Wonderful Map Site

At our last Teacher Education call, we looked at a website that received all 5's from both reviewers in the MERLOT process. It's Historic Maps in the K-12 Classroom: http://www.newberry.org/k12maps/ from Chicago's Newberry Library.

What's so valuable about this site is that it includes primary resources which have been digitized. As well, the curator of the Newberry maps section has included notes for each map. The lesson plans attached to the maps provide teachers with wonderful lessons, tied to Standards and enriched by the curator's notes.

For instance, I looked at one of the maps of New Orleans, circa 1723. It is written in French, but the translation is available. There are lessons available for:
K-2 - Waterways and Communities
3-5 - Setting up a New Community
6-8 - Cities and Settlement
9-12 - Mapping Migration and Settlement
all based on this map.

For a social studies class K-12 or a social studies methods class, this site is a treasure!

See our review at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/workflow/viewCompositeReview.htm?id=450873

Jane

May 3, 2010

Today's teacher ed call involved three big topics---blended learning, some new applications, and the topic of time management.

In terms of blended learning, it appears that many schools of education employ blended learning in their teacher training programs. I just got the go-ahead to transform my face to face math methods class into a blended course, which is innovative in my program. I plan to take notes on how and what it takes to make the transition. My first step is to determine which are the best sessions to put online.

Some new applications that we discussed on our Teacher Ed call today included ietherpad.com and typewith.me. Both are examples of sites that can be used in both a face to face, blended or online format. They are effective both synchronously and asynchronously. At the Sloan Blended Conference, one of the speakers had an etherpad set up and as he was talking about innovations, had audience members log in and type in their ideas, which were projected on the screens in the room....it was sort of like using Twitter in the background, but easier for those who are unfamiliar with Twitter but comfortable with a word processor. Since support of the original etherpad has been withdrawn, both ietherpad and typewith.me have sprung up and give you all the benefits of the first iteration. They allow for multiple writers to participate in crafting a document, have a timeline, where participants can see the changes in the document over time, and identify writers in different colors. Our MERLOT Teacher Ed Board used etherpad to write our conference proposal for the MERLOT/Sloan/Moodle conference on Emerging Technologies in San Jose July 21-23. It was a really positive experience. I highly recommend you trying it.

As well, Cris Guenter, our art educator suggested three sites which provide online interactive whiteboards:

CoSketch.com
http://cosketch.com/
Whiteboard that you can collaborate to visualize your ideas and share them as images. The good thing is that, you don't have to register or install anything. It works in all browsers, it's real time and you can get an embed code for your drawing after you finish.

Dabbleboard
http://www.dabbleboard.com/
Whiteboard that enables you to visualize, explore and collaborate. It also lets you conduct presentation and chat though you can not share files.

Creately
http://creately.com/
Lets you create professional looking online diagrams with your colleagues.

I recently attended the TLT group's Friday Live session and it brought to mind the issues we all face when we are teaching online, web-supported or blended courses--time...or lack thereof. Some of the suggestions included setting up specific times to be online and letting your students know about it...i.e. I'll be online from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. M-F. You can contact me via email or instant messaging, or perhaps in an Elluminate, Wimba, Adobe Connect, Centra, or whatever type of meeting tool you have available. Dorothy Fuller and Nancy Pelaez noted that they had specified times when students could find them online and that they found that students were not looking for the 24/7 presence that most of us have established in our online work. If you have any suggestions for maintaining a life outside of teaching online/blended/web-supported classes, please post them as a reply!!!

If you're available on Fridays and want to think about a variety of interesting teaching/technology related topics, I highly recommend the TLT Group's Friday Live series. The sessions are free and quite informative. http://www.tltgroup.org/

Jane