March 27
I explored a new web site that is designed to ease people through the process of creating their own web site, and I plan to try it, perhaps creating a web site for my self-employed woodworker partner so that he can display and market his beautiful, artful creations. (He’s definitely a right-brain artisan/musician!). I discovered the site while exploring links on a school district web site, so I believe it has been vetted by IT personnel, and looks to be a great resource. It also has a blogging option, so that is another area that has increasing appeal.
I also learned about the potential role of games in learning, and how young learners’ brains are actually wired differently, making them much more receptive to the learning potential of games. The site gave lots of examples which I will explore as time permits.
Mapping our world: Geographic resources: The maps I have the most familiarity with are mind maps – I love creating these for planning and studying. “Real” maps are something I have never paid much attention to unless I am consulting them in order to get somewhere by foot or car, and I have quite a collection of them. Now however I am gaining a new appreciation of them. This is partly because of exposure to them through this course, because my oldest daughter is majoring in geography and I like to find great resources for her, and also because good, detailed maps were crucial to a walking holiday I took in 2009. We needed a stack of maps for the journey, along with a compass and a keen eye for waymarkers (see previous post). Ordnance survey maps are incredibly detailed, with country houses marked and named. Even standing stones and other heritage and archeological sites are noted on the maps, enriching the journey immensely.
A “global” issue came up this week in the class discussions. Surprisingly, some schools have few or no globes, and it seems a shame that such a great representation of our earth would be lacking. Every classroom should have one, if for no other reason than to remind us that we are part of something so much larger. I was pleased to discover nine globes displayed on top of the shelves in the middle school library I am working at this week. What a find! I’ve never seen anything like it in any other school library. Some libraries have one globe, but nine! Unheard of. A bonus is that each globe has a barcode affixed to the underside of its base, so it can be signed out just like a book or any other library resource. What a great idea and practice!
Speaking of geographical resources, I also discovered that the BBC has some geographic resources such as country profiles. Again, who knew?!