netTrekker Blog

A Christmas Carol : A sneak peek into the Victorian Era

What a perfect project for Christmas time – and spectacular way to introduce the Victorian Era, while learning a wonderful lesson about the true spirit of the holidays.

The newest version is a 3D Animation by Disney Studios.  Students will love the rich characters and mystical nature of this classic holiday story, A Christmas Carol. The main character, Ebeneezer Scrooge, is a miserly old man who hates Christmas and whose heart has turned cold since the death of his business partner and the break-up of his engagement many years ago. As Scrooge meets up with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, they help him to understand his misgivings and start celebrating the holidays in the true spirit of giving and compassion.

The tale has been viewed as a reflection of nineteenth century industrial capitalism and provides a “sneak peak” into the Victorian Era.  The novella captures life in London between 1830 and 1840 – the midst of the Victorian Era.

The Victorian Era is defined by the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 – 1901.  netTrekker provides many resources to compare and contrast what life was like at the start and end of the Victorian Era.  This time of tremendous change is most evident by where people lived and worked in London, England.

1837		1901
People lived in villages and worked on the land.		People lived in towns and worked in shops, offices and factories.

Check out some netTrekker resources that will bring the Victorian Era alive in your classroom.  These and other similar sites can be found by refining your search on Victorian Era with Interactive Media.

Travel back in time to the Victorian era in this interactive journey to help Ruby & Michael search for Sam, their missing dog. While you are searching, you can learn about Victorian life by examining the objects in the house, listening to the characters, and answering the questions.

Be a Victorian Millionaire Now! Benjamin Gott was a model of entrepreneurial skill. By taking risks and experimenting with new ways of doing things, he managed to hit the cash jackpot and become a powerful businessman.  Can you solve business problems and make money by taking risks?

Virtual Victorians. Interactive examination of life during the Victorian era. Home, work, leisure, education, and technology are just a few facets of life addressed through photos, brief summaries, interactive games, newspapers, and documents.   Questions about daily life can also be submitted on-line to a role playing persona.

To learn more about integration ideas other resources to support your learning objectives, contact your Account Manager. We’d love to provide the perfect Professional Development solution for you.

Tags: Integration Ideas, professional development, refinement menu, Training, Victorian

Glogging It

This past weekend I was invited to hang out with the Florida Discovery Educator Network at SeaWorld for a great learning event. The teachers learned how to create a waypoint for geocaching and how to create a Glog as a way to share what they have learned. Being the netTrekker fanatic that I am, I created a SeaWorld folder with resources, a link to a map to use with geocaching in the classroom, classroom project ideas and a link to my Glog. Unfortunately, you can’t access this project folder unless you are at my school. However, if you want a copy of it, leave a message of how to reach you and I’ll move the folder to your school or district.

Aside from catching up with good friends and making new ones, the fun part for me was creating the Glog. I chose to do one on Polar Bears. Unfortunately this exhibit was closed (SeaWorld is getting ready for sharing their Polar Express), so I couldn’t add any photos I took first hand. However, netTrekker did point me to a great video and some interesting facts.

For those of you new to Glogster, it’s a way to posterize your knowledge with graphics, text, video, images, and even sound! (The sound I found in a resource under References!) The even better thing is that they now have an “edu” version. If the regular version of Glogster was once blocked, I encourage you to see if this version can now be made available. It’s a great way for students to be creative in sharing their knowledge.

Quick note about the video, I ended up using the link from YouTube. The same video is on a website found in netTrekker, but it didn’t have the link-ability that YouTube has. Sorry about that!

My Portfolio is a great way to organize complete projects. One of the things you can do is add links to outside resources, which is especially a safe and easy way to have students post their projects. The link(s) you add will not show up in netTrekker as a whole, but rather in your portfolio, for your students to view.

Anyone up for a free webinar on Glogster? I’d love to share what I learned! Or contact your account manager to learn how to book your next professional development with us to learn how to integrate netTrekker with many great tools out there!

Tags: DEN, Glogster, netTrekker, polar bears, professional development, SeaWorld

Techno-Novice Call For Help

There’s a request for help on the discussion board by a netTrekker Villager who would like me to fly to him and assist him for a week.  Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to make it to Northbridge, but I still want to help. My first tip, take it at an even pace. Try one thing at a time, and then add the next step. Don’t try to do all of it at once!

There are more great tips and ideas in the Teacher Tools Section of netTrekker. There are a few resources that are linked to the One Computer Resources and a few more for the One-to-One Computing.

A great tip I have learned over the years came from a friend of mine, Tom Turner. Tom’s school bought a bunch of SMART Boards last year and he needed to find a way to “hook” his teachers into using them. His secret weapon? netTrekker.

Tom did a search, refined his search by the collection of SMART, and pulled up those resources to share with his teachers. Once he showed them how easy it was to find SMART notebooks already created by other educators, how cool they were to use on the SMART Board, and what other interactive sites were like on the SMART Board, they were hooked! Once they got used to just using pre-made SMART notebooks, he then taught them how to make their own. He even used resources in netTrekker to help build those resources.

If you have a great tip on how to get started, please visit netTrekker Village and let Dean know. Help a fellow teacher out.

Tags: getting started, help, netTrekker, netTrekker Village

A Day to Remember

Last night a group of us were reflecting on where we were, to borrow from Alan Jackson, “when the world stopped turning.”  I was at the District Office in Sumter School District Two, which serves Shaw AFB. As a military BRAT, we were used to exercises and high alerts, but parents and teachers were unsure how to handle the “real thing”. Parents flooded the schools to take their children home, as the jets took off to assignments that were no longer an exercise. Many teachers were undecided as to whether to turn the news on and watch the events unfold, or to continue the day. A numbness fell across many classrooms. And this wasn’t just at Shaw area schools, but schools all across the nation.

When students started to show back up, teachers were left to answer questions like “what is terrorism”, “are they going to attack us”, and “why would someone do that”. And these questions continue each year as we remember 9/11, and each year teachers have to explain the magnitude of this major event in America’s recent history.

netTrekker has some great lessons and websites already researched that are great and supportive to any teacher looking to teach and explain the attack and our response. There are BrainPOP movies on terrorism and about September 9/11. Many of the websites use primary sources, images, quotes from those who were there, quotes from the leaders that were involved. Sites range from PBS, Smithsonian, the BBC, CNN, and more. There are websites with time-lines showcasing the events leading up to the attack and after the attack. I even found memorial websites on how Americans plan to remember the three sites that the four planes hit.

September 11 is the day that we came together as a nation,  and we changed some of our ways. Parents hugged their children and shifted priorities back to the family.  Neighbors knocked on doors to reconnect. Those who serve(d) us as firefighters, police officers, emergency crews, in the military and as teachers worked hard to respond, rescue, protect and start the healing. It was the everyday American who stepped up to the plate to aide as needed. As Americans, we need to remember our backgrounds and embrace the cultural differences that make us one of the most unique nations in the world. If we continue to remember, to reflect, and to allow this major tragedy remind us just how precious life is and it changes how we interact with the world in a positive way, then a small triumph can be found. The greatest way to honor those who died that day is to find a lesson that teaches what happened on September 11, but also to teach the compassion that followed after.