Summer is officially here, and I am freezing! We are in Bavaria, at the foot of the Alps and the forcast is calling for snow tomorrow! Otherwise it is beautiful here!
For those of you interested, I am keeping a little website about the trip which includes Google Earth placemarks and GPS tracks.
David
Well, the summer is here. School ended yesterday for us and that means a couple of months for doing other stuff. Saturday my wife and I head off to Europe for a couple weeks and I will tote along the laptop and the new GPS unit, so hopefully I can get some work done and have fun at the same time!
The big thing I will be doing on the rainy days is working on the site and trying to develop some good lessons to use with the kids for next year, which brings me to the quandary that has been troubling me for the last couple of weeks.
As I develop the site I think of more and more things to do, but I want to create lessons too, not just manage and update the site or crank out tutorials about how to create course content using Google Earth. In the process of looking into content that could be addressed with Google Earth I was looking over the ‘Assignment Builder’ section of the United Streaming website (a great resource, but not free) and noticed that the site allowed you to select by State Standards for the different subject areas.
Meanwhile, Mr. Barrett over in the UK published another placemark collection that addresses the standards and curriculum in his home country.
And it all started me wondering…
What is it that students need to know? Why should it make a difference if the kid is growing up in Orlando, Montreal, Singapore or London? Yes, there will be cultural differences based on the history, politics and geographic elements that the child grows up in, but aren’t there universals? And if so, what are they and why hasn’t anyone put them down on paper (at least so I can find them through a Google search 
Is teaching simply a process of taking a Standard, presenting it to the student and hoping it sticks? Or is it more than that? Teaching can’t simply be following a recipe or instruction booklet. There are too many variables. The child’s IQ, home life, place in the family, age, developmental level, a zillion things. I had a kid this past year whose mother died. He was angry and obviously lost focus on school. Is there something that says a kid like that has to master M5.33.7.21 above all else? I had another kid, an 11 year old girl who had to be the mother to her three other siblings who attended the school. She didn’t have a dress to wear to the end of the year celebration and had to borrow one from one of the teachers because her family was so poor. How important was SS6.24.12.3 to her existence? If you teach you have your own stories, possibly hundreds or thousands of them.
What is it that they ALL need to know and understand?
As teachers, yes, Standards are important, but there is something even more important. Something that anyone who stays in the field had to have (at least in my opinion) and that is Instinct. An Instinct to know where your kids are, what they need and how to reach them.
Maybe that is why I haven’t developed too many new lessons other than technical stuff these past couple of months. Maybe when I start looking at the world, the whole world, like I see it with Google Earth, I lose the instinct because the stories, the Standards, the needs are so disparate that they just don’t fit in my head.
Maybe we need Global Standards, maybe we need Global Instincts.
Maybe we need summer vacation.
David
After years of thinking about getting a GPS device, I finally broke down and got one yesterday so that I could learn about how to incorporate it with Google Earth. It is sooo cool! I picked up the Garmin eTrex Legend for about $150 at Best Buy and it works great! I had anticipated a higher learning curve and technical issues with Google Earth integration, but it was seamless!
Expect some lessons using this technology before the summer is out!
David
For some reason it seems like it has been a long time (10 days) since I added anything new to the site. School has been overly hectic as we begin our end-of-the-year sprint at our school and it hasn’t allowed me the development time needed to really work on the site. But I actually have been working on it in the spare minutes I can grab.
The big thing coming is a new Nifty Trick which I have entitled ‘MultiNeatia’ where it tells all sorts of tricks and tips for including Multimedia in your Google Earth Lessons. That is the problem too. The topic is very dense with so many variables that it is taking forever to work all the bugs out and figuring out how to present the material in a way that will make sense to non-techno teachers.
To give you an idea of what it involves:
Using audio clips for ambient background sounds (I have one that has the sounds of chainsaws as you zoom in on the Amazon rainforest), topic narration, etc.
Using video clips for Virtual Field Trips (many thanks to Karen Seddon of the Discovery Education Network for some great ideas!)
Virtual Reality environments inside Google Earth. Interactive Flash Lessons, etc.
And the one that has gobbled up the most time, getting Microsoft Office integrated into Google Earth so that you or your students can run a PowerPoint presentation with videos, placemark links, internet links, etc. all within the main Google Earth window, or have a Word document load in Google Earth so the students can fill in digital worksheets or quizes all while they navigate the globe.
There are so many variables, so many options, so many potential problems and so little time that it seems like I’m not getting anywhere with this one. But, stay tuned, it will get done
David