netTrekker Blog

Ethnic Identity in a Multicultural World …

The importance of ethnic identity in coping with a variety of life situations has been a major focus of current literature. While identity development is a difficult task for all adolescents; it is particularly complicated for adolescents belonging to ethnic groups. Teens feel a pull between their “home” and “school” identity – caught between parents’ ethnic beliefs and values, and that of the mainstream society.

To help your students understand our multicultural world, you may want to use a story to provide context and understanding.  A great example of such a story is a semi-autobiography by Julia Alvarez titled, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

This story spans 30 years in reverse chronological order of four sisters that fled from the Dominican Republic with their family.   They were forced to adapt to American life which proved to be difficult and embarrassing as they met friends, and tried to fit in.  They experienced identify confusion as they adjusted to life in New York and trips back to Dominican Republic. The story is told in a series of episodes beginning in adulthood and moving back to their early life as a wealthy family on the island.   Themes on family life, character, and love are intertwined in the story as topics of immigration and ethnicity are addressed through Hispanic eyes.

To extend these topics in the classroom check out netTrekker’s Multicultural Pavilion
It provides geographic and cultural information on continents, countries, and regions. Resources on ethnic identity, acculturation, cultural sensitivities, diversity, cultural heritage, and social justice issues are also included here.

To provide a multicultural experience for your students, check out these netTrekker resources:

PBS: Beyond the Border
A companion site to the PBS site that explores the story of 4 brothers who leave their family in Mexico to seek a better life in Kentucky – and find a different version of the American dream.

BrainPOP: Faces
Face the facts as Tim and Moby introduce you to the wonderful world of the human face! In this BrainPOP movie, you’ll learn about some of the many roles the human face plays in your life, and you’ll find out how faces differ from each other. Discover a few reasons that facial features vary from person to person, and why where your ancestors came from might affect how your face looks. Finally, you’ll see why the face is so important for communication, and you’ll find out which emotions look the same on faces all over the world. Are you ready to put your best face forward?

Lower East Side Tenement Museum: We Are Multicolored
Explore the multicultural influences on your life by creating a flag that combines flags of different countries. Also learn the symbolism of colors and shapes in the flags of the world.

Education World: Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!
Lots of activities that can be done in a classroom to celebrate the month. Includes biographies of Hispanic Americans in History, graphing from the US Bureau of Census, trivia questions, and more. Site also provides a long list of related sites about Hispanic Heritage on the Internet.

Tags: ELL Channel, literature, Multicultural Resources

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