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

Are You the Biggest User?

This blog post is the first of an exciting series to come. Many of us are inspired by the hard work and accomplishments of the men and women who participate in The Biggest Loser. Through coaching and the support of peers these dedicated individuals learn new things and discover tools and strategies to gain a wonderful new lifestyle.

This experience is much like the virtual community in NT101, netTreker’s Online Professional Development Course. We are currently in our sixth session and our participant group includes a diverse group of over 200 people including teachers, media specialists, curriculum coordinators, administrators, and content evaluators all representing many regions of the United States.

I recently sent out a request to the NT101 Alumni groups to write in and let us know how they are doing “after they left the training camp.” Within just a few minutes, I had an amazing response. Jo Anne McClelland from Sierra Sands School District in Ridgecrest California wrote back to me, “I Have a Great One!” She explained to me that on the first day of school, during first period, as she was checking attendance, she noticed one of her eighth graders who had not answered roll call. Knowing he was a new, unfamiliar face, Jo Anne matched him up with the one name left on her roster. At the end of the day she received a message from the office that this new student was from China, had only been in the United States for two weeks and spoke very little English. JoAnne knew absolutely NO Chinese. After working with him a few days, it was evident that he read and understood English a little better than he could speak.

JoAnne called in “netTrekker to the rescue” with the Read Aloud feature. “I just pull up a list of search results that relate to our lesson of the day, have him use my computer and he loves exploring, with the assistance of ‘Mike’ or ‘Lauren’ to help him learn English and history. It’s been 7 weeks and now he brings an electronic translator to class and is able to complete most of the written work that the class is working on. Thank you netTrekker!”

This is just one of the many training success stories. Visit netTrekker Village to join our online learning community, meet members in your regional group, participate in discussions, enjoy reading Best Practices, watching videos and learning about exciting upcoming events. If you have training success story to share, please let us know. You may be the next Biggest User.

Tags: netTrekker, NT101, Training

What Are You Showing Us Exactly?

One of the gems I discovered at the SDE conference was this video from Saturday Night Live showing Fred and his Magic Map. I searched so many different ways, so many different times looking for this video, and finally stumbled across it by accident.  It’s a hilarious video showing all the cool things you can do with a map on an interactive white board. But then a question came up, “what are you showing us exactly?”

I fell in love with this video for so many different reasons. Mainly because it emphasizes that we need to be trained on all new programs and equipment, otherwise it’ll be abused and misused. For instance, why is it important to that you can bounce a state or scramble them up? Well for scrambling, can you put the states back in the correct order, and as they entered the Union?

Recently I was conducting a training and a teacher was upset about having to be there all day for a six hour training. After all, it’s netTrekker, simple to use and she already knew how to search. I asked her to just give me a little bit of her time and let’s see how she feels after the first thirty minutes. I started the training, talked about the various ways to search with standards and then keyword and the refinement menu. While the teachers took their turn to find resources, I went over to this particular teacher and asked her if she wanted to stay for a bit longer or if she still wanted to leave. She said that the refinement menu was new, so she’d stick around for a bit longer but probably wouldn’t come back after lunch. As the day progressed, this teacher stayed focus and on task. She had ignored the dictionary button, the read aloud key, the various features, and definitely didn’t know all that you could do with the My Portfolio. She ended up being the last person to leave the session, sticking around to pick my brain for other possibilities.

It proved to me that even if you “know” something, sometimes it’s good to have a refresher or an enhancing session on it. After all, how many times do we teach planets or addition or the structure of the US Government in our curriculum from the time the students start school to the time they graduate? There is always something that needs to be refreshed, and knowledge that can be expanded.

Another thing I learned? Make sure that as a trainer I not only show the class the fun stuff, but the relevant stuff and make the connections to their curriculum. Otherwise, all they’ll do is make Michigan bounce, and really, does Michigan need to be bounced? Make sure there is a connection and they know exactly why they are attending (besides “because I said so”).

If you are about to attend a session of professional development, even if it’s a mandated session that you’ve already been to before, I want you to do some investigating. Keep a fresh mind though and see if there’s some nugget of information that you can actually take away and use. If you don’t find something, raise your hand or approach the instructor at the end and ask how this relates to what you do. Maybe, just maybe, they didn’t realize they weren’t making that connection and you can help them improve their training for the next group.

If you are looking for professional development ideas, check with your CRM Rep. We conduct a variety of training, including an integration coures that are customized to your needs. Digital storytelling, Google Earth, Web 2.0 Tools, and more. All integrate netTrekker and all are hands on fun. Then of course we have our basics, train the trainer, webinars, and nT101 courses. You can’t go wrong with a netTrekker Training.

Tags: SNL, Training