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

Kissing Frogs brings Literature and Culture to the Classroom

The Princess and the Frog will debut in theaters this December.  Disney brings to us, “a modern twist on a classic tale.”  Set in the bayous of Louisiana, this film follows the adventures of a frog prince and a beautiful girl.

As this movie is filled with Cajun culture and a definite contrast to classic literature, it provides the perfect introduction to a multicultural unit of study centered around familiar classic folk or fairy tales, as well as, any other topics related to holidays or cultural events.

netTrekker’s Multicultural Pavilion and other portions of the ELL channel contain a wealth of resources to help students study classic literature and the cultural  traditions represented in diverse school populations.

Choose a familiar classic folk or fairy tale or any other topic relating to culture.  In the Elementary tab of netTrekker, do a keyword search for Venn Diagrams.  Use the subject refinement and choose Language Arts>Literature.  On this page you will find a great place to begin planning,  Scholastic: Myths, Folktales, and Fairy Tales: Online Activity Teacher’s Guide. Scholastic’s Online Activities are designed to support the teaching of standards-based skills. While participating in the Myths, Folktales, and Fairy Tales project, students become proficient with the skills listed below, only to mention a few.

* Appreciate diverse cultures and traditions through folklore and folktales.
* Compare historic world cultures with contemporary ones.
* Demonstrate understanding of the genres by responding to questions.

Select a story based on your content standards and the cultural diversity of your student population. For example, you many choose to study the Persian version of Cinderella. You will find that this Cinderella may prefer a sturdy sandal to a glass slipper so that she may trek through the sandy Persian terrain. If you are a physical education teacher, you may choose to focus on the sports of a particular culture. Math teachers may be interested in converting currency or analyzing climate statistics.

Use the resources in the Multicultural Pavilion and/or any other portion of the ELL channel in netTrekker to locate resources to help students study the food, geographic features, weather and climate, dress, or any other topics pertinent to your curriculum.

For the assessment of this project, create a plan for students to produce a visual representation of what they’ve learned.  Encourage students to cook authentic dishes, create cultural costumes and enjoy  associated art and music to produce a shared Cultural Literacy Festival.

To learn more about the Multicultural Pavilion and other resources to support your ELL student population, contact your Account Manager. We’d love to provide the perfect Professional Development solution for you.

Tags: ELL, language arts, multiculture, profess, professional development, standards, Training

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

The Venerable PBS

First, I searched for “pbs teachersource” and got several results, one of which was the PBS Teachers site, of course. From there it’s easy enough to look around and seek specific items of interest. They have a large amount of Professional Development, Teacher Resources, and Standards-based Resources available from the home page. Nice.

Curious about just what I’d find using netTrekker like most folks do, I performed a couple of fairly random keyword searches to then refine using the Collections. Here are some winners:

I tried “wolf” from the High School tab and got a lesson plan from NOVA about wolf relocation programs that included handouts and answers!

I tried “twain” from the Middle School tab and found a fairly extensive curriculum from a PBS show, “Culture Shock,” for teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and dealing with the controversial material in the book. I know I hated reinventing the wheel when teaching, so having a unit I could modify instead of creating one from scratch was always welcome.

Lastly, I thought I should try an Elementary tab search, so I looked for “president” and got a short, cute activity from PBSkid’s Arthur section. I happen to like Arthur, so it looks like fun to me, and it also includes everyone’s favorite part of early childhood education: snack! Maybe I’ll talk Presidential elections, Arthur-style with my kindergartener and we can vote on the snack, too.

 

Tags: Arthur, huck finn, NOVA, PBS, PBSTeacherSource, professional development, The Collections