Take Your Class on a Virtual Art Gallery Field Trip with Google Art Project

Teaching art has never been more powerful or interactive.  The Google Art Project is an absolutely incredible resource.  Using street view technology and incredible high resolution imagery, students can virtually tour many of the most famous art galleries around the world, explore famous art works right down to cracks and brush stroke details, learn about famous art works and artists, and much more!  If you're an art teacher, you must explore the Google Art Project with your students.  Incredible!!

Google Street View Just Keeps Getting Better

Google's amazing Street View just keeps getting better and better.  Use this in your classroom to take students on virtual field trips anywhere in the world with incredible 360 degree panoramic views.  Imagery from inside the Colosseum in Rome is newly available in street view, as are a variety of other World Landmarks including the C.N. Tower, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and many more.  You can even ski the slopes of Whistler through Street View.

One of my personal favourites is Stonehenge, where it is actually possible to get the 360 degree view from inside the circle that you can't even get if you visit in person!

You can also visit the Street view home page to teach your students how Google creates the Street View images.

All you need is a data projector connected to one of your classroom computers to open up a world of possibilities to your students using Google Street View.

Compare Front Pages from Around the World

The Newseum in Washington D.C. is one of Education Officer Tim Ralph's favourite places in the world, and well worth a visit if you're ever in Washington.  But their website is also an incredible tool for classroom use.  If you discuss current events with your students, you have to check out the Newseum's Today's Front Pages map.

This amazing tool displays interactive maps, organized by continent.  Hover over any of the yellow dots, and you see a thumbnail of the current day's newspaper front page from that city.  Click on the thumbnail to view a larger image or a readable pdf of the front page, as well as a live link to the full website of that newspaper.

This is an incredible tool which could be used by students during independent reading, for group research, or for whole group instruction.  Imagine comparing and contrasting how newspapers around the world report on the same news topics.

Check out Today's Front Page soon;  you and your students will love it

Wallwisher - A Virtual Bulletin Board for Your Classroom

Wallwisher is a free online application that allows you to instantly create an  online bulleting board.  You can share the customized URL you create with your students, who can then post text and links to images on the wall.  This is a great way to add instant online collaboration to your lessons.  Imagine your students responding on a class Wall to a read aloud, adding new vocabulary to a Wall as part of a literature circle, brainstorming as a pre-writing activity, and much more!  Add your own ideas for using Wallwisher to our 6 Easy Clicks Wall.

Microblogging

Many of our kids are excited about using social media in their own lives.  Can we leverage the appeal of 140 character thoughts in our classroom?  You be the judge - Twiducate allows teachers to create a class of students and have the students communicate in a Twitter-type style.