Fun With Art - The Getty Games

Getty Games is a nice collection of art-based games produced by The Getty Museum for younger students to enjoy. There are four categories of games, each offering a subset of games. Getty Games also offers directions for a selection of offline activities.

The four game categories offered by Getty Games are Detail Detective, Match Madness, Switch, and Jigsaw Puzzles. In Detail Detective players are shown four small pictures and have to identify which of those four came from the larger piece of art shown to them. Match Madness offers four games in which players match either match two parts of a picture together or match exact images. In Switch players are shown two pieces of art side-by-side and have to identify the parts that have been switched or altered. There are twelve jigsaw puzzles available on Getty Games. The neat thing about them is that players are shown the completed artwork and then choose how many pieces they want to have to put together to reassemble the artwork.

Applications for Education
Playing the Getty Games could be a nice way for students to review artwork they saw while exploring art online at The Getty.

Now You Can "Go Back in Time" In Street View

For years now we've been able to look at historical imagery in Google Earth by using the time slider. Now a similar feature is available in Google Maps. As announced on the Google LatLong blog, now when you're viewing an image in Street View you may see a little clock icon in the upper-left portion of the screen. When you see a clock icon while viewing a Street View image you can click the icon to roll-back the view to a previous image. Google began publishing collections of Street View imagery  in 2007. The number of images available will vary from location to location.

Applications for Education
Going back in time with Street View imagery could be a good way for students to see how some places have changed over the last seven years. This could be particularly useful when looking at locations that have suffered some type of natural disaster like a flood or earthquake. For older imagery on Google Maps, take a look at History Pin.

Free Webinar - Five Fun Uses of Comics In the Classroom

Back in January and February I conducted a couple of free webinars about digital storytelling with comics. Storyboard That has offered to sponsor a new webinar. In this next webinar hosted by StoryboardThat.com and FreeTech4Teachers.com we'll take a look at five engaging ways to teach with comics. The webinar will be held at 7pm Eastern Time on April 30th. Click here to register.

1. Create digital citizenship lessons.
2. Create alternative book reports.
3. Teach literary terms.
4. Tell personal stories with anonymous characters.
5. Create classroom procedure stories.

Even if you cannot attend the live session, register anyway so that you can receive the recording of the webinar. Click here to register.

EverySlide - Share Your Slides and Run Polls At the Same Time

EverySlide is a free (for educators and students) service that allows you to share your slides directly to the iPads, laptops, Chromebooks, and Android devices used by members of your audience. As you move through your shared slides you can pop-up a poll to gather feedback from your audience.

EverySlide supports PowerPoint and Keynote slides. To get started just upload your slides to EverySlide (you can re-use uploaded slides for multiple groups). When you're ready to present give your audience the access code for your slides. At the end of your presentation you can grab a spreadsheet of the responses to your poll questions. Watch the video below for an overview of EverySlide.


Everyslide - your old slides made interactive from KPicture Inc. on Vimeo.

Applications for Education
In a 1:1 classroom EverySlide could be an excellent tool for gathering feedback from students while conducting a lesson. When your students are presenting to the class they can use EverySlide to share their slides with you.

The Dirt on Dirt - An Earth Day Lesson for Pre-K through First Grade Students

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Last week I shared 14 Earth Day-related resources. That list is comprised of resources for middle school and high school setting. If you want resources for elementary school students, take a look at the offerings from PBS Learning Media.

One of PBS Learning Media's featured Earth Day lessons for elementary school students is The Dirt on Dirt. The Dirt on Dirt features Sid the Science Kid teaching children what dirt is made of, what lives in dirt, and why clean dirt is important to the Earth.

Applications for Education
The fourth video in the Dirt on Dirt series features students collecting dirt and recording their observations about their samples. You could do this at school or you might consider adding it to your classroom website or newsletter as an activity suggestion to parents who want to continue in-class lessons at home with their children.