Teach Students About Architecture and Building With This Free Guide from the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has some neat resources for teachers and students. One of the resources that I've recently downloaded is the Masters of the Building Arts Activity Guide.

The Masters of the Building Arts Activity Guide provides the history of six types of buildings and architectural features. At the conclusion of each section there is a hands-on activity for students to try in your classroom. For example at the end of the section on timber framing you will find directions for an activity in which students attempt to create a model building with straws or pipe cleaners. At the end of the section on stained glass students can try to create their own "stained glass" panels with tissue papers, ribbons, and glue.

Applications for Education
Masters of the Building Arts Activity Guide provides a nice history of building styles and architectural features that students may see on a regular basis. To extend the activities have your students look in their communities for examples of the buildings and architectural features that they read about in the guide. The text of the guide and the activities are appropriate for elementary school (grades 3-5) students. At that level you may consider incorporating some basic geometry principles at are present in the buildings and architectural features highlighted in the activity guide.

OpenStudy Launches a Mobile App for Making Studying Social

OpenStudy is a free service that allows students to create online study groups. Students can create groups to share notes and ask each other questions. OpenStudy currently claims more than one million users. MIT OpenCourseWare has named OpenStudy its official study help partner. Last week OpenStudy released an iOS app for students to use to participate in study groups on the go.


At its most basic Open Study is a message board for students in search of help answering difficult questions. Students could use it just for that purpose, but Open Study provides more than that. Open Study offers students the option to create or join online study groups, subscribe to other students' updates, and provides students with a place to record their notes online. Students can register for Open Study using their email addresses or connect to Open Study with their Facebook accounts.

How Not to Cite an Image

This morning one of my Facebook friends posted one of those "ten signs you're from..." Buzzfeed-like articles that sucked me in. As I looked through the article I noticed something strange about the image credits. In fact, they really were not image credits at all. The caption below the images simply reads, "Source: Google Images." Besides not naming the owner of the image, the author of the article didn't link to the source nor indicated that it was used by permission. I took a screenshot and added a comment to it. You can see my screenshot below. 

Click the screenshot to view it in full screen.

(Yes, you can use this screenshot if you want to share it with your students). 

Applications for Education

Between great public domain image sources like Pixabay (click here for other options) and Creative Commons image search tools there are few occasions when students should have to resort to claiming fair use to use a copyrighted image. If they do end up at that step, they should at least give proper credit to the owner of the image.

Multilingual Lessons for Pre-K through Second Grade Students

The Early Childhood Education Network's Literacy Center provides young students with online learning activities in four languages. The Literacy Center provides tutorials and games in English, Spanish, German, and French. The tutorials and games are designed to teach students the alphabet, writing the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, phonics, and basic spelling.

Each section begins with a tutorial before moving on to ask students to apply their new knowledge to an activity. For example, in the alphabet section students first hear and see each letter before being asked to form the letters. See the screen captures below for a demonstration of the sequence.

Alphabet activity 1.

Alphabet activity 2 - Student constructs letter.

















Applications for Education
In addition to the online learning activities for students, The Early Childhood Education Network's Literacy Center in collaboration with Read Today offers hundreds of free printable resources for teaching early literacy skills.

Dozens of Virtual Tours and Webcams On One Google Map

Angela Hamblen is a high school school Social Studies teacher in Kentucky that I've had the pleasure of meeting at ISTE conferences and presenting with at EdTechTeacher.org events. Through her blog Angela has shared some great ideas and resources for teaching history, civics, and geography. One of the neat resources that Angela shared a few years ago that I still revisit from time to time is a Google Map containing placemarks for dozens of webcams and virtual tours. Click any placemark on the map to find a link to a virtual tour or webcam for that location. The map is embedded below.


View Virtual Tours & Webcams in a larger map

Applications for Education
When I saw this map I immediately thought that it would be a great resource for teachers of geography, history, and world studies. The map of virtual tours and webcams could also be useful for literature teachers to give their students a real-life look at places mentioned in the books they read.