Instructify

BY DAVID BARGER

As Mark Twain famously remarked, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” In today’s world of war and unrest, it is not hard to see that we all could use a little less of these things in our lives. Given the current economic climate, though, overseas travel is probably not making the cut in most family budgets. Although our wallets might be getting smaller, the world is not. It’s as big and wonderful as it has always been.

So how do we get out there and enjoy it? The folks at the EarthWatch Institute have a good idea. They have created fellowships for students, teachers, conservation professionals, and corporate employees to participate in research expeditions worldwide.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Do you enjoy playing video games, learning geography, and helping those less fortunate, not necessarily in that order? The online game FreePoverty rewards your knowledge of geography by donating 10 cups of water to thirsty people around the world for every city or landmark you can correctly place on a world map.

Similar to FreeRice, FreePoverty lets you have fun and help others at the same time. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

As schools move away from rote memorization of facts, what happens to those kids who like to rattle off the state capitals or list all the presidents? They can put their knowledge of educational trivia to good use at Sporcle, a site filled with countless list-style quizzes that will exercise kids’ knowledge of…well, just about everything.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As further proof that my pop-culture awareness stopped sometime in the mid-90s, this month’s random roundup features Indiana Jones, apparently Instructify’s go-to reference to convey that a history or archaeology tool is exciting or adventurous in some capacity.

Of course, now that they’re making a fifth Indiana Jones movie, I don’t feel quite so dated.

National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid: Archaeology with No Risk of Snakes or Nazis!
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and I dreamed about being on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly, I’m not currently exploring foreign lands for ancient artifacts and getting chased by Nazis, nor did I ever get the chance to be a Blue Barracuda. But with National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid, your students can have the opportunities that I never did, and learn while doing it!

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BY NICK YINGLING

One of my fondest memories growing up was this time when my friends and I found an old treasure map. We eventually ran afoul of a family of gangsters, but my one heavyset buddy was able to befriend the deformed son of the head gangster, Mama Fratelli. Just as the gangsters caught up with us, Chunk and his new friend, Sloth, were able to swoop in and save the day. We were, truly, a bunch of Goonies. No, wait—there I go again, confusing myself with Corey Feldman.

That image you get in your mind when you imagine treasure maps isn’t just fascinating because of the promise of riches. That classic example of some old, yellow, frayed-at-the-edges map also maybe has some crazy artwork of an agitated seabeast where there be dragons or something. You can just feel the wonder of exploration resonating from old-world cartography.

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has been busy scanning these old maps and making them available free-of-charge in digital high-resolution images. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

This week’s MBTN features tips to help you to hang on to your job, a panoramic tour of the new seven wonders of the world, and ideas on how to make Wordle educational. More after the jump.

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If your geography students haven’t learned the locations of all the states by now, maybe they need a little game-based incentive. Know Your States is a geography game where students have to plop all 50 states into their correct positions on the map. Sure, they can handle gimmies like Alaska and Hawaii, but can they find Rhode Island when they don’t have the rest of the eastern seaboard as a reference?

Know Your States isn’t the most robust game, but it’s a fun diversion, and will hopefully give your students a better idea of where Wyoming is, just in case their parents take them to Yellowstone on summer vacation. -BILL FERRIS

Know Your States

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There are few places on Earth that seem to me more remote than Greenland.  Not to mention cold.  And dark.  During the winter, the sun really does not even rise.  Sounds like a place for your next vacation, right?  Thanks to NASA Cryospheric scientist Lora Koenig, you can experience winter in Greenland without making the actual trip and braving the minus-50 degree Celsius temperatures.  She spent this past winter in Greenland blogging about her experience.

As you read her weekly entries, you can come to understand some of the important work she is doing in Greenland.  She collected time measurements of snow surface temperature, microwave brightness temperature, and snow surface height.  These measurements all help with ongoing projects that NASA has involving several satellites.  In her entries, Lora tells you about her work and what life is really like in the winter in Greenland.  Even better, there are lots of pictures and a summit webcam and weather station!

In a classroom, this site could be utilized in different ways.  As part of a geography class, it could be used to highlight the different geographical features that exist in Greenland.  Your class could take a virtual field trip while immersed in the personal stories of the author.  In science, this website could be used to highlight important aspects of the  process of scientific inquiry.  This blog provides a great view into what it’s like to actually work as a scientist.  Using the weather station data, a math class could create graphs that track daily temperatures, and could even use other resources to add some local data comparisons to their graphs.  This blog opens up a new part of the world to your students.

As long as you can get past the chilliness that will seep into your bones as you peruse the site (I think I need to go put on a sweater), you’ll find at least a few ways that this resource could be useful to you and your students.  -REBECCAH HAINES

Winter Camp: A Blog from the Greenland Summit

Summit Camp Webcam and Weather Station

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Meet Me at the Corner: Virtual field trips for kids, by kids

We here at Instructify love to hear from you. Would you like to leave some feedback on this posting or just send me a message? Simple: just go up on your roof and paint your remarks in big, block letters. If you’re in a rural area, you might arrange some rocks in a field. Then in the comments section under each posting simply send us the coordinates.

Yeah, I suppose maybe you could leave the actual comments in the comments section, Captain Buzzkill. I’m just trying to get you motivated about different ways that you might possibly use Google Earth.

Maybe you might be interested in using Google Earth to explore the Civil War, look at the global diamond trade, or engage students in math and geometry by looking at different mountains’ ski slopes. Take a look at these lesson plans for Google Earth, for example. You’ll find lessons spread out across five content areas: social studies, math, science, language arts, and cross curricular. The lessons start at basic how-tos for users (which aren’t just for stinking newbies — experienced users might even find new features to investigate), then branch out into both student-controlled and teacher-controlled lessons.

The best part is that these lesson plans are already prepared for you. The file formats will vary, but now you don’t have to stay up until 1 a.m. doing prep work and planning. Who knows? This new abundance of time might afford you the chance to start a new hobby…like arranging cryptic messages for satellites to read. I’m just saying. -NICK YINGLING

Lesson Plans for Google Earth

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Many, many changes have taken place in the world since we last visited Google Earth. I don’t mean changes in the outside world. No, that’s a terrible place! I mean the world you can explore inside of the latest update for Google Earth.

Google Earth 5 has a bunch of new content for you to use in the classroom. In fact, there are too many new features for me to break down in a short amount of time. So here is a quick spotlight on them.

1. First, as always, set aside five minutes for your students to locate their own house. It is inevitable.
2. See how places have changed thanks to more historical image content. Not only is it cool to watch buildings grow and towns expand, but this is also useful for lessons on the environment. Check out urban sprawl, tropical deforestation in the rain forests and the melting of ice caps.
3. The Earthquake layer is very cool. Every site is linked to info about the magnitude, depth and date of the earthquake. Zoom way out and it pretty much paints a picture of where the tectonic plates are all fussing and feuding.
4. The Touring feature allows users to create and share narrated tours as they move around in Google Earth. I’m not quite sold on this one, personally. Then again, people have described me as being a spleen. But let’s be honest—even the best tour is still a tour. Google Earth is most fun when you go off the beaten path and explore.
5. Google Mars 3D allows you to check out high-res images and terrain of the angry red planet. I’ve just spent 20 minutes bumping around Cydonia looking for the Face on Mars. The first person to provide me some coordinates wins a chance to hear me discuss the 2000 sci-fi movie Mission to Mars.
6. One of the biggest and most publicized additions to Google Earth is all of the ocean-related content. With numerous content layers from scientists and researchers, you can now explore the other 70 percent of our planet. Check out the Mariana Trench and a bunch of shipwrecks.

The classroom uses for Google Earth are plentiful, so I don’t think you’ll run into problems working it into a lesson or two. -NICK YINGLING

UPDATE — They found the lost city of Atlantis! But then the Illuminati were quick to discredit that. Hm, weird… My coffee tastes like almonds now. That’s strange…adgrgfd….

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As budgets for field trips (and supplies and paper!?!) get brutally slashed in schools around the country, teachers are looking for alternatives. Okay, no, there never was any money for a field trip to Jordan, but Project Explorer gives the kind of information and experiences that replace — and even exceed in some ways — what you and your students might have found at that history museum that you suddenly can’t afford to go to.

Project Explorer, which was previously reviewed on Instructify, provides free, virtual field trips to global destinations for students at the upper-elementary-, middle- and high-school levels. They have recently added Jordan as a destination, which is filled with Project Explorer’s robust written, photographic, and video content about the nation’s history and customs. As with other destinations on Project Explorer, students are taken through Jordan by “tour guides.” Unfortunately, the tour guides are not a racially diverse bunch, which has two negative effects. First, it contributes to an overall sense of the outsider looking in on a culture that has little chance to represent itself with an insider’s voice. Second, it may be more difficult for students of color (now representing 44% of public school students in the U.S.) to identify with the guides and conceive of the notion that they too can become global explorers.

That said, Project Explorer provides a great way for students to explore Jordan, from key historical sites to cuisine to Middle Eastern music to more nuanced socio-political issues such as the experience of Palestinian refugees or Western stereotypes about Middle Eastern dress and terrorism. The video content is by far the most engaging part and there is plenty of it for your students to get access to the sights and sounds of Jordan. Accompanying lesson plans provide basic ideas that you can use as seeds for more robust lessons that link to key content for your students.

The new content about Jordan is a welcome addition to Project Explorer and we can look forward to planned trips to Singapore, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Greece and Italy, as well as content catering to the early-elementary level. More than an encyclopedia or a typical museum, Project Explorer gives kids the chance to explore the world…no buses or plane tickets required! -ABBY MARTIN

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As if Antarctica wasn’t inhospitable enough, it’s also got a freaking volcano.  Mount Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano, showed signs of life in February, and NASA’s Earth Observatory got a nice overhead shot of it, along with some thermal imaging that shows off the volcano’s lava lake.

This photo might add some color to a lesson on geography or plate tectonics. If nothing else, the picture proves that, whether you freeze to death or get engulfed by molten lava, Antarctia is a great place to experience deadly scientific phenomena. -BILL FERRIS

Volcanic Activity on Mt. Erebus via NASA Earth Observatory

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NASA’s Earth Observatory has picked up some some great images of the bushfires in Australia. Seeing these from outer space gives an idea of the scale of these fires.

While you’re there, be sure to look at some of their other photos, such as the Antarctic warming trends, or shots of the crowds during the presidential inaugurtion. -BILL FERRIS

Bushfires in Southeast Australia via NASA Earth Observatory

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At one point in time, I knew all 50 U.S. states and their capitals. I am confident I could still name a majority of them, too. What’s more is that at one point I also knew all the countries and their capitals. I could name even fewer of these now. Nonetheless, it was all the result of memorization techniques in order to regurgitate the information for a test (sorry, Mrs. Little) and now I couldn’t identify Chad from Libya on a map if you paid me. (I know, I am a total dummy, but let’s not focus on me here.)

So along comes Maps of World and its games to show me exactly what kind of dummy I am. This is a great resource for geography students and teachers to take advantage of in order to improve your identification of the world’s many countries and cities. The site boasts having high quality maps of just about anywhere, but it was, of course, the games that caught my attention. Especially the one that asks you to Know Your World. How hard could it be, right?

Mind numbingly difficult, that’s how hard. This game gives you 10 seconds to remember as many different countries and cities on a map as you can, then it takes away the text and leaves you with a bank map. The game prompts you with the various locations, which you must then locate using a cursor and your quick memorization wits. If you are a dummy like me, you’ll get to about round four before your brain explodes. Either way, the game is a fun way to improve your geography skills or for your students to study for an upcoming test. There are other games on the site, though, so feel free to peruse until you find something your speed. Too bad “Click on the Map” isn’t a game.  -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Know Your World on Maps of World

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Two things I don’t particularly enjoy: geography and quizzes. I have a horrible sense of direction, and who really enjoys quizzes, anyway? Yet somehow I love the San Francisco Chronicle’s Annual Geography Quiz. It’s eerily similar to last year’s quiz in that the questions are fun, and in the words of quiz-creator John Flinn, it is, “a way for me to highlight some fun facts I stumbled upon in 2008, usually while in the process of looking up something else.”

This quiz might be a fun activity for your students. If nothing else, they’ll learn a lot of cool trivia about the world. You never know when you might need to know whether Mount Everest is taller than the Mariana Trench is deep, or what nation Zanzibar belongs to. -BILL FERRIS

2008 S.F. Chronicle Geography Quiz

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Photo credit: -Fearless-!- on Flickr