Explore the World's Fair on Your iPad

The New York Public Library’s Biblion: World’s Fair app puts the wonder of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair on your iPad. Through the app you can view images, videos, and documents all about the World’s Fair. All of the media in the app is arranged into thematic stories. These stories showcase the innovations that were on display in 1940 as well as the predictions for the future. Plenty of historical context is provided through the stories to help readers understand why the innovations on display were significant.

Applications for Education
One of the fun things that you could do with this app with your students is to have them look at the stories that feature predictions for the future. Then have you students see which of those predictions were accurate, which weren’t, and which became part of our world today.

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from sunny Woodstock, Maine where Max has illustrated that it is a perfect day for lounging in the sun. Yes, my dogs are spoiled and have it made.

This week I hosted webinars on three nights. On Tuesday evening the second meeting of Getting Going With GAFE was well attended. On Wednesday and Thursday I hosted Blogger Jumpstart which had a smaller audience, but was still a lot of fun to teach. Next week I'll be visiting Wa-Nee Community Schools in Indiana. Thank you to everyone who has joined one of the webinars an invited me to your schools. The opportunity to teach is always energizing.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. My Five Favorite Classtools.net Tools
2. An Interactive Infographic About Designing Infographics
3. Use Your Phone to Control Google Slides Remotely
4. Three Good Resources from the Lawrence Hall of Science
5. A Glossary of Blogging Terminology - A PDF Handout
6. 5 TED-Ed Lessons on How the Human Body Works
7. Student Blogging Activities and Tools That Don't Rely on Text

Summer PD Opportunities With Me.

Teaching History With Technology begins in July.
Getting Going With GAFE is offered in June and July.
Blogs & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is offered in July.

Would you like to have me visit your school? Click here to learn about my PD services.

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.

Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.

BoomWriter provides a fantastic tool for creating writing lessons. 

Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards and cartoon stories.

MidWest Teachers Institute offers online graduate courses for teachers.

HelloTalk is a mobile community for learning a new language.

Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.

PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.

The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.

Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.

EdTechTeacher is hosting host workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.

SeeSaw is a great iPad app for creating digital portfolios.

Plan and Share Biking and Walking Routes on Google's My Maps

This weekend some friends and I are going on a 75 mile bike ride. In preparation for the ride I created a map on Google's My Maps and shared it with the group. My Maps makes it fairly easy to create shareable maps of biking and hiking routes.

To create a biking or walking route map on My Maps first sign into your Google account then open My Maps. After signing into My Maps select the "draw a line" tool then choose "add biking route." To draw your biking route click on a starting location on the map then drag the line along a road. My Maps tries to predict where you are going to draw your route. The prediction feature can be handy when you're trying to make short biking routes. When you're making longer routes you will have to draw over the predicted lines if you don't want to use the suggested routes.

Applications for Education
The summer is here (in the Northern Hemisphere) and it's a good time to encourage students and their parents to enjoy some healthy outdoor activities. Creating some maps of safe biking routes and walking routes then posting them on a school website could be a good way to encourage participating in outdoor activities.

Build Your Own Silicate Materials - And Other Virtual Chemistry Lessons

The University of Kentucky's College of Arts and Sciences has a nice interactive activity about silicate minerals. The activity has an overview section in which students read about the structure of silicate minerals before moving to attempt to create silicate mineral models. There are three models for students to try to construct in the simulation.

Learn Chemistry is a production of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The purpose of Learn Chemistry is provide educators with resources for teaching chemistry lessons to students of all ages. The database of instructional resources has more than 2,700 entries organized according to topic, age of students, and media type. This set of simulations on Learn Chemistry is a good place to start your exploration of what Learn Chemistry has to offer.

An Augmented Reality App for Learning About Nature

Parts of this post originally appeared on my other blog, iPadApps4School.com.

Disneynature Explore is a free iPad app designed to help children learn about bear, butterflies, lions, chimpanzees, and sea turtles. The activities for learning about each animal include augmented reality components. Students can use their iPads to take pictures to put animals into settings that they photograph.

The app encourages students to go on nature walks with their parents. On the nature walks students can take pictures and record observations in their digital field journals.

My favorite part of the Disneynature Explore app is the interactive augmented reality aspect of the brown bear lesson. The lesson starts with a prompt for students to growl like a bear. After growling like a bear students swipe at salmon swimming up a river.