Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: geography

  • FaceTime Connection During a Tornado Warning

    This past Wednesday night when I was in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, at least two tornados and “lots of straightline winds” hit Oklahoma City not too far from the neighborhood where our family lives. No new details on OKC-Moore damage survey. Confirm at least 2 brief tornadoes. Max rating EF1. Lots of straight line wind damage. #okwx — NWS…

  • Podcast417: Mobile Digital Ethnography, Place-Based Learning and Inquiry

    This podcast is an interview with Thomas Steele-Maley, the Director of Academic Technology and Innovation for GEMS World Academy – Chicago, discussing mobile digital ethnography, place-based learning, and inquiry learning. GEMS World Academy is launching now (in fall 2014) and this summer elementary students (in grades 5-6) have been participating in inquiry-based ethnographic activities as urban…

  • Prevent Spiders and Bugs from Getting In a Garage Tornado Shelter

    A few weeks ago at long last, our family got a below-ground tornado shelter installed. You might think every Oklahoma household already has one, but that’s definitely not true. The current “shelter in place” policy which has encouraged many churches and other public shelter locations to close their doors to the public may be pushing…

  • Load Saved MinecraftEDU World on School Server

    Today I’m making final arrangements and tweaks to the “MinecraftEDU Orienteering Challenge” my 4th and 5th grade STEM students will be completing this week in class. As I moved this saved world to the school computers I’m using as MinecraftEDU servers I recorded a short (just under 5 minutes) screencast, using Screencast-o-Matic, showing the steps…

  • Orientation Challenge in MinecraftEDU

    This is the next-to-last week of school for this academic year in our district, and I’ve been planning a final MinecraftEDU lesson for several months for my students that is ready at last. I wanted to create a scavenger hunt, and decided to focus on developing student knowledge and skills of the Minecraft coordinate grid…

  • Tornado Season is Here But Don’t Look For an Oklahoma City Public Storm Shelter

    Spring has sprung in central Oklahoma at last, and that means tornado season is here. This past week we had our first set of storms in the northern part of our state, and I’m sure many more will come in the weeks ahead. Technically, tornados can form any month of the year, but statistically the…

  • Become a Connected Teacher to Help Students Make Global Connections

    This morning my wife and I experienced a benefit of being “connected educators” together: We participated in a virtual field trip with students and adults in both Tanzania and New York thanks to Google’s Connected Classrooms website. Here’s the quick story of how we ended up learning about the global water crisis on a free…

  • GeoMap: Google Maps Engine Lite Hiroshima Project

    Back in September I helped my 8th grade daughter create a “geo-map” project for her English class. I shared about this in the post, “8th Grade GeoMap Project For English: Road to Hiroshima.” Today after school I shared a videoconference with educators in Corpus Christi, Texas, on “Google Maps and Google Earth.” After our videoconference,…

  • Photos of our Ice Storm in Oklahoma City (Dec 2013)

    The last couple of days we’ve had freezing rain in Oklahoma City and temperatures that have hovered just below freezing. This morning I got up early (relative to the sleeping teens in our house!) and took some photos of the ice on shrubs, trees, cars and Christmas lights. It’s not a winter wonderland of snow,…

  • Mapping Media at Library Camp 2013 (Fort Wayne, Indiana)

    This morning I’m sharing the opening keynote at the 2013 “Library Camp” Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Here are the slides I’ll be discussing. I’m changing the introduction I’ve used lately for this presentation to focus on the Waldseemüller map, which is also known as “America’s Birth Certificate.” This map is explored in glorious detail…