The project would start with students
watching a video about immigrants coming to Ellis Island and to Angel
Island. They would then be
introduced to the Google Earth tutorials on how to navigate the Earth. They would find their house and then
use the timeline to view changes to their house and surroundings over the
years.
Part of the family heritage project would be
to see how far their ancestors had to travel for students to land at their
current home. They would need to
practice how to add placemarks and measure distances between locations in
Google Earth.
Once they’ve learned how to use Google Earth
for the project, students would then conduct interviews with a family member or
members using Voice Thread. First,
they would practice with each other.
They could describe what country their family came from and tell their
classmates a little about the culture, food, etc. from that country. The goal would be for them to be able
to interview a relative using Voice Thread and ask them questions about their
heritage. I would provide a list of questions that they could add to if they
wanted.
After the interview, they would explore
Google Earth and the region/country they originated from. They would use placemarks to plot how
their family came to live in El Dorado County (ex. start in Locri, Italy, then
to Ellis Island, then to Pennsylvania, then to Los Angeles, then to Bay Area,
then to Shingle Springs). They
would measure the distance traveled.
We could also plot a more simplified version in the classroom on the
world map and see what family travelled the greatest distance. This could tie in with some math
lessons on average, longest, shortest distance. Students would then graph it on a
Google Spreadsheet.
The final product would be either a Prezi or
Google Presentation on their family heritage. I would provide them with a checklist of what they needed to
have in their presentation (e.g. family tree, facts about their family,
artifacts, facts about the country/region from which they originated, etc.).
At the end of the project, we would hold a
festival where students would present their projects and bring in artifacts and
food to share.
This main curriculum objective in this family heritage project would be to
learn about different countries, cultures, and geography. Other curriculum objectives include
learning math concepts like average and how to create and read
graphs.
A further objective would be to create an
environment where students learn to be tolerant and proud of their diversity.
Because this would be an extended project, I
would provide students with a calendar and deadlines for each activity (Google
Calendar) and checklists and rubrics for each activity along the way.
The family heritage project promotes all the
levels of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Examples include:
- remembering how to use placemarks and measure distances (Google Earth), how to find the average, etc.
- understanding how to use the measurements to create a graph and find the average, longest, shortest distance travelled (Google Spreadsheet)
- applying what they learn in their interviews and research to help them create their final product (Prezi or Google Presentation)
- analyzing the information from their interview, from their research and from their measurements
- evaluating what information is credible in their research and what would be best to include in their final product
- creating a presentation that effectively brings together all the information they’ve gathered about their family
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