netTrekker Blog

Make-a-Flake, Make-a-Snowman & Looking into Holidays Past

Happy Holidays from netTrekker! In honor of the holiday season, we will be featuring several Sites of the Day.

Elementary users can explore two virtual worlds called Make-a-Flake and Make-a-Snowman. Make-a-Flake teaches real-world scissoring skills by letting players create snowflakes from folded sheets of paper. Those who don’t feel like virtual snipping can print out a fabulous flake from a gallery of countless designs and start making snowflakes in real life! Make-a-Snowman allows users to build a snowman and read an animated story about ten little snowmen.  Other links in this site provide emergent reading skills.

Middle and High users are welcome to explore Holidays Past by The Library of Congress. This site allows users to investigate a virtual house for each season and features holidays to celebrate during that  season.  Click  on a window to learn about the past through primary sources such as documents, audio clips, movies and images.  This is a very cool way to look at how our holidays have been celebrated throughout history and a reminder of the power of using primary source materials in the classroom!

Click here to login to netTrekker and access the Site of the Day.

Login to netTrekker before midnight (eastern) today to access the netTrekker Site of the Day and add it to your “My Portfolio” for easy future reference.  After midnight, the new Site of the Day will go up and you’ll have to look for today’s site using netTrekker’s search tool. Need help with My Portfolio? Easy, handy instructions can be found here.

Not yet a netTrekker subscriber? Visit www.nettrekker.com and click on the Free Trial link at the top right of the page for 14 days of complimentary access to netTrekker.

Tags: history, holidays, site of the day, snowflake, snowman, winter

Snowy Days

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a great snowfall, or had a white Christmas. I loved snow days growing up, building snowmen and igloos (which I really did try to sleep in one night), snow angels, sledding, snowball fights, and then the nice warm hot chocolate with marshmallows overflowing. Those were the best days!

Living in coastal Florida, I don’t believe I’ll be seeing a lot of snow anytime soon. I haven’t had much luck in making it to a snowy place either. Every time I get there, the snow melts and starts back up when I leave. But snowflakes can still be apart of my life, and classroom lessons, this season. With netTrekker d.i., snow can “warmly” be part of your sponge activities and lessons for the remaining few days before winter break. Let me share with you my discoveries.

I started my search in Elementary and decided to look up “snowman” and refined my search for interactive media. It took me some time to get back to this post as I practiced my mouse skills while building a snowman. Next, I searched Middle School for “snowflake” and then used the refinement menu to narrow my search for interactive games. There are two websites which help you to create your own snowflakes, without any of the cold.  My last stop was high school, where I did a search for snow. Again, my trusty refinement menu came in handy as I narrowed my searches down by subject. I used Language Arts and Writing and Grammar as my refinement selection and found a lesson plan from the New York Times for students to write riddles about their favorite season. I tried my hand at a few, then went back to the snowflake site to illustrate.

Did you do a winter search in netTrekker d.i.? Care to share with us one of your great finds and how you plan to use those sites in your classroom? Just leave a comment below!

(Image citation: Irish, kelley. dsc00265.jpg. 2008. Pics4Learning. 15 Dec 2008 http://pics.tech4learning.com)

Tags: integration, netTrekker d.i., Pics4Learning, refinement menu, snow, winter