Google Earth Tour Ring of Fire

Here is my tour of the Ring of Fire


Students love Google Earth especially if you let them find their own house first! There are so many layers to this program; it could be used for any subject. I teach earth science during the first part of the school year and I made this Ring of Fire tour as an example from which my students could create a Plate Tectonic Tour. The student version would include an example of a divergent boundary, transform boundary and also a convergent boundary. Each stop would include informative links and a photograph showing associated features such as mountains, faults, volcanoes, et. I often integrate with the humanities teachers and right now they are looking at how the Western Reserve was settled. Students could use google earth to document the journey of settlers moving from New England to Ohio. They could take on the persona of a child, or adult on the journey and at each stop they could write about what they are seeing, feeling, eating, etc. They could incorporate pictures or scans of their own drawings. Perhaps they could find or create pictures of household items, wagons, dress or animals important to the journey. I think this virtual journey is a nice alternative for those students who do do not want to make a hard copy journal.

Webquest

I made a web quest for my students to use during our unit on Plate Tectonics. Once they go through this web quest and become familiar with the format, they will create their own web quests later in the year when we study ethical issues in genetics. I will divide the class into four groups and have each group choose an issue such as genetically modified foods, cloning, gene testing, or genetic information privacy/genetic discrimination. Each group will have to create an objective and balanced web quest that demonstrates multiple viewpoints on the issue. Student web quests will also include a personal position statement based on evidence and logical reasoning.   I would like to see students create surveys and discussion forums to link to their web quests as well.

WEB 2.0

Each seventh grade student chooses a topic for her science journal and deepens her understanding of this topic throughout the year. An entry includes an article, summary, new words defined, new learning, three questions and a creative response. All I had to do was mention Glogster and Go Animate and my students were all over it. Right now I have two students who have ongoing Glogs filled with experiments and videos. I have also created a wikiprojects section on my grade 7 science homework page where students can upload videos, Glogs and other multimedia. The following is an example of a Student Glog.  Another student used Go Animate to create a cartoon about whale evolution. The content was great but she was completely focused on those bouncing rabbits.