Navigating Google Maps Using Pegman

Recently,  I introduced you to Pegman, the little icon who lives in Google Maps and Google Earth and helps us explore imagery of places all over the world at street view level. The video below shows you how to use Pegman to navigate in Google Maps, including how to use it to visit museums from around the world. 

Another way to view street view imagery is to use Instant Street View. This project is not associated with Google, but it does provide a quick and easy way to explore Google Maps. 

Culture NOW - Museum Without Walls

Culture NOW is a New York City based organization that works to promote diversity through arts education and cultural tourism. One of Culture NOW's efforts toward that goal is the creation of a Google Map featuring museums and culturally significant sites across North America. The Museum Without Walls map features thousands of placemarks representing museums. Click on a placemark to learn a little about s museum, get a link to that museum, and in some cases listen to a podcast about that museum and its collections.

Applications for Education
Culture NOW's Museum Without Walls map could be a good resource for US teachers and students looking to learn more about the cultural sites near them and across the country. The podcasts provide offer insight into the purpose of the museums. The podcast series also includes audio tours to accompany a site visit to some of the places on the Culture NOW map.

Video - Making the Most of a Museum Field Trip

Through the Teaching Palette, I discovered this video from the Art Institute of Chicago. The video was created as a resource to help teachers and students get the most out of a trip to an art museum. The animated video tells the story of high school students going to an art museum. In the video the teacher explains how to behave at an art museum (don't touch the paintings). The teacher and students also model critiquing art. The video is subtitled in English and Spanish.

You can watch the video below.


By the way, if YouTube is blocked in your school, you may want to explore one of these options for viewing the video.

Applications for Education
Even if you're not able to take your students on a field trip to an art museum, this video still has value. The modeling of conversations about art could be used prior to having students look at art online or in books.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
ArtsEdge - Podcasts and Lesson Plans
Blogs for Art Teachers
Kodak Lesson Plans

Take a Field Trip to a Free Museum

In this current economy school districts around the country are trying to cut costs wherever they can. Often one of the first budget items to get cut is field trip expenditures. Therefore, teachers who would like to take students on field trips have to find ways to do it on the cheap. This morning I found a resource, through Fred Delventhal's blog, that can help teachers find museums to which they can take their students for free. Free Museums is a wiki listing museums that offer free admission. The wiki is arranged by state and is accompanied by a key indicating the conditions of free admission to each museum. Links to each museum are provided in the list.

Science Museum - Free Online and Offline Activities

Science Museum.org offers fourteen free online activities for students and ten free lesson plans for teachers. The activities and lesson plans are designed for introducing elementary age students to a variety of science concepts through problem solving. Each online game is accompanied by a set of links to support and complement the content each game addresses.

Applications for Education
The online activities are designed for students of elementary school age, but would be useful in middle school setting as well. Each activity will challenge students to solve a problem or series of problems using their prior knowledge or with the help of information they find on the accompanying links. One strategy for enriching students' learning experiences with the online activities is to have them record the new information they gather and the mistakes they make throughout the problem solving process.

Free Technology For Teachers: Make Your Own Museum and Go On Virtual Trips

Did your district cut the field trip budget? Don't worry, create your own museum and go on virtual field trips through Thinkport. Thinkport is a project funded by Maryland Public Television and The Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education. Thinkport offers much more than just virtual field trips and the create your own museum project. Thinkport offers lesson planners, activity builders, and videos for classroom use as well as numerous activities for students to use independently or collaboratively.

Applications for Education
Create Your Own Museum is a great way for students to share the findings of research projects. Students can add images and text to their museum and arrange the order of the displays. This format of sharing information is a nice change from creating a slide show or a wiki. Thinkport also provides a nice selection of virtual field trips with lesson ideas for teachers. Many of the field trips are based on Maryland, but there are some field trips that are universal. The field trip about money sucked in a student that I showed it to today. Finally, the Thinkport timeline builder is simple and easy to use and is a great way for students to organize history or plot developments in a story they may be reading.