Ms.berning

One of last month's most popular posts was 18 Google Earth & Maps Lessons for K-12. In response to that post I received a bunch of requests for more information about Google Earth and Google Maps including how to create placemarks and tours. I've shared these directions in the past, but it's worth sharing them again for folks who are thinking about trying a Google Earth or Google Maps-based lesson in their classrooms.


You may also find this playlist of Google Earth videos useful.

Finally, last fall Jerome Burg and Thomas Petra hosted a Google+ Hangout about using Google Earth in education. A recording of that Hangout is available here.

There are so many social networks on the web today that it can be hard to keep track of which ones to use for which purposes. Avalaunch Media is here to help with two of the cutest explanations that you'll see today. Social MEDogIA Explained and Social MEowDIA Explained are explanations of social media from the perspectives of dogs and cats.

http://avalaunchmedia.com/paws-vs-claws/

http://avalaunchmedia.com/paws-vs-claws/

The infographics are part of a campaign to raise money for two charities, NEADS and The Humane Society of the United States. The money raised during the campaign in July will be donated to the two organizations. 2/3 will go to the infographic that gets the most votes and 1/3 will go to the other.

Applications for Education
If you find yourself trying to explain social media and social networks to a colleague who loves pets, these infographics might be a cute way to help them understand the purposes of the various networks depicted in the infographics.

H/T to Cool Infographics.

MAKE magazine is hosting a virtual Maker Camp starting tomorrow (July 8th) and running through August 16th. The virtual camp features new DIY projects that students can do at home or school as individuals or in groups. A new project is posted each day. Daily Google+ Hangouts will offer tips for completing each project. Students can share their projects in the Maker Camp Google+ Community.
Applications for Education
Maker Camp looks like it is going to provide lots of great, hands-on, educational activities for students to try all summer long. Whether you're looking for something for your own children to do or you're looking for some fun activities to try in your classroom, Maker Camp is definitely worth following for the next six weeks. The first week's schedule of projects can be found here.

Since I started using them earlier this year Pixabay and Every Stock Photo have been my go-to resources for public domain images. This morning I learned from Tony Vincent that Bing has an option for finding public domain images. To access this setting go to Bing Images, enter your search term, then use the "license" menu to select public domain images. I've included a screenshot of the settings below.

click image to view full size

Applications for Education
Bing image search would probably be my third choice of places for students to search for public domain images after Pixabay and Every Stock Photo. It's my third choice because, like Google Images, the "related" images and search suggestions might not always be appropriate for classrooms.

The other day I received an email from a reader who was looking for a way to digitally sign documents. My suggestion was to try Hello Sign. Hello Sign is a service that allows you to digitally sign documents. Hello Sign can be used in your web browser, on your iPhone, on your iPad, and on your Android tablet.

On your computer you can use Hello Sign to record your signature by using your mouse or by importing a picture of your signature. Then whenever you need to sign a document just upload it to Hello Sign and apply your stored signature. You can email your newly signed document directly from Hello Sign. Alternatively you can use the Hello Sign Chrome app or the Hello Sign Gmail plug-in.

On your iPhone, iPad, or Android device you can use Hello Sign by selecting a document or by taking a picture of a document. I tried it out on my iPad and was impressed by how easy it was to use. I just opened the app, logged into my Hello Sign account, and snapped a picture of a document. After the picture was captured I had the option to apply a stored signature or sign the document using my finger on my iPad's screen.

Even for adults who have been in the workforce for a while the prospect of searching, applying, and interviewing for jobs can be challenging. For recent college and high school graduates the process can be intimidating and overwhelming. Everyone wants to standout to prospective employers for the right reasons. Congratulations Graduate! Eleven Reasons Why I Will Never Hire You is a Slideshare presentation from Mark O'Toole. In the presentation he outlines not only why some candidates aren't hired, but also what they can do to get noticed. The presentation is embedded below.



Applications for Education
As someone who did a bit of hiring of new employees for entry-level positions when I worked at FedEx, there are two items in the presentation above that I would emphasize to students. First, sometimes you didn't do or say anything wrong in the interview, we just had a better applicant. That's a hard lesson for young people to learn. My advice is to reflect on the interview and if you really think you did your best then just chalk-up the experience as practice for your next interview. Second, dress for success.

Recently, I was asked to create a list of titles for a ninth-grade novel unit in which the essential question that the class would address is the following: “How do the decisions and actions of characters (people) reveal their personalities and impact others?” What a rich series of conversations could take place surrounding this question. What great fodder for persuasive and/or argument essays. What a wonderful source for reflection on how characters in great books mirror people in real life!

I had a lot of fun finding teen-appropriate novels that fit the bill–with well-developed characters who find themselves in situations in which their responses reveal their character and their actions have important consequences. Here are a few newer highlights from the list:

In Borderline by Allan Stratton, Sami Sabiri is viciously bullied by a classmate on a daily basis. Wanting to avoid trouble at school and at home, Sami tries to ignore it the best he can. He’s mostly interested in his friendship with old pals Andy and Marty, while not making waves in his parents’ strict household. But when Sami does some digging and finds out that his father has lied about a business trip–and the family’s whole world explodes amongst terrorist accusations–he must decide whether to risk his life to save his father. Sami’s decision and actions aren’t the only ones to examine in this fast-paced novel, in which the undercurrents of racism and bigotry beg questions about society’s blanket treatment of certain groups, whether religious, ethnic, racial or otherwise. (ISBN 9780061451133. Gr 7-10.)

In Every You, Every Me by David Levithan, Ariel is close friends with Evan but is also Jack’s girlfriend. When she disappears, Evan begins to find photographs in the woods, seemingly left for him to encounter, that depict earlier times with Ariel. Evan and Jack begin to investigate, wondering what happened to the Ariel they both loved and wanting to know who is the source of the photos. The images are interspersed with the novel’s text, much of which is Evan’s train of thought as he tells the story. Questions about Ariel’s relationships with both boys, her disappearance, and the motives of the photo “stalker” leave readers with much to discuss about human nature. (ISBN 9780375854514. Gr 9-12.)

The List by Siobhan Vivian is a realistic novel about Mount Washington High, where tradition produces a well-publicized list of the ugliest and prettiest girls in each grade, copied and plastered hundreds of times across the billboards, walls, and lockers of the school on the Monday morning of Homecoming Week. Who would do this? Why? And how does it affect a girl labeled the ugliest or prettiest? To the junior girl labeled the ugliest, who after seeing the list marched through school with the word UGLY printed across her forehead, “the list is so powerful, its judgment so absolute, and yet no one wants to deal with it.” The consequences of this so-called tradition are surprising, devastating, and empowering, and not for the reasons you might initially think. (ISBN 9780545169172. Gr 9-12.)

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork tells the story about the summer before Marcelo’s senior year in high school. After he’s attended a school for students with special needs for 11 years, Marcelo, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, learns that his father wants him to move to a traditional public school for his final year. Resistant, Marcelo accepts the compromise offered by his father: he’ll spend the summer working in the mailroom at his father’s law firm–working in the “real” world. This is just his first important decision. Working at the law firm, Marcelo learns a lot about people’s behavior in the “real” world as he struggles to make the most important decisions of his life. (ISBN 9780545056908. Gr 9-12.)

Using novels in units of inquiry is a great way to engage students in higher-level critical thinking about big questions. To engage them even further, you could include some nonfiction titles on the same theme–in this case, titles like I Did It Without Thinking: True Stories about Impulsive Decisions that Changed Lives by Bob Hugel, Is It Still Cheating if I Don’t Get Caught? by Bruce Weinstein, and The Teen Brain Book: Who and What Are You? by Dale Carlson.

For the full list of high-school fiction titles for this essential question, click here: Decisions and Actions Book List.

–Blogger: Lori C.

Most commercial search engines like Google and Bing track what you’re searching for because that’s how they know which ads to present to you. In fact, that’s why two people could be visiting this blog right now and be seeing two very different advertisements in the righthand column. (Click here for an explanation of how Google Adsense works).

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that promises not to track or share your search history. (It still does display advertising based on keywords in a search). Besides the privacy aspect of DuckDuckGo there is an aspect of showing you less biased search results that makes it useful. If you’ve been clicking +1 on websites or links in Google+ some of that information is taken into account in giving you “personalized search results.” Personalized results can be helpful sometimes, like when you want to find the best restaurants in a city, but it can be less than helpful if you want results that are not skewed by your past habits.

DuckDuckGo works in any web browser on your Android devices and they they recently released a free Android app too.