing it through a Google Story.  Watch the story as a class and find out what your students already know, what they need to learn, and what they want to know.  You could also create a Google Story as a class after new learning.  As you teach, ask students to jot down thoughts about what they could add to their search story to sum up the learning.  This will keep students engaged and thinking critically about the new material.  After the video has been completed, students can access it from home as an outline of what they learned in class.

Tips: Check out the Tips offered for starting a story, these tips will give you, and your students, a great jumping off point.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Search Stories in your classroom.

Google Street View Gallery

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Google Street View Gallery2957 views

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What it is: Google Street Gallery is a must add bookmark for any classroom.  This is a collection of Google Street views of famous landmarks, buildings, and art, sport, and entertainment venues from around the world.  Landmarks includes places such as Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Space Needle, Gateway Arch, CN Tower, Tokyo Tower, Plaza de Cibeles, Eiffel Tower, Arthur’s Seat, The Colosseum, Arc de Triomphe, and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.  In Famous Buildings students can see the street view of Westminster Abbey, City Hall, St. George’s Hall, Coventry Cathedral, Sydney Opera House, Sagrada Familia, Chateau de Chillon, Belem Tower, St. Peter’s Basilica, and Taipei 101.  In Art, sport and entertainment students can tour Angel of the North, Coronation Street, Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, Tate Britain, Wales Millennium Centre, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and The Louvre Museum.  Not only can students explore the street view of all these places, they can also see users pictures embedded right in the street view.  Each place can be viewed on Google Maps with the click of a button.   Students can also quickly find more information about any of the landmarks by clicking “more information”.  Students are taken to a Google Search that shows the location on a Google map, gives details, photos, videos, reviews, tells about nearby places, and gives more information about the place.  

How to integrate Google Street View Gallery into the classroom: Google Street View Gallery makes it easy to whisk your students away on virtual adventures around the world.  Bring your geography, history, and social studies lessons to life by letting students take a virtual field trip with Google Street Views.  Using an interactive whiteboard or projector, your students will feel like they have visited landmarks around the world during class.  Allow students to be the “tour guides” and navigate the street view and pictures associated. Make sure to view the Google Maps so that students can get a sense of where each landmark is located and practice their map skills. Google Street views can be used during math to study architecture shapes, angles, etc. in real world settings.

Display a Google Street View on your projector or interactive whiteboard and ask students to imagine they have just visited this landmark or building and write a story about what happened there.  The street views make excellent writing prompts.

Tips: I love using Google Street Views with an interactive whiteboard.  Students really get the sense of what it is like to stand on the street in the middle of Prague or London and take a look around.  It is fun to imagine the stories that take place every day on those streets.

Google Street View Gallery is not a comprehensive collection of available Google Street Views, it is a great collection of famous landmarks and buildings, grouped together for easy access.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Street View Gallery in your classroom.

eyePlorer

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What it is:  eyePlorer is a really cool site that allows students “explore and process knowledge.”  Student type in a word or words to research.  eyePlorer pulls information from Wikipedia and puts it into a color wheel of information.  When students hover over the different areas of the color wheel, they get a sentence or two about their subject.  There is a notebook where students can drag and drop facts that they want to remember.  Students can drag facts to the notebook and rearrange them as they need to.  Students can click the “i” button under the search box to get a quick summary of their topic, click on the “+” button to add search parameters, and click on the paper button to go to a Google search.  The idea behind eyePlorer is to improve the way “users interact with knowledge and information online.”  The goal is to provide innovative, interactive, visual methods for working with and discovering facts and information.  I think the result is pretty amazing and perfect for the educational setting!

How to integrate eyePlorer into the classroom: This is a truly unique way for students to research and explore new information.  Students quickly get a visual guide to their inquiry and can drag and drop what they are learning into a notebook.  This is a fantastic tool for research projects but would also be amazing for use with an interactive whiteboard.  As students are learning about a new concept, they can type the subject into the search and as a class decide which information they want to save in the notebook for later.  What a great introduction to any new material.   This site will definitely help wet students appetite for learning!  Make sure to bookmark this site on the classroom computers as a classroom research center.

 

Tips:  eyePlorer was created in Germany so the home page information is all in German, once you start a search you can choose to search in German or English.  When I searched “shiba inu” it automatically searched in English for me.

 

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

Shahi

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What it is:  Shahi is a mashup of Wiktionary (a Wikipedia type dictionary) and Flickr.  This visual dictionary is a great way for students to look up definitions and get a visual representation of the word.  Students can choose for the images to come from Flickr, Google, or Yahoo.  I find the most reliable image results come from Flickr.

How to integrate Shahi into the classroom: Shahi is a neat mashup of two tools.  Having a visual dictionary is great for every student but especially useful for your visual learners.  Beyond using Shahi as a dictionary, this is a perfect site for teaching your students the parts of speech.  Because pictures acompany the definitions, students can “see” that a verb is an action word.  Use Shahi as the base for a part of speech game with the whole class and a projector.  Choose a word from reading, spelling, etc. and have students ‘guess’ the part of speech based on the pictures.  This is a great way for students to learn the parts of speech through inquiry and problem solving.  Shahi would also be a useful tool for ESL or ELL students.  Bookmark Shahi on your classroom computers as a resource during reading/writing time.  Look up a spelling word on Shahi and have students journal about one of the accompanying pictures.  This site could be very useful for writing prompts.  Shahi would also be wonderful in the science classroom, students can look up difficult words or concepts and immediately have a good visual representation to aid in understanding.  In the geography classroom, students could search places and get a  collection of images that will provide them with additional insight into the place.  Cool!

 

Tips:  I learned about this site from activeducator  on Twitter.  If you haven’t yet, sign up for Twitter today, it is a great way to network and learn about education (or anything you are interested in).  Don’t forget to add me as a friend, ktenkely!  A word of warning with this site: sometimes images will be inappropriate on this site because of the tags people put on their pictures in Flickr.  For example “berry” brings pictures of fruit berries but also scantily dressed women named “Berry”.  For elementary students, pre-search words you will be using with the class for appropriateness. 

 

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

Google Posters

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What it is: Google Posters are printable posters offered by Google for educators. The posters can be printed in different sizes and teach students how to perform better searches.

How to integrate Google Posters into the classroom: I am realizing lately just how clueless students are about performing a quality search. Teachers are not exempt from this, I have had many educators tell me that it took them 3 hours to perform a search to find a state flower. What this tells me is that they don’t know how to search. Google Posters can be handed out as an individual handout, hung around the classroom, or both. The posters are found in Google’s Educator section. The posters teach students (and teachers) how to use modifiers to refine searches for the best results, the anatomy of a search, how to find a book using books.google.com, and examples of how to go about a search. Use these posters to teach your students how to do a quality search and then pick a topic for them to search and have a Google scavenger hunt. Students will learn how to use search engines and increase productivity.

Tips: Make sure that you have tested your scavenger hunt before you let your students loose, sometimes you will get results that aren’t appropriate for your students.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Posters in your classroom.

Doodle 4 Google

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What it is: Google is encouraging students to put their creative doodles to work and giving the opportunity to be a part of Google history. Doodle 4 Google is a contest for schools that invites kindergarten through twelfth grade students to doodle on Google’s logo and see what they come up with. The theme is centered around the question “What if…” Students can take this question and go anywhere with it…for example: What if I could live underwater, outer space, or colonial America? What if I could build any invention I wanted? What if I could see into the future? Students “doodle” their logo on an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of white paper. They can do this with any medium (as long as it isn’t 3-D) including using the computer.  The winning doodler will receive a $10,000  college scholarship and their design will take over the home page for the day.  As if that isn’t exciting enough, the winning school will also receive a $25,000 technology grant!!

How to integrate Doodle 4 Google into the classroom: This one needs to be started soon, the registration deadline is March 28, 2008 and the doodles need to be submitted by April 12, 2008. Each school can only submit 6 entries so you may have to hold a classroom vote to narrow down which doodles get sent to Google. A panel of judges will select 40 finalist doodles and the public will vote for the best. The winning doodle will be displayed on May 22, 2008 on Google’s homepage. Google provides the original artwork for the students to work from. Google has also provides some awesome lesson plans for integrating Doodle 4 Google into your curricula. This would be a fun writing/creative activity!

Tips: Google also has a section where students can learn about the original Google doodler, find out where he gets inspiration, and watch a video of him at work. They have also provided some fun posters to print out advertising the contest in your classroom.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Doodle 4 Google in your classroom. If your class is participating in this fun Google contest, be sure to share your students work with us!

Google Lit Trips

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What it is: Google Lit trips is a new way to teach literature. Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place. This is interactive learning at its best! Google Lit Trips include books such as By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleishman, My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, Traveling with P.G. Wodehouse, The Aeneid by Virgil, Candide by Volatire, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Odyssey by Homer, and Blood Meridian by Comac McCarthy.

How to integrate Google Lit Trips into your classroom: Use these virtual trips to make literature come alive for your students.

Tips: These Google Lit Trips are best used for upper elementary through high school.