Author: Peter Pappas

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First Google Map Discovered – Created in 1652

I enjoy looking at historic maps and other visual displays of information. I was browsing online images from the National Gallery of Art’s current exhibit “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age” and was startled to see  “A Bird’s-Eye View of Amsterdam” painted (around 1652), by Jan Micker.

Micker’s work certainly parallels the Google Map satellite view. Especially noteworthy are his realistic depiction of details, shadows of clouds and the large key with drop shadow in the lower right corner. Not bad considering he lacked an aerial perspective. He was inspired by a similar work (minus shadows) from 1538 by Cornelis Anthonisz. 

Below is a current Google Map of Amsterdam for comparison. 
Note: the Google maps faces north. Micker’s view faces south.
Click map to enlarge or go to Google map of Amsterdam 

Google

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Teaching with Historic Photographs: The Google LIFE Photo Archive

Google has posted ten million photographs from the LIFE photo archive on their online gallery of images. It's a great source of material for teachers and students who support a document-based approach to teaching history. 

While I wish that Google had done more to curate the collection with robust search tools and more specific categories, I think that teachers will find it to be an invaluable resource to enable students to "be the historian."

I've put together this quick guide to help you get started.

1.  If you are unfamiliar with the document-based approach to teaching history, you might want to start with a quick visit to my web site Teaching With Documents. There you find many resources including Document-Based Questions (DBQ) for  students grade 2 – high school. Of particular interest are these Student Analysis Guides and for more detailed analysis – my Reading a Visual Document: Guiding Questions. (55KB pdf)

2.  If you are interested in how historic documents can be used to support literacy and critical thinking, visit my sample:  Homefront America in WW II.  It shows how to improve content reading comprehension with source documents framed around essential questions that link the past and present. 

3.  Now that you have some instructional background in using historic photos – it's time to visit the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. It's organizes images by era and subject. Once you click on an image you get a brief description and some labels (tags) that allow you to find similarly tagged images. 

Lange For example here's one of the archive photos taken by Dorothea Lange in the Migrant Mother Series. It makes a great contrast to the iconic photo she took that day that is more commonly reproduced in textbooks. (You might ask your students which of the five photos they would choose, and why?)

The LIFE archive includes this description with the photograph: Migrant mother Florence Thompson & children photographed by Dorothea Lange.
Location: Nipomo, CA, US
Date taken: 1936
Photographer: Dorothea Lange

And LIFE archive uses these labels for this photo: Lange, Dorothea, Mothers, Fsa Photographers, Us, Tension Or Worrying, American, Poverty, Florence Thompson, Photography By, Migratory, Farmers, California, Expressions, Agriculture, 1930s
4.  If you don't already use Cooliris, I suggest you download this free browser plug in. It presents the photos in a broad panorama that  allows you to scroll through many images.  I've embedded a short clip below of Cooliris in action, so you can see how it can transform your browser when searching for images and videos on Cooliris supported websites.

5.  And remember that all Google image searches allows you to specify image size with this drop down box in the upper left of the screen. 



Picture 2
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Why Study Algebra?

Today I listened to NPR's Scott Simon and Keith Devlin of Stanford University, answer the question: Why Do We Need to Learn Algebra? (NPR Weekend Edition Saturday~February 28, 2009). Devlin described how spreadsheets have become essential to managing everything from your finances to your fantasy football team. And of course, spreadsheet are basically collections of algebraic formulas. You can follow this link to the NPR story, comments and audio file. Teachers might use Devlin's comments as a springboard for getting students to think and discuss the application of algebraic thinking in their lives. 

 

Excel 

 

This is essential, since algebra is emerging as an academic gate keeper. I'm not a math teacher, but I suspect it stems in part from the fact that many students lack basic computation skills. But more importantly,  students have to be able to transition from concrete lower order thinking skills (arithmetic) to higher-level and more abstract thinking (algebra and beyond).  

 

As Doug Reeves has noted, "The single highest failure rate in high school is Algebra I. After pregnancy, it’s the leading indicator of high school dropout. The leading indicator of success in Algebra I is English 8. The Algebra 1 test is a reading test with numbers.”  District Administrator, April ‘05

 

If Reeves is correct, then this is as much a literacy problem as a math problem. Teachers of all content areas can pitch in to support the higher order skills (analysis, evaluation and creating) that will help students with more advance mathematical thinking. 
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President Obama’s Federal Budget 2010 – Education

Education continues to dominate the news with the release of President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget – "A New Era of Responsibility."

“The path to jobs and growth begins in America’s classrooms. The decisions we make about how to educate our children will shape our future for generations to come. They will determine not just whether our children have the chance to fulfill their God-given potential, or whether our workers have the chance to build a better life for their families, but whether we, as a nation, will remain in the 21st Century, the kind of global economic leader that we were in the twentieth. If we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate the world today.”  ~ President Barack Obama 

Click for Office of Management and Budget Fact Sheet Download Fy10_education   

This budget comes on the heels of  the recent stimulus package which devoted $115B for education. Diagram from Education Week. Click chart to enlarge.

Ed-stim

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President Obama’s Address to Congress 2/24/09 – Education in the Word Cloud Top 25!

Note: For full web version of President Barack Obama's speech to Congress Feb 24, 2009 click here.  

I think Wordle.net is a great tool that helps teachers and students to analyze text. Read my post to see some ideas for how you can use Wordle to foster literacy and critical thinking in your classroom. 

I used Wordle to make the "word cloud" below out of the text from President Obama's speech to Congress. I chose a setting to display the 25 most frequently used words in his speech. Glad to see that education made the top 25 of his verbal agenda!

You can make your own Wordle version of  his speech. Here's a text file Obama-2-25-09 of his words taken from the NY Times transcript. (I deleted the applause breaks.) Copy and paste it to the Wordle "Create" page and make your own word cloud. For more on Wordle font and layout setting click here. 
Obama-address-25