Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

How measurements in Google Earth can support math learning (Why We Need Pi)

Yesterday in week 8 of my “Technology 4 Teachers” class at the University of Central Oklahoma we focused on GeoApps, or Geographic Applications. The overview for yesterday’s class was:

GeoApps are applications which permit learners to connect concepts to geography. Google Maps is a browser-based Geo-application environment, and Google Earth is a software-based GeoApp. We’ll explore both and learn how to use resources created by others as well as make our own.

The first half of our (almost) two hour lesson yesterday was a review from the past week. It was great to be able to share not only exemplary video reflection blog posts from some of my students, but also several of their VoiceThread digital stories which are really superb for different reasons. In the second hour we focused on GeoApps, and my content was based on the Google Workshop for Educators (GWE) curriculum I used in November 2009 when I helped lead a GWE with Lisa Thumann in Austin, Texas at the Virtual Schools Conference. One notable addition to this was the following video, “Why We Need Pi,” which my children and I made a year ago for Pi Day (March 14th / 3.14) for the now-discontined “Film on the Fly” cell phone digital storytelling contest. This highlights a creative way the measurement features in Google Earth can be used to support mathematics learning.

The lecturecast of yesterday’s class (my 2nd session) is available via our T4T Blip.tv channel. I have the channel set to auto-post each new episode to our T4T Scribes / Shared Learning Blog on Blogger. For the first time, I used the web-based image editing site Picnik last night (for the first time) to add my weekly title to the show image for the video. I was interested to learn Picnik was recently purchased by Google. Online photo editing is a great feature for Google to add to its online app kit. I hope online video editing is next! 🙂

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2 responses to “How measurements in Google Earth can support math learning (Why We Need Pi)”

  1. Ella Rogers Avatar
    Ella Rogers

    My students are totally engaged when I include online math games within a lesson or as homework. The repetition and association that games = fun really helps them capture the subjects. My class really enjoys http://www.mangahigh.com/, a new site with Algebra, Geometry, Quizzes, etc.

    Has anyone else had success with online math games?

  2. Andy Avatar

    Don’t forget the cool Google Lit Trips. Expedition Lit Trips is a good one too.