PCS Tuesday Tech Talks

Multimedia Projects with Google Earth

Google Earth has changed significantly since its launch over 20 years ago when we had to download it to our computer and suffer the freezes, crashes and frustration of working with its massive database. Today’s Google Earth is fully online and offers engaging ways for students to explore geography, history, science and culture through professionally created tours. Even better, your students can be digital creators by designing their own multimedia Earth tours.

If you’re new to Google Earth and not sure how to use it in the classroom, you might want to start with Passport Warm-Ups. These standards-aligned prompts get your students thinking, writing and talking about geographical locations in the context of your academic content without taking a lot of time from your curriculum.

With the Google Earth Passport lessons, “teachers will use I’m Feeling Lucky and Street View in Google Earth to randomly select a location in the world and relate it to [academic] concepts. Teachers can also choose to preselect a location that lends itself well to relevant standards and objectives using Search.”

Below are links to directions, academic standards, standards-based questions and student handouts for Google Earth Passport Warm-Ups for 4th-8th grade:

To let Google Earth choose a random location for your warm-up, use the I’m Feeling Lucky option: click in the Google Earth Search box and then click I’m Feeling Lucky below it.

Ready to dig a little deeper into Google Earth projects? Check out these Google Earth Education Resources to connect Google Earth to storytelling, baseball, biodiversity in Costa Rica, wind energy, and more.

You could use Google Earth to create multimedia resources for teaching your content area. This video takes you through the steps for doing that, including how to add a Google Forms quiz at the end:

My preference, though, is to give students the opportunity to create their own digital presentations with Google Earth, like tours that identify and explain locations of historical events, track the timeline of a person’s life, create a fictional story, solve place-based math problems or plan a trip for their future.

More than simply pinning locations, a student’s Google Earth project could also include research and writing about each location, choosing images and videos for each location and citing their sources. Plus they can build their speaking skills by presenting their project to the class. Check out this video to see how students could collaborate on a Google Earth project:

Get started with Google Earth with these resources:

Creating with Google Earth (YouTube playlist)
Getting Started with Telling Stories with Google Earth
Best Practices in Google Earth

-November 7, 2023

Hands-On Webinar with Edpuzzle

When: Thursday, December 7, 4:30-5:30pm
Where: click here for the Zoom link

Have you heard all the buzz about Edpuzzle but haven't had a chance to try it out? Or maybe you have used Edpuzzle but are curious about its latest updates. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced fan of Edpuzzle, you are invited to a live one-hour webinar with Edpuzzle trainers where you will discover how to foster active learning through interactive questions, monitor student progress, harness the power of Edpuzzle Live Mode, and access pre-made, standards-aligned content with Edpuzzle Originals.

Best of all, you will get help and time to practice building a video lesson for your students. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to create interactive video lessons to engage all learners. Mark your calendar for this opportunity to transform your classroom with help from the folks at Edpuzzle!

NOTE: To make the best use of your time, we encourage you to bring a link to a video you would like to use with your students. That might be a favorite video from YouTube, or one of the 3,924 videos in the Edpuzzle Originals Library, or maybe a video you have made yourself. Any video will work! Put Edpuzzle on your calendar for Thursday, December 7 at 4:30pm.

-November 14, 2023

Hour of Code: December 4-8

Last year we shared a variety of resources for participating in the Hour of Code, but if you don’t teach computer science, you might be wondering how coding is relevant for your students. So this year we thought we would share some of the reasons you and your students might want to dip your toes in the water of coding.

But first: if you are looking for how to teach coding when you have no experience yourself, check out last year’s TechTalk here on the Hour of Code. Of the many resources offered, we especially like Code.org because it includes video tutorials and detailed lesson plans for students of all ages. This year Code.org has added lessons on A.I., including how it works, its ethics and implications. We also love the OctoStudio iPad app for elementary students.

My first experience with coding was with my 8th grade English class. Since computer games are another way of telling a story, I realized that coding a computer game could be a way to reinforce the narrative elements my students had been learning. They created games based on stories they had written, but students could also design games to reflect storylines in a book they have read. I wrote this article about the project and included classroom strategies and handouts. Students in history classes could also design and code games to demonstrate their understanding of stories from history.

Coding projects can offer the best of project-based learning as they teach computer science along with a variety of content area and “real world” work skills. For instance, this article explains how learning to code can build numerous cognitive areas that help students to think and process, such as:

Understanding logic
Applying algorithms
Improved memory skills
Complex problem-solving skills
Staying focused

This article includes examples of student coding projects across a range of academic areas:

5th grade Spanish students who programmed computers to produce bilingual, animated photo albums;
7th grade science students who modified the code behind climate models;
6th grade science students who programmed claymation plate tectonics to recreate the 2011 tsunami in Japan, the rise of the Himalayas, and the 1904 San Francisco earthquake;
6th grade science students across an entire city who learned about food webs in forest ecosystems, and then coded those relationships and animated them with uploaded photos of their own flora and fauna paintings;
Middle school students who used MIT’s App Inventor to create apps “that will help their school community,” such as games, flash cards and translators.

If taking on a lengthy coding project seems too daunting, we encourage you to start with the Hour of Code. It can help you see what resources are available to you and your students, and it might also inspire ideas for extending the hour into a small project.

Check out more coding resources here on the EdTech Resource Hub.

-November 28, 2023

The tiny brain of the Ozobot offers a great tool to teach the basics of programming in a fun and interactive way. Students can start screen-free with Color Codes, paper and markers to learn cause/effect, critical thinking and debugging. They can move to on-screen coding with Blockly, a visual block-based programming language with five skill levels from pre-reader to master coder. And your advanced coders can program Ozobot with Python.

You don’t have to be a computer science teacher to bring Ozobots and programming to your students. Just filter your Ozobot lesson search by grade level and subject area, and you’ll find lessons that incorporate coding into a variety of content areas.

In addition to a host of online resources (including videos, of course), you also have the support of your EdTech TOSA. I am available to meet with you to get you started with Ozobots and to co-teach with you to get your students going with programming Ozobots.

Let us know if you would like to check out our class set of Ozobots and if we can help you and your students get started. And happy Hour of Code Week to all who celebrate!

-December 5, 2023

Choose Your Own Adventure with Edpuzzle

Have you submitted a proposal to your site administrator for the January 8th Choose Your Own Adventure session? Those proposals are due Tuesday, December 19 and could offer time for you to learn more about Edpuzzle and prepare a video to use in class. More than a tool for bringing videos to your students, Edpuzzle provides a variety of ways to increase access and differentiate for your students through Universal Design for Learning.

To help you get started (or move ahead) with Edpuzzle, we have a recording of the December 7th webinar that Edpuzzle hosted for our district. Included in the webinar is information on how to:

Set up an Edpuzzle account and sync it with your Google Classroom;
Create or edit a video lesson: trim, add voiceover, notes, and questions (and use the new audio notes feature);
Access the new Edpuzzle Originals;
Engage students with Edpuzzle’s Live Mode;
Learn about new features and additional resources.