The Day after

My Google buddy, Andrea.

It is the day after the GTA, and my brain is still exploding from all the possibilities.  I've decided that I need one place to start writing down my discoveries, questions and thoughts in hopes that I can wrap my arms around some of it, and perhaps someone else might even find it useful.

The Academy was wonderful, with teachers that never slowed down because they just assumed you are with them, that talked at a million miles an hour because they were so passionate and full of ideas it was like they couldn't slow down because they might not get to share with you that last amazing thing they have in their head.  I wish I could spend days with each one of them, just following them around and sweeping up their little thought-crumbs.  But instead, each one only got an hour or so the first day and an hour or so the second before you were moved into another amazingly smart person's orb to get caught up and excited by again....I loved it!

First off was Amy Mayer from Texas and Cory Pavicich from Colorado. Their idea is an amazing project about celebrating the people in your community called The Somebody's Hero's Project, which I going to run home and do immediately.  We took a quiz about our superpowers and one of my colleagues won a hand-made google cape.  The project looks very easy to implement for teachers and is set up with templates for the kids to just click and go.

Too quickly their time was up and we walked through Google New York HQ (which is a little like being in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory) to our second session on Google Maps and Google Earth with Wendy Gorton and Kern Kelly, who were also fabulous.  Here is a starter video--very inspiring.

It was empowering to get a broader picture of Earth and Maps can do and where some great resources are for when I need them.  My favorite idea was one in Maps from Wendy, where she uses a map of a setting of a story to have the kids collaboratively find and discuss events from a book.  Here is one example using James and the Giant Peach.  I think we'll try this one out when we read Blood on the River to study Jamestown.  Maybe even use historical maps so we can look at the impact that Europeans have made on the area?   I love the idea of the kids interacting and annotating the maps as they think!

Then Kern showed us how to use sketch-up to make Earth 3-D buildings, which was really cool but doesn't work on an ipad, so we are out of luck in Room 29.  However, they shared another app for the ipad called 1234-D which looked amazing and we'll try soon.  Kern's high school students are using sketch-up and 3-d printers to present to the school board their ideas of what a new high school in their district should look like.  Talk about authentic learning!  On my list--to look into 3-D printers.

Just looking around at my resources from this session, I found Google Earth Walks, described as: "During a Google Earth Walk, students engage in real-world problem solving as they work their way through a virtual tour on Google Earth.  Each placemark offers an engaging, geotagged image as well as a compelling question, challenging students to apply what they've learned in the real world."  

How am I ever going to sleep again, with all these ideas to explore?  

These are just some starting notes---a tiny tip of the iceberg of the GTA.  I'll write more soon--but for now, I have to go see New York City.  Today the Statue of Liberty awaits!