Lillian F. Cruz

ED638 Internet Tools Exploration Continued

The three Internet tools that I have selected to review are “Google Earth, Wordle.net, and Weebly for Education.

Google Earth  http://earth.google.com/

Google Earth allows users to explore the Earth’s globe from the comfort of their home.  Google Earth was originally developed by Keyhole, Inc., a Mountain View based company founded in 2001.  It was used in fields such as real estate, urban planning, defense, and intelligence.  Google purchased the company in 2004.

Google’s focus was on exploration, using 3D globes of other planets, 3D modeling of hundreds of cities, and tours given by humanitarian outreach programs.

I would use this program with my kindergarteners.  In my lessons, I currently use a child friendly map that’s on my wall, or the globe of the earth.  Using Google Earth would be so much better for learning because you could use a feature called “layers” which allows the user to click on desired features to view places on earth.  You could use different forms of media such as videos or photos to view different places. You could get the weather, see oceans, roads of cities, borders, or you could click on photos and check out how a certain place looks before you even visit that place.  If you were teaching about a certain place this would be a great feature to use to learn about a place.  When you visit these places, you could say you were flown to a certain place, or you’re going to fly to a certain place.  It is a great way for your students to visit and learn about a place they are studying, whether it’s the Amazon river, the Alps mountains, China, etc.  It is a virtual 3D fieldtrip in which your students could take without stepping outside the classroom. You could type in your home address and see your house, your front yard, your car parked in the driveway. Another great feature is that you could zoom in or out of these locations.  Upon further exploration I came upon a feature called, “Voyager” in which you are able to access a series of interactive guided tours across different countries which is put together by leading storytellers, scientists, and nonprofits.  Another feature I came upon is called, “I’m feeling lucky.”  When you click on the button you are taken to a surprise, random location.  You will be provided with a knowledge card filled with facts and information about the place you were randomly sent to.  You are able to take a 3D virtual fieldtrip of these places you are visiting.  You can share these experiences with your family and friends in the form of postcards.  Voyager can even take you into the homes of other people from around the world.  You can even meet these people.  This is a great learning Internet tool to use in the classroom.

Wordle.net  http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a site in which an online generator creates “word clouds” from text that you provide.  You could use different color schemes, fonts, and layouts.  I would use this in my classroom and have my students provide me with vocabulary words that they associate with our unit of study.  You could create word clouds on any subject.  It could be about mammals, musical instruments, body parts, etc.  Once all my students provide me with their words I would have wordle.net create our word clouds.  It would be nice to have a word cloud for all sixteen of our unit studies to put into their portfolios.  It’s also a nice presentation of all their vocabulary words.

Weebly for Education  http://education.weebly.com/

Weebly for Education is a free website builder and is user friendly.  It is used to create classroom websites, websites for assigned projects, student e-portfolios, and blogs.  Teachers will be able to control their students’ websites ensuring their passwords are protected, and that they manage their students’ privacy settings, determining which websites would be public, private, or edited by the student.  Weebly ensures that their users have a safe, protected environment.  Teachers are able to accept homework assignments online, and keep their students’ parents up to date.  Another great feature is that they have an easy drag & drop website editor which allows videos, text, pictures, & maps to be dragged & dropped into their website.