A New Add to an Old Fav, Google Earth

It is funny how your after hours web-surfing actually connect to something that happened earlier in the day....

One of my favorite tools, Google Earth was part of the observations I was doing in classrooms today. One class was using the toolGE to measure distances part of developing a "map" of the school neighborhood in a geography unit.

Another teacher was helping students read a chapter by doing a "text walk" and modeling a "think aloud". The topic was the ability to see the landforms of the earth. At that time in the observation a document camera was used to show a picture taken from space. The students read an excerpt from a book by astronaut, Michael Collins, describing the view of the world from space.

Ah...I wish she had Google Earth on each student laptop so that students could manipulate a take different views from outer space...

And now here I am finding that Google Earth now has a "sky" view. Download the latest version of Google Earth and check out what the sky has to view!!! There is a great video by astronaut, Sally Ride, which demonstrates the Sky View.

Virtual Spaces for Classroom Collaboration and Management

As a part of my consulting for efriendlylearning.com I have been working with schools in one-to-one digital tool initiatives in learning. I have found many teachers involved in these one-to-one technology initiatives looking for e-solutions which support student collaborating about learning, a place to manage their classroom content, the ability to publish student products, access to share ideas with other educators and communicate with the learning community what is going on in the classroom.

Oh...and please can it be free!!!! Hey, we are talking about education here, right?!

Well, that usually rules out the biggies like BlackBoard, Elluminate, and the other $$$$ tools. Open Source solutions like Moodle and Sakai are free, but usually need more expertise than the average teacher might have, or need resources beyond the teacher's "reach", so they are generally ruled out as options. But...what about the emerging 2.0 solutions??

Here is a list of solutions that I am investigating.
Chalksite, Elgg, Nuuvo , haiku LMS and Digication.

Of course the "free" is always for limited use but sometimes the features are just enough without going to the premium "pay" accounts. I want to guide teachers to a simple solution for those who have little support outside of the classroom.

I will be look for other solutions...post any you find!