Virtual Field Trips

You know background knowledge is kind of important.  I mean....I think it is.  Especially for the younger kiddos who are just learning about the world outside of the little neighborhood.

So when they start learning about places like Greece and Rome and France and Great Britain...it's all (excuse the expression) Greek to them.  They (most elementary kids in my school) have never been outside the US.  So to study about the history of these countries....there is a slight disconnect.

A teacher friend of mine is teaching the American Revolution right now.  She said it perfect, they love it because they know how it ended...because we live in America...this is how we got to this point.  But with all those other countries, you can't necessarily say that.  The kids don't know how it's different from what they studied because they haven't experienced it.  And in all reality...many won't, for many years.

Here is where vacation planning came in for me.  No, I'm not having them plan a vacation.  (Well I actually had the 6th graders plan a trip to Greece.) But I found some websites that give the kids a tour of famous tourist spots in the country that they are studying.  When going on a vacation, you may want to see where you're going to visit.  What about when you're studying a country, you should see what it looks like now compared to what it was.

Are you studying Ancient Greece?  Try a Greek vacation website: http://www.greecevirtual.gr/
Are you studying Ancient Italy? Try a Roman vacation website: http://www.touritalynow.com/virtual-italy-tours or http://www.youvisit.com/tour/rome
Are you studying England?  Try a London Virtual Tour: http://www.visitlondon.com/discover-london/london-virtual-tour#zwHZOJL4xVSPhEP0.97

And all of this can be done to a degree on Google Earth as well!

Students can compare and contrast, they can talk about where would you rather live; then or now, they can rewrite history....the possibilities are endless!

Side note: this leads to a great conversation about the fact that websites are not just American...each country has their own.  My students' minds were blown when we talked about the .gr at the end of the Greek website!

Now...where will you go?

Map Scales and Google Earth

Do you remember breaking out your atlas to measure how far it was from your school to your house? Or maybe from your favorite vacation spot to your house?  Of course there was also the obligatory worksheet that had perfectly manicured streets with geometric houses, a school, and a library.  All different ways to learn that on the map, the distance is not real...it is a scale.

Now we're so used to using some kind of GPS (Google Maps is my personal favorite) that the concept of needing a scale is completely foreign now.  Even the kids know how to use a GPS app. The skill of reading a flap map, an atlas, is seemingly obsolete!  But, nope, it's still part of the curriculum - and I'm not arguing whether or not it's important, I'm just stating that it is what it is.

So, in technology the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about map scales (to compliment the kiddos 4th grade curriculum).  Since we have computers and not paper maps, we broke out Google Earth and since we have GPS that gives us EXACT distance, we worked on estimating.

The image of the kiddos searching on Google Earth and getting their exact distances from point A to point B (we also brought in some Nevada Geography and measured the important places in Nevada) was amazing!  They are pros!  Then the image of the kiddos using the rules on the monitor was quite funny.  Who ever imaged that we would use a ruler on a computer monitor?!  Not me!!

They really seemed to enjoy the exploration and realizing that a few inches can be anything from a few miles to hundreds (or more) of miles!!

Up next...longitude and latitude?!  Any ideas?!