I am guest blogging on My Wonderful World Blog (National Geographic Education Foundation) in honor of Geography Awareness Week 2009 the week of November 15 – 21!

This year’s theme is “Get Lost in Mapping: Find Your Place in the World”.

I wanted to share a successful geography lesson that continues to grow throughout the school year.  I have blogged about the  News Events Assignments with a Twitst and The Logistics of creating a Current News Events Google Map previously.

The lesson was born out of a very traditional  “Current Events Assignment”, handed in to the teacher on paper, which had been part of the curriculum for years.

The Middle School Social Studies teacher at my school (Martin J.Gottlieb Day School) was not satisfied with the paper and pencil assignment and was looking to bring the old and tried task into the 21st century. She wanted students to not merely be looking up random and disconnected news events that were handed in to her on a weekly basis. She wanted students to be really making connections among these events by involving higher level thinking skills such as evaluating, analyzing and creating. The new assignment was to not only involve geography skills, but also bring into the lesson information literacy and global awareness.

We decided to create a collaborative map for each grade level (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) with Google Maps. Each student was assigned a different colored or shaped placemark within Google Maps . They were also given the class username and password to be able to log in from home.

Their weekly “Current News Events” assignment now consisted in:

• Logging into their grade level map
• Placing a placemark on the location the news event had taken place
• Entering the location’s country as the title of the placemark
• Using the description box to add a category the news article was falling under (Ex. politics, environment, entertainment, etc.)
• The source link to the original news article or citation if from a paper newspaper
• A summary of the article. Preferably in 140 characters or less.

Since the start of the assignment,  several weeks have passed and new lessons have been learned, input from educators around the world received and new dimensions to the lesson have crystallized themselves.

As more news events are added,  we are asking questions such as:

• In what category do most news events we added fall?
  
• In what continents and countries are these news items in?
  
• What area of the world do we know or hear the most or least about? Why?
  
• How can we expand our horizon to cover more areas of the globe?

It has been good to observe that students are branching out in their search for sources. They are reading newspapers from different locations around the world, such as the UK, Australia, and Japan.

They are realizing that:

• different sources bring different points of view, opinions and kinds of news items.
• not all perspectives are represented in one source
• to get a “fuller” picture of a news event, you have to look at more than one source
• location of a source influences the content and perspective of the article

We  are asking ourselves:

• What does it mean if the majority of our sources are US based by coming from CNN.com and Foxnews.com?
• How are other countries affected by events happening in different countries or continents?
• What is ( or is there) a difference in terms of validity of news when the source is BBC or Comedy Central?

Each week students, after they have entered their news event, present the location and summary of their placemark to the class on the SmartBoard.

As students present their news event, other students are working with their laptops at their desk and are editing their peer’s placemark. They are becoming collaborators and critical thinkers  by validating and cross-referencing sources, asking for clarifications if the summary was not understood and making suggestions to where to place the placemark best.  As Mrs. R., their teacher said:

In previous “Current News Events” assignment, there was never an element of self- and collaborative checking of their work. Students handed in their news event and summary on a paper. I was the only one reading it.  The collaborative web based map has brought a new dimension of deeper thinking.

Why are students motivated to go over and check their own and classmate’s work?

Students are aware that their Google Maps of Current Events have been viewed by over 10,000  people (all three maps combined). Over 20 comments have been left by others from far away countries such as Israel, Australia and Korea, leaving students with a sense of pride and that what they do in class matters. Other teachers are using their maps as examples to teach their students. Commenters have:

• asked students to add source links to the original articles
• requested that we double check location placemarks
• challenged students about the “worthiness” of adding articles in the entertainment category
• encouraged students to look for patterns about their news event locations
• shared links to images about a news event

As the Social Studies teacher and I reflect on this weekly task, we want to continue to add new elements and enter into additional phases of the assignment in order to prevent it from becoming routine or just another thing to do for the students.

We are contemplating:

• To give students a broad topic and asking them to find relevant news sources, representative of different countries? Is there a difference in the “facts” that are reported or omitted depending on location? What is their “take” on a specific event?
• Ask students to come up with a world news topic, add their opinion and take on the subject, then ask others around the world to contribute their unique perspective to that topic.
• Have students analyze responses from different locations around the world and consider responses on basis of geography.

What are your thoughts and ideas how to expand, develop and create even more facets to this assignment?

Take a look at the GoogleMaps at and leave a comment for our 6th graders, 7th graders and 8th graders.

I’ll be joining bloggers around the Web for the 2009 Geography Awareness Week Blog-a-thon, hosted by National Geographic’s My Wonderful World Campaign.

Tune in to the My Wonderful World Blog November 15-21 for a daily dose of geographic news and jottings, photos, calls to action, a mystery location quiz, and more…

The Teddy Bears Around the World blog has moved domains! Please update your RSS, links and bookmarks. Please point to the new address: http://www.langwitches.org/blog/travel/teddybearsaroundtheworld/

• If you are looking to participate in an easy and cute global project, that your students, school and parents will absolutely love, then this project is for you!!
• Are you in higher education and teaching pre-service teachers? They could contribute stories, specifically designed with subject area integration on their mind or practice their skills of storytelling as a teaching tool.

What is this project all about?

Teddy Bears Around The World started as a project with one school mascot called José,  The bear enjoyed roaming the world, getting to know new places and meeting interesting people.

This blog provides the space to hang out and communicate with different teddy bears around the world to hear more about their lives and adventures. This will allow our students to see each other’s countries, customs and traditions through the eyes of our “teddy bears” and open their horizons through a more global perspective.
The idea is to have an ongoing exchange (no deadlines, no pressure) to contribute stories, photographs, videos or podcasts.

These contributions can be from the teddy bears point of view or from the students’ point of view telling a story ABOUT their teddy bear. We could have seasonal posts or specific “story starters”, such as:

• … “Teddy” celebrates Thanksgiving in USA (other country specific holidays)
• … “Teddy” is going to the movies
• …  New Year’s Eve tradition
• … “Teddy” and his favorite foods
• … ”Teddy” looses his first tooth
• … “Teddy” watches TV
• … ”Teddy”’s favorite fairy tale
• … “Teddy” celebrates his birthday
• … Christmas trees around the world
• … Playgrounds around the world

If you are interested in hanging out with us, please contact me with information about your school and teddy bear and to receive a username to participate on this blog.

We have 10 bears around the world participating at this point and more signing up. We are looking for more teddies to contribute stories, pictures, videos and/or audio. This could be a great “creative writing” activity, geography, social studies,  “All about communities” lesson and global connections/awareness.

What do you need to participate?

• Contact me
• A stuffed bear (panda bear, ice bear, brown bear, black bear, etc.)
• A story or information about your geographic location to share
• Images, video or audio

Check out some of the latest posts from Teddy Bears Around the World

• A Birthday Party under the Sukkah
• This is the story of Jose, who helped save the Nature Park of Buenos Aires

Last week I posted a lesson with the Middle School social studies students, “News Events Assignments with a Twitst“.

Students and their teacher have really taken to this assignment with incredible enthusiasm and creativity. Since each grade level has started entering current events onto their map, they have discussed, edited, and revised their entries. The printed- on- paper predecessor version of the assignment never had engaged them in the same way before.

I sent out a  link to the map on my Twitter Network and within a few days, the viewer count of the 8th grade map was above 500o viewers. Some of them even left the students a comment.

The motivation of having a worlwide audience was a decisive factor for them to work harder at finding AND choosing relevant news events, summarize them better and enter them on the map.

I have had requests from other educators to post directions how to set up a map for your students.

So here it goes: (You can also download a .pdf version of “Current Events on Google Maps“)

Guide to creating your own Google Maps News Events with your students.

Create a google e-mail (http://www.gmail.com ) for yourself

Create a google e-mail for your students to use. The entire class will use this username to sign in to edit the map.

Sign in with your google account into Google Maps

Click on “My Maps”

Click on “Create new map”

Enter a title

Enter a description
Choose between “Public” or Private”
Click on “Collaborate” and enter the email you created for your students while setting up the google account in Step 2.

Sign into the student account e-mail and click on the link sent in the invitation. That will place the map you created in the student account “My Maps” list.

These 10 steps conclude the set up of the map and sign in accounts for you and your students.

Go to Google Maps http://maps.google.com/ and sign in

Click on My Maps, then choose the map you want to edit (the map you invited the student account to collaborate with should show up as a link!)

Click on “edit”

Students will zoom into the location on the map, where they want to place their current event
Click on the blue placemark, which will make a floating placemark pop up. Click on the map to anchor the placemark to the map. This will make a new window pop up, where students will enter a title, description and choose a color for their placemark.

We chose to use for the:

• Title: Country the news event took place Description: First line: Enter the category the news event falls under (Politics, Entertainment, Environment, etc)
• Then enter a summary of the news event (try to use 140 characters or less in an effort to practice precision and focused writing.
• Enter the link of the article, the student is summarizing. (Click on Rich Text) in order to insert a link into the description area)
  (Thank you to all who suggested this part through the comment section!)
• Icons: Each student was assigned a different icon/color in order to know who contributed each news event.

You can now use a code to embed the map into your classroom wiki or blog.

I wanted to add my reflection to the lesson, as a follow up to my post” Map skills and the SmartBoard” with 2nd graders from a few days ago.

As one of the activities for their maps and globe unit, 2nd graders worked collaboratively by creating an imaginary island according to specific directions.

Directions were:

1. Draw a Compass Rose
2. Draw an island
3. Draw an Ocean around the island
4. There is a mountain range on the East side of the island
5. A river running from the mountains West towards the Ocean
6. Draw a small lake in the South of the island
7. There is a pirate ship anchored off the Northwest shores of the island
8. A pod of dolphins is swimming from the North towards the pirate ship
9. 5 palm trees are found in the North of the island
10. A princess is hiding to the East of the palm trees
11. A treasure is hidden in the Southern part of the mountain range
12. 6 pirates have split into two groups and are searching across the island for the treasure
13. The queen’s ship is approaching the island from the North to rescue her daughter

Here is the screenshot of the completed island.

After the map was created, I re-told the story, taking care to include as many times as possible the cardinal directions in relationship to the symbols. I paused in my story to make sure that students were following me on the map and asked them to supply the direction a character in the story was going next.

Ex. “…So, the princess was running (North) towards the beach, where her mother’s ship was approaching….”

Many skills were addressed in this activity, such as :

• following directions,
• cardinal directions
• symbols and visual representation,
• collaboration
• retelling of a story from a map

Although some children were getting antsy, while waiting for their turn to come up to draw or drag and drop the next step, everyone seemed to be engaged when I retold the story. The classroom teacher con further extend the story by asking students  to write the story about the pirate island and the princess’ rescue down on paper as homework.

Over the years (from Elementary to High School) , I cannot tell you HOW many times each of my own daughters had to find news articles to bring in to class to share. These assignments came in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they were required to write a summary, print out a representative image and hand both in to the teacher to receive an all important check mark each week that they had “done it”. Other times they had to stand up in class and actually read the article, maybe even answer a question or two from the teacher about it to show some kind of understanding of what the article meant.

The social studies teacher at my new school has the same assignment for her middle school students….

… BUT…

Simply cutting out or copying and pasting, then printing an article to hand in is not enough for that teacher. She wants her students to make connections. she wants them to connect dots to geography, cultures and categories and how they are interrelated to each other.

In comes Google Maps.

Each news event is added with a placemark to a Google Map. Students are categorizing the events as well as providing a short summary which are added to the placemark. We are striving to make the summary to be 140 characters or less in an effort to practice precision and focused writing.

The map provides an incredible visual and is a medium to further explore geography, information literacy and global awareness. Questions such as these arise:

• In what category do most news events we added fall?
• In what continents and countries are the news items in?
• What area of the world do we know or hear the least about? Why?
• How can we expand our horizon to cover more areas of the globe?

You can follow the map as students continue contributing and expanding it during the school year.

View News Events Around the World in a larger map

2nd Grade is off to a great start in the school year. They are exploring maps and globes. Why are maps useful? When do you use a globe instead of a map? What is a map key and how does it help us?
More and more students are becoming familiar with their families’ GPS systems too, whether in the car or on cell phones.

Let’s put these new learned skills to use by taking a screenshot of a map from the school’s surrounding area and creating our own map key? Homework had been to pay special attention to landmarks and sites as students were taken or dropped off at school.

Each student chose a landmark, decided on a symbol to represent and then adding it to the map key with an appropriate text label. Once in the map key “box”, a copy of the symbol was placed on the correct spot of the map.

2nd graders are using the SmartBoard to create and edit their own map key. Here is a screenshot of the map in progress.

I have been blogging for over three years now. I use my blog to:

• document my thoughts about educational technology and my journey as a connected teacher
• share  educational resources, lesson plans, How-To guides, web 2.0 tools, experiences in the classroom
• develop professional development workshops
• sprinkle awareness about cultural, country and language specific differences among us

This blog is written in English, since it is  the language of the country I have studied, live and work in. 99.9% of the comments left by my readers are in English.

Why does it still not seem natural to me? Why do I  feel (and have always felt) that something is missing? I am the product of three languages, histories and cultures that are ALWAYS present in me. It feels unnatural to be confined to one language. I feel disconnected to the German and Spanish voices of educators that are and should be in my PLN.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian philospher

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”

We have to understand that NOT everyone is comfortable in reading, learning and participating in English. There are many different levels of English learners. Some will read comfortably in English, but will not feel they are able to join the conversations on Twitter, a blog or a Wiki in writing. Others simply might not even join, because of the language barrier.

What can we do? What can we do to invite and include the voices of Non-English speakers?

First, we should recognize that the “global” part is missing in global network if we are excluding non-English speakers. I am not saying that we  are intentionally excluding them, but I feel it is important to recognize that VOICES ARE MISSING!

I am also not saying that EVERYONE should learn another language (although that would be great!), but maybe the edtechies among us who already know another language chould make an effort to include their “other than English” language and facilitate an interchange between the English speaking world and “your other language” world.

Maybe I should start to blog or twitter more in Spanish or German to invite these voices to participate in this amazing network that has changed my own learning forever?

While pondering HOW I can invite teachers around the world to the conversation of the English speaking edusphere, I revisited Alec Courosa’s graphic of The Networked Teacher. I started looking at what makes a teacher a networked teacher, a connected teacher? BUT…

• Does that mean the same thing in different countries?
• Are we all there yet?
• Are we talking about the same issues?
• How does culture influence (support/hinder) our issues?
• Are (and why) certain areas of connections preferred and others not popular?

How will I find out, if only English speakers read my thoughts, only the ones who feel comfortable in written English will respond?

Maybe it is time to open the dialogue further.

If you are a speaker of another language, will you be the one to bring non-English speaking voices in? Maybe you can take the time to blog or twitter (in the other language) about some of the issues that are floating around in the twitter- and bloggersphere? Bring those voices back and share with the English speaking monolingual world.

We can’t talk about global connections, if that only includes English speaking connections and leave it at that. The power of collaboration should take all of our contributions, creations and voices across languages and cultures.

No podemos hablar de conexiones mundiales, si solamente están incluídes las conexiones del habla inglés. El poder de la colaboracion debería llevar todas nuestras contribuciones, creaciones y voces encima de idiomas y culturas.

Wir koennen nicht ueber globale Verbindungen reden, wenn diese nur Englisch sprechende Verbindungen bedeuten. Die Staerke der Zusammenarbeit muesste alle unsere Beitraege, Gestaltungen und Stimmen ueber Sprache und Kulturen hinweg tragen.

Here is my first effort of opening up the dialogue across languages.

Aca está mi primer esfuerzo de abrir un diálogo encima de idiomas.

Hier ist mein erster Versuch einen Dialog ueber Sprachen hinweg zu oeffnen.

What is a networked teacher? ¿Cómo es un docente enchufado? Was is ein vernetzter Lehrer?

Please feel free to comment in the language you feel most comfortable in. Let me know if you feel that your culture or language is not represented correctly? What will you share with (and from) the non-English speaking twitter- and blogging world?

Por favor, deja tu comentario en el idioma en que te sentís más cómodo. ¿Tu cultura o idioma está representado bien? ¿Qué vas a compartir con (o desde) el mundo de los blogs o twitter de habla hispana?

Bitte hinterlasse ein Kommentar in der Sprache, in der du dich am sichersten fuehlst. Ist deine Kultur oder Sprache richtig representiert? Was wirst du mit (und aus) der Blog oder Twitter Welt des deutschsprachigen Raumes teilen?

The Networked Teacher based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

El Docente Enchufado, based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

Der Vernetzte Lehrer, based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

Having written a few days ago about What is in a Field Trip?, it was time to put the theory to practice.

Gail Lovely ‘ s quote about “framing a field trip” resonated with me

framing the event in learning before and after – & give them something to do while there!

Our third graders go on an annual field trip that drives them around the city of Jacksonville, Florida. They learn from a tour guide on the bus about historical places, buildings and about architecture.

How to FRAME this field trip, so it does not become an isolated few hours of being outside the school building for the students?

I created a Google Earth Flight map that included all the landmarks, students would visit on their tour around Jacksonville. Each stop is marked with a Placemarker, that has a pop up balloon with further information.

Here is what I did:

Create a folder in Google Earth BEFORE you create placemarks in that folder. Right click on “My Places”, then choose “Add” and click “Folders”. Name your folder.

Then enter all stops for the tour as placemarks in Google Earth. Type the address in the “Fly to” Search box and click on the placemark icon to place it on the map.

Once you add the placemark, another window pops up and you are able to enter a title, description and an icon among other things.

I chose to make the balloons a little fancier by adding an image of the landmark or building. In order to get the image, I took a screen shot from Google Maps’ StreetView, then uploaded these images. Make sure you know the URL of each image, since you will need it for the HTML code.  When there was no street view available, I went to Flickr and did a search for the address or building (most of them historic), then contacted the owner of the image to ask permission to use it in an educational setting. Permission was granted every time.

Here is the code I used. You can tweak it with your own information:

<table width=450>

<tr><td colspan=2 bgcolor=darkblue><font size=5 color=white>Old YMCA Building</font></td></tr>

<tr><td>

<img src=”http://www.sjeds.com/projects/jax-tour/stop17.png” width=250> <br><font size=1>407 North Laura Street</font>

</td>

<td>

<!——-Do not edit above this line —————————————–>

<b>Did you Know?:</b><br>

The building had a swimming pook in the basement.

<p>

<b>Activities:</b><br>

How many meters is this building away from the Jacksonville Landing?

<!——– Do not edit below this line —————————————>

<p></td></tr></table><font color=white>

Credit to original placemark code goes to Jim Holland and Susan Anderson from Curriculum Magic. I attending one of their session at TCEA in Texas.

If you already have created your placemarks, you can edit them by right clicking on the placemark (on the map or in the “Places” list)

Each placemark has a “Did you know” tidbit information about its particular building or landmark and an “Activity” for students to do.

The curriculum integration the classroom teachers chose was for math (shapes and measurements). So activites ranged from:

• Identifying shapes
• Counting shapes
• Measuring circumference of a shape
• Measuring parking lots, roof tops, distances to other locations (in yards, feet, meters, kilometers, etc.)
• Addition

When it is time for students to explore Jacksonville virtually, they will have 3D buildings and Borders and Labels checked off on their “Layers”. Make sure to have them do this first, so they do not get distracted with too many added placemarks.

Jacksonville has several 3D buildings available in Google Earth, especially in the downtown area. Some of the activities require the students to actually zoom in and around a building in order to answer the questions.

Next Step:

Actually go on the field trip!

• Do you think students will have a different mind set when on their excursion?
• Do you think they will be more engaged and able to connect to WHAT they are seeing to WHAT they have explored in Google Earth?

Last Step:

What to do when students return from the field trip?

• Reflect
• Make further connections to content studied in the classroom
• Edit Google Earth with more activities, tidbits of information and questions for students who will do this field trip the following year

Download:

• Jacksonville Tour kmz file (will open up in Google Earth, if installed on your computer)
• Jacksonville Tour ( pdf file)
  Stops with address, Did you know? and Activities
• Framing a field trip in Google Earth How- to-Guide (pdf file)

Kindergarten teachers at my school proved this past week that they are a team of AMAZING teachers. I am in awe the way they :

• worked as a team
• were enthusiastic about the topic/content that they were teaching
• taught with excellence in mind
• did not use excuses why their students could not do this or that (Ex. they are too young)
• understood that learning increases when students are involved, creative and teach others
• were creative
• helped their students shine and celebrated their successes
• allowed them to reflect
• integrated technology

Successful technology integration is as Kim Cofino said a

Mind set, not a skill set

I believe that that applies to successful teaching in general too.

Teaching, no matter if it integrates technology or not, is an art. The “art” that these Kindergarten teachers created for their students inspired me to write about it. It literally gave me goose bumps, while I was witnessing the commitment, preparation, the design, the delivery and the reflections that took place in their rooms. Again, I am in awe…

The mission: Learn about the country of Brazil as part of our Global Studies program.

The commitment: Let’s not just “cover” the facts, but let students EXPERIENCE and apply what they learned. Let’s work as a team to collaboratively create that experience.

The preparation: Three classes working together to create an experience for their students. Once class became experts about the Brazilian rainforest, one class focused on general information about Brazil, and one class learned all that they could about the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The design: Each teacher would prepare their students to not only learn, but guide them to be able to teach about their area of expertise to the rest of the school. Their rooms would be converted into the country of Brazil, the rainforest and Rio de Janeiro. The students would be tour guides for the day, explaining and answering questions from “tourists” (teachers and students from the rest of the school, PreK-6th grade)

The delivery: 5 years old students became experts, who taught the rest of the school. While some  might have been nervous, a little quiet and shy with the first visitors, students became more sure of themselves as the classes rolled through. They exhibited their knowledge, their confidence and expertise in such a way that was inspiring.

The reflection: Teachers took the time to not just let the day end, but give students a chance to reflect and talk about what they experienced and learned.

Do I think that these 5 year olds will forget what they learned about Brazil? Do I think that they, as grown ups, will place the country of Brazil into Asia or lump them together with Spanish speaking countries of South America?

I am in awe…

Stay tuned for upcoming post about the creation of 3 podcast episodes to document the Kindergartener’s Brazil experience.