The onslaught of technology for education in the classroom the last few years has been impressive. Many see it as the answer to all things educational, while others fear it as the end of teaching as we know it. Today’s economy is riddled with funding shortages. School systems across the nation struggle to find ways [...]
Yesterday The Portland Project was covered in an article by Mashable entitled, The Case for Social Media in Schools. The conversation that is ensuing because of that article is really quite amazing.
Request your Twitter followers to tweet their locations. Students use atlases or world maps to find their location and measure and convert the distance mathematically. Students can then use Google Earth to find the actual distance.
In this lesson, students will research daily life, industries, and the political situation along the United States/Mexico border.
Oil spills have devastating consequences, both for the environment and for communities. In this lesson, students compare the Exxon Valdez spill with the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They look at similarities and differences in the way it happened, how it was contained, and how long it took (or will take) to repair the damage.
A great Geography lesson using Google Earth and Twitter! Overview: Source Edublogs The main idea for this activity is to teach students geography using your Twitter network and Google Earth. Hopefully, your network is worldwide so the students can find a wider range of places. Objective: 1) To increase student’s knowledge of world geography [...]
Here’s another great lesson plan utilizing social media. The focus here is student engagement using math skills to create a numerical representation of their lives. Objective: Students will share important numbers in their lives using social media. Materials: Computers (or cell phones) with Internet access Procedure: Explain to students that they will be using social [...]
We’ve received some great ideas on using social media in the classroom from some of the great folks that took our workshops in June. One of the homework assignments (for credit!) from the workshop required attendees to create two lesson ideas using social media in their area of expertise.
Geometry: Photo Message Scavenger Hunt Objective: Students will identify and share geometric shapes using social media. Materials: Internet access, digital cameras or cell phones Procedure: Review with students basic geometric shapes including various quadrilaterals, triangles, regular and irregular polygons, etc. Review with students (if needed) how to take pictures with digital cameras and cell phones. [...]