Total Techies This Week!
Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 5:21PM As many of you know, we are a homeschooling family. We have recently completed our first 6 weeks of the year and will celebrate by diving into a couple of fun projects. Since we are on a technology roll around here, I thought it would be fun to explore ways to enhance our studies of Medieval History and Physical Science. So, after much deliberation, I have decided that we will tackle the following two projects:
- Interactive 3-D Timeline for History
- 3-D blueprints of a roller coaster to use to build an actual working model
To accomplish these things, I thought we would use Google Sketchup and Dipity. I am very new to these programs, but thought it would be fun to explore the possibilities. I have included links to the lessons I planned to accompany each activity.
- Timeline of Medieval History: Here's what we have so far! Obviously, this is a work in progress, but really cool! Dipity allows you to link not only to images, but youtube videos and webpages too. Wow!
- May The Force Be With You: This is going ot be more of a challenge, but should prove to be a memorable learning experience.
Also, I am continuing to find ways to enhance our vocabulary studies. This week, we are using Visuwords to create fantastic word webs. This is an amazing, interactive, graphical dictionary! After entering your word, you are given a design resembling a neural net. You can quickly see parts of speech and browse various word meanings. Check out the web below for one of our words: abrupt.
I would love to hear any comments and/or suggestions. I'll do a follow-up post of our progress. Also, check out other Thirsty Thursday posts at the Five J's.