Around the World in 30 Minutes

Grades: 9-12

Teachers: All
Subject: All
Project Name: Google Expeditions

On Thursday April 7, Yarmouth High School was lucky enough the host Google Expeditions. Teachers who signed up brought their classes to the library and computer center for 30 minute periods to explore "expeditions" that they had pre-chosen to supplement the curriculum. The list is vast and seemingly includes just about any area you can think of. Each student was given an Android smart device and a Google Cardboard to look through. The teacher had a tablet that he/she could control the events that students saw on their cardboard. Some of the time was spent exploring an area, such as Machu Picchu, or the teacher could pick a spot and freeze an area so that students could move to that area to hear an explanation. The activities were well received and we look forward to the fall when Expeditions will be available on iOS.

Google Expeditions coming to YHS and YES

Recently,  Yarmouth High School was invited to take part in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program. This program uses virtual reality to take students on tours of different kinds of places they may never be able to visit in real life. There are hundreds of curriculum based “tours”. The Expeditions Team will be coming to YHS on Thursday, April 7th for the entire day.

Coincidentally, our Teacher Technology time on Wednesday March 30 will be about using virtual reality and having some time to try it out, so you can see what it’s like.

The idea is for a teacher to pick an expedition and then create a mini lesson around it. Many expeditions fit with what we are doing right now in our curricula. Google brings all of the equipment. The list of expeditions is here.  There are over 180 options, so be prepared to browse! Use Command-F to search for keywords to see what is available (try World War, Rome, Asia, Biome, etc.). 

You can read more about Expeditions here. We are very excited to be able to bring this opportunity to our students. Stay tuned!

The following week the Expeditions team is scheduled to visit YES with two rooms of devices used by all classses in the school.

Nexus 7s in Fourth Grade Classroom

Grade: Fourth Grade
Teacher: Kate Parkin
Subject: Pilot 1:1 Nexus 7s grant
Project Description:

The Nexus 7s arrived in Maine on Friday afternoon and we were able to give them to students just three days later. Kate Parkin (4th grade teacher) and Cathy Wolinsky spent time preparing for the devices, exploring apps, becoming familiar with various resources like Edutecher and Android4Schools and thinking about how to bring this to the students in the most productive way. Some weekend work went into charging, updating and preparing the tablets with each student's Yarmouth Google account. We were pleased to find that there is a Content Filtering Setting that should modify any suggested apps and materials to keep them appropriate for students.

As teachers, Kate and Cathy planned for the physical realities of having the new set of devices in her classroom. Consistent with our district practice with student 1:1 laptops we ordered cases to protect the tablets. At the time we ordered they were $6.95 each and they have the added feature of putting the device to sleep or waking it on opening. We set up 4 bins in the classroom with plug strips nearby. The strips only allow 3 plugs at a time so we will be rotating overnight charging.

Once we did the planning and getting the room ready it was time to rollout the tablets. We invited parents, our building principal, Alice Barr (integrator at Yarmouth High School) and a college student who has helped us move ahead with technology since we was a student at YES. We planned an hour and a half at the end of the school day for the rollout. We started by giving each student a label to decorate so that s/he could easily identify her/his own tablet in the bins. We affixed the labels to the cases with plastic book spine labels to help them last through the year.


The slideshow above shows a set of photos from the preparation, through the labeling, to unboxing the Nexus 7s, changing the wallpaper and widgets on the devices. Once the students had done some personalizing and exploring the screens available Kate used the document camera to project her Nexus 7 onto the screen and showed students how to download and install a set of apps that we had previewed. We looked for an assortment of apps that allowed students to create simple projects, take notes and practice math facts as a start. In the slideshow you can see the students working from this list of apps.

Apps to download:

Skitch

Evernote

Free Rice

50 States

Google Drive

PopMath Lite

NASA

Space Images

Math Workout

Sudoku Plus

Math Maniac

Countries of the World

Note Everything

SimpleMind Free

Kitchen Timer

Camera Launcher

ListNote Speech to Text

This video gives a quick glimpse of the classroom once the students are exploring apps:

Many thanks to all who helped with this successful rollout and especially to Mark Wagner and the EdTechTeam for donating the devices to our school. An additional post about the arrival of the Nexus 7's is posted on Kate Parkin's classroom blog.