Content for Virtual Tour:
3rd Grade Social Studies Objective 2
Describe how various communities have adapted to existing environments and how other communities have modified the environment.

a. Describe the major world ecosystems (i.e. desert, plain, tropic, tundra, grassland, mountain, forest, wetland).

b. Investigate ways different communities have adapted into an ecosystem.

I chose to do the virtual tour on major world ecosystems and how communities adapt to those environments because this curriculum fits very well with using this type of technology to teach. I think the best way to learn about the environment is to go out and explore it. A third grade class will probably not be allowed to fly to South America and Africa to learn about the ecosystems there, but they can learn through seeing pictures, watching films, finding it on a map, and reading about it. This multimodal representation helps students to be able to interact with the environment in a sense and discover more about it then just reading about it in a text book.

Location	Activity Description	Google Earth Content
1. Sahara Desert	Read about the Sahara, describe the inhabitants who have typically lived there over time and how they survived. Look at the temperature in the Sahara Desert. Now compare it with the other locations on the tour. What are the differences in temperature? What do you think causes the differences?	Wikipedia
2.Amazon Rain Forest	Read the National Geographic article and think about why the rain forest is in danger. What are the negative influences on the environment? How is that impacting the surrounding community? Come up with your own plan based on what you have learned, to help the rain forest survive.	National Geographic Article
3. Rocky Mountains	Look at pictures of the mountains at different times of the year. What are your observations? What are the changes you see at different times of the year. How do you think the surrounding community of people adapt to the changes in the weather? How do the animals adapt?	Picture Links
4. Florida Everglades	Watch the National Geographic clip about the Everglades. What are the Everglades a home to? What are the negative influences right now impacting the Everglades?	Video

thoughts about digital stories

I think that creating and presenting digital stories is a very fun and creative way to teach in the classroom. I think that it could be very challenging though because of the time that it takes to create a digital story. On top of all the other responsibilities a teacher has, it may be hard to make the time to create a digital story to present the information you need to verses using some other digital technology to get the job done.

My Digital Story: Eight Balloons

TPACK

I learned a lot about the value of TPACK this last week and why it is so important for teachers to have this knowledge. TPACK stands for Technology, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge. Basically, TPACK is being able to understand and use technology, understanding and applying good teaching methods for the benifit of the students, and having a knowledge of facts, skills, contents in a particular area. So, if a teacher truly has a knowledge of TPACK and applies it in the classroom, their resources or tools are multiplied in so many ways and as a result, students are able to learn and expand their minds in great new ways. It makes teaching in the classroom much more effective.

Storyboard

The content of my digital story is from 3rd grade language arts, standard 1, objective 2b. The content is a multimodal representation, helping students learn more about poetry through visual, audio, and some textual forms.

I can Skype!

Another skill I just learned...

Week 2...

This week I feel like I have doubled my capacity in using technology. I think the most useful thing I learned doing this week's assignment was just in general, learning how to create a website. I feel like I was able to become more comfortable with different programs I can use on the computer in order to be effective in my technology endeavors in my future classroom. I spent several hours after class trying to solidify everything we learned in class and I feel much more confident now in being able to repeat what we learned. Yay!

This is a very new experience for me. Especially because for the last year and a half I have only been on my email and lds.org (I was on my mission). I have had a few on campus jobs where I have learned more about how to use computer programs like photoshop. I have never loved using technology and actually try to avoid using it when I can. So this will be a great learning and growing experience.