Exploring our World
Mr. Sellinger & Mrs. Wolinsky
Yarmouth Elementary School
Yarmouth, Maine, USA
Geography Questions
To learn about Geography we started with some
questions like these:
1. Why does Australia look smaller than
Greenland on the map?
2. What does political mean?
3. How many square miles is the entire earth?
*Our resource is Continents (A New True Book)
Google Earth
• We learned to use Google Earth in the
•
Computer Lab.
Go to this link to hear our Voicethread about
our explorations.
Exploring Shanghai
We read the surveys from our two partner classes in
Shanghai, China. We “flew” to Shanghai on Google Earth
and zoomed in to look at pictures of the city.
Tracing Our Travels
We are mapping the places we visit in our reading,
blogging, and whatever other means takes us
there. As we do this we add a pin to our Google
Map. We've decided to adjust the pin color based
on the continent we visit. Opening this map in
Google Earth offers a 3D perspective and lots of
options to expand our learning.
You can view our map at this link.
Lobster Blogsters
Mr. Sellinger puts some of our learning on
our class blog. It is called “Lobster
Blogsters” (we have lots of lobsters in the
oceans off of the coast of Maine).
You can comment on our blog at:
http://lobsterblogsters.blogspot.com/
Mystery Class
Soon we will join other classes who are part
of the Journey North Mystery Class
project. We will keep track of the change in
daylight reported by each class and try to
figure out where in the world they are
located.
You can join us at Mystery Class.
Shared Projects
• We started from the question of wondering how students
•
•
in other parts of the world learn about geography so the
first part of the presentation tells you about how we are
exploring our world.
The other classes in the project took our questions and
made them into a survey. We didn’t receive the
responses in time to add responses to their survey
questions.
We may have been unclear back when we described our
project, but all is OK and the next few slides describe the
responses we received from the two Shanghai schools.
Class Info. From Jianyu Gao
Participants -- 10 students in 4th Grade in Shanghai China
1. What is it like where you live?
a land beside the sea -- 10
2. Are you near oceans, mountains, rivers or landforms we can see on Google
Earth?
Yes -- 10
3. What do people do for work where you live?
Industry and service -- 10
4. What do people do for vacation where you live?
a.
stay at home -- 5
b.
travel around Shanghai -- 1
c.
travel far way -- 4
Class Info. From Chen Fang
Participants -- students in Grade 5 --12 students
1. What's it like where you live?
We all live in Shanghai. Shanghai is a big city in
China. It sits on the Yangtze River Delta on
China's eastern coast.
Class Info. From Chen Fang
2. Are you near oceans, mountains, rivers or landforms we can see on Google
Earth?
East China Sea -12 students
Yangtze River - 12
Huangpu River - 8
3. What do people do for work where you live?
Boss - 2 students
Officer - 2
Teacher - 5
Engineer - 3
Doctor - 2
Lawyer - 1
Class Info. From Chen Fang
4. What do people do for vacation where you live?
Traveling - 8
Camping - 1
Ball games - 1
Skateboard - 1
Fishing - 1
Singing and dancing - 2
BBQ - 3
Shopping - 3
Going to a park - 2
Chart of Shanghai Information
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
iEARN Project
• We learned that we can connect with classes in other
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•
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countries through a Learning Circle.
We learned that being more specific about questions and
deciding early on to use a survey of those questions
helps the interaction be successful.
Thank you to Chen Fang and Jianyu Gao for sharing
information with us.
The online version of this presentation is at:
http://webapps.yarmouth.k12.me.us/~cwolinsky/iEARN/ExploringOurWorld.htm