Vista: GeoBlogging

Livonia Primary School

Anne-Marie Gordon

I had a hard time thinking up a final project for two reasons:  figuring out which of all the cool tools I wanted to use, and then figuring out what wouldn't be blocked in my district! 

• Goal:  to create a student blog which will relate Social Studies content (current events related to a particular location, and geography) with the use of blogs, tags, and RSS feeds.  I want this project to meet national Information Power standards, state standards for Social Studies, ands district Tech standards. 
• Tools:
  • Classblogmeister:  this website is permitted by our filter.  I created a new blog called Vista, to be used by third grade students. 
  • FlashEarth:  an interactive map that allows specific aerial views to be pinpointed and bookmarked by users. 
• Steps:
  • identify standards / goals for student outcomes  (DONE!)
  • create the blog (DONE!)
  • set up student access, check AUP's  (Acceptable Use Policies) are on file for the kids  (DONE!)
  • arrange for a "pilot group" to start things off  (DONE!)
  • arrange a training time for each class
  • agree on responsibilities with classroom teachers: 
    • identify proper current event sources
    • follow-up on student stories to make sure links work and locations are properly identified
  • schedule lab time with 3rd grade teachers
  • teach the "reporters" how to correctly add items to the blog, including links to FlashEarth
• Challenges:
  • overcoming teacher resistance to the idea of blogging
  • teaching 3rd graders how to add links to the blog--including a little HTML, to make it "prettier."
  • figuring out a way to encourage the use of RSS feeds among classroom teachers, so that updates to the blog will be seen by the whole grade level.
  • maintaining currency and interest
• Project Maintenance: 
  •  update several times a month. 

UPDATES:

November 20, 2007:

We had the first group of third graders come in for a "technology playtime" today.  They could zoom around FlashEarth and look for cool places and copy & paste the URL to a word document.  They came up with AMAZING places--the only thing we had to help with was spelling!  Here're some of the places they wanted to find:

• Iraq
• Texas
• Hawaii
• Tennessee
• Madagascar
• their own houses and towns
• our school building
• Afghanistan
• a volcano (ANY volcano!)
• Australia

November 27

Our first group of bloggers came today.  We had problems (of course) getting on classblogmeister, so we ended up having the kids write up their "cool places" in a word document, and we'll post later.  The second group comes tomorrow...