Powerpoint As a Collaborative Classroom Tool

I had never thought of using powerpoint or any other program for that matter and having students collaboratively create a project. The program that I will use to create such a project will be google docs. I am pretty sure I will approach parents with the idea of their child setting up a gmail account at curriculum night in the fall.

One of the third grade social studies units that we study at the end of the year is First Americans. At the end of the 6 week unit, the students are assigned a powerpoint presentation to create. For some students I have a template of slides already set up that they can use. Other students choose to create their own presentation from scratch. There are 4 main regions that are studied: Plains, Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, and Southwest. Once the kids choose which region they will research, I will have those students work collaboratively on a powerpoint presentation.

Google docs is such a great program to use because all the kids can have the document open and can be working on it at the same time in the computer lab. I am excited to get started using google docs.

Oil Map Activity

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/06/business/20071107_WINNERSLOSERS_GRAPHIC.html#

The above link was used to help create an interactive 3rd grade oil map activity. My third grade students are always interested in using the internet to seek and learn new information. I can definitely see using more interactive maps/graphs/charts in my classroom. As I was completing this assignment, I really thought about what information I really wanted my kids to learn by using this map. My objective was to have students see which country was the #1 top oil producer and compare that to the #10 oil producer. I further extended this lesson to have kids identify the top 3 oil producers and the continent that those countries are on.

To promote some higher level thinking, I asked kids to think about... 1) Why can Japan (a small country) consume 5.2 million barrels of oil each day, when Australia (a larger country) only consumes 920,000 thousand barrels of oil each day? 2)If the United States is a top supplier to themselves, where do you think we get (produce) our oil from? Use the internet to find your answer. In order for some kids to answer these questions, they will need to do some research on the internet. With both of these questions, students are asked to site references and give specific examples that support their answer.

I can see using more interactive maps/graphs/charts in my classroom. What it will take is me researching the internet and finding maps that will work for my third grade classroom.

Be Funky Pictures

Wikipedia Comparison

I went to wikipedia and searched the topic wine. What came up on the English wikipedia site was pages and pages about the history of wine, grape varieties, classifications, vintages, tasting, collecting, production and so on. On the simple wikipedia site the information that came up was general information about wine. It talked about the 2 varieties of grapes: red and white. It talked briefly about the history of wine and what countries drink and make the most wine.


On the Britannica online encyclopedia site because wine is such a general topic, a did you mean list popped up. Under the did you mean list were the topics: wine, Bordeaux wine, burgundy wine, fruit wine, dessert wine, and malt wine. I went to the category wine and the information that came up included history, the wine grape, wine regions and varieties, wine making process, aging and bottling, and special wines.


I found that both the english wikipedia and britannica article were very similar. Both gave a lot of information about the history of wine and of the different varities.


I really liked using simple wikipedia and I know for a fact that my kids will also enjoy it better than the English wikipedia site. It is definitely more kid friendly.

Video Editing Activity

This was a fun assignment to complete. Frustrating at times when videos off of you tube took forever to download. However, I would definitely see using this in my third grade classroom within the content areas of science and social studies. Some of the units that I would have kids find videos for are: life cycles (butterflies), electricity, objects in the sky (solar system) and Native Americans. I would want to make this assignment as fun as possible for the kids, while promoting higher level of thinking skills.

Wunderground Activity

I used http://www.wunderground.com/ to create this high/low temperature graph for Auckland, New Zealand. I looked at the high/low temperatures from the 15th of every month in 2008. The third grade science curriculum taught does not specifically support the use of this website. However, I could see taking the kids into the computer lab and having the kids explore a place they would like to visit. Much like what we did for this assignment.