Karen Bosch’s “Great Tech-spectations!”

I have been enjoying watching Ken Burn’s documentary on the National Parks this week.  Last year I did a project in the computer lab with 6th graders about the National Parks. I had planned to repeat the project this year, but unfortunately, I have not been able to do it because of my reassignment back  into the classroom.  But I thought there might be some other classrooms that would be interested some of the activities that we did last year.

Each of these activities are explained in detail on the links which are posted in an exhibit that I created at the Apple Learning Interchange.

1) Google Earth – did you know there is a layer in Google Earth that clearly shows all the US National Parks?

2) Inspiration – excellent topic to create word maps to examine students’ prior knowledge.

3) Wikis – the National Parks are an excellent topic to research.  Read how our students created a wiki from their research.

4) Comics – using Comic Life or other tools.

5) Travel Posters – we used Print Shop, but other tools would easily work.

6) National Park Trading Cards – students loved making these – so easy!

7) Postcards – we took advantage of the Instant Alpha effect in Keynote to make pictures where it looked like the student was actually in the park.  Another easy trick!

8)  Commercials – student used Garageband to create a commercial for the park that they researched.

Hope these projects give you some ideas of ways you can teach about the National Parks in your classroom!