Exercise 1
Exercise 1
A
Walk Through Ridgely's Learning Community
Social Studies Curriculum: Grades 3-5
Overview: Students will learn about their school neighborhood through field trips, interviews, research, and graphics. Using this information the students will create a web page tour (virtual tour) featuring their school and the immediate community. The final project will be linked to the school home page.
Purpose: This project will allow the students to learn about the community they live in. Each student will also develop their writing skills and learn how to publish their work on the Internet. Students will interact with various types of technology and display their projects for viewing.
Objective:
1. To improve writing/publishing skills.
2. To increase knowledge of the student's community.
3. To utilize a variety of new technologies.
4. To participate in their school's history.
5. To meet and share information with pen pals.
Resources/Materials:
Technology resources: Eudora/e-mail, digital camera, computer, Claris Home Page, Claris 4.0, Netscape
School web site: http://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/ridgely
Web Resources:
Illinois State Board of Education Site contains Illinois Learning Standards
International Society for Technology in Education
Outstanding site, very informative, site will publish your project, no membership fee to use site
Site contains many virtual field trips, wide range of curriculum choices
Organization for Community Networks
Site deals with community networks all over the world, contains community related lessons and support
Activities & Procedures:
1. Discuss communities. View the district site and explain that the final project will be a part of it.
2. View some other virtual tours.
A Walking Tour of Plimoth PlantationQuestions to discuss:
- What is a virtual tour?
- Why is this important?
- What can you gain from using a virtual tour?
- Is this a usable web tool?
- Why should we create one?
- What needs to be included in our web tour?
3. Using a graphic organizer, brainstorm ideas to include in our tour.
4. Narrow ideas to 6 or 8 sites. Divide the class into groups of 3.
5. Each group is given a site. As a cooperative group, decide what you need to learn about your site, where to get started and how. Group will need to divide responsibilities for their report. (researcher, reporter, photographer, etc...)
6. Field trip to selected sites. (Make sure each team has recording material ready. They can use tape recorders, video cameras, digital cameras, cameras, paper and pencil, etc...)
7. Each group must have one good digital picture to include in the web page.
8. After field trip students will work in their cooperative groups to write their reports. Reports need to be at least 40 words in length and include information concerning their site.
9. Reports will be reviewed by teacher. Mistakes will need to be corrected and then the group will type the report into Claris on the classroom computers.
10. Working with a group at a time, each group will insert their picture and report into the web page. Groups will decide on the appearance of their pages.
11. Web page will be uploaded into the school server and linked to the school home page.
12. Class will unveil their finished project to the PTO at the next monthly meeting.
Assessment: Assessment will go on throughout this project. (2 weeks) Teacher will assess each student's progress daily. The project will be scored according to a rubric. (Especially designed for this project.) Project score will be reflected in writing and social studies.
Project currently under construction!