Using Google Earth...on Mars?

In writing curriculum for the University of Houston/NASA Mars Rover Celebration, I had the opportunity to explore a little more in Google Earth...Mars.

What a great way to engage students and take a trip to Mars!  By activating the Google Earth Mars function, students can explore Mars freely on their own by spinning Mars to different locations and clicking icons that display facts and images.  Students can even visit specific locations on Mars by using the "Fly To" feature or chat with Meliza, Mars' resident alien, to learn more about the red planet.  

If free exploration isn't for you, students can take a guided tour of Mars, narrated by Ira Flatow and Bill Nye. Or, if you're feeling creative, record and narrate your own tour of Mars.

For an out-of-this-world experience, download Google Earth at: http://earth.google.com/mars/

Google Forms

Today is a great day to sing the praises of Google Forms.  I'm working with some folks from AIAA, FAA, NASA, AFA, and the Navy to put together a STEM teacher workshop this summer and we needed a good way to collect information regarding their workshop sessions.  Enter Google forms.  By the end of the conference call, I was able to create a basic form, share it with everyone on the call and request for them to complete it.  It's great for organization because everyone is submitting information in the same way.  No faxes, emails, etc to lose. Plus, Google forms drops the information into a spreadsheet saving me a lot of extra work! If you haven't experienced Google forms, you should definitely give it a try!

Google Docs for Collaboration

Google Docs is a great tool for collaborating in the classroom or across the nation.  With Google Docs, students can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and even graphics and share them with others.

Google Docs now supports a clip art library of sorts by allowing you to search Google Images to insert into your project.  Most educators shy away from Google Images because of the inappropriate images that could come up in a search, but using Google Images through Google Docs will yield different results as they have put a filter in place to make it more education friendly.

STEM- Where do I Go For for Help?

For teachers who are new to STEM, or even for the STEM veterans who get stuck from time to time, the question becomes: Where can I go for help?

Maybe you work in a district that has a STEM Director (Don't laugh.  Some actually do...SO jealous!) Or, maybe you are fortunate to work with a colleague who knows their way around and is willing to share.

For everyone else, it sometimes can be difficult to find help when all of your colleagues have a full plate and are struggling to keep their own heads above a sea of papers to grade.

 So where do you go for help?  In this age of everything digital, Google is actually an excellent resource. By carefully selecting your keywords, you should be able to hunt down the information you are looking for.  If you're still having trouble, try Google's Advanced Search.  You can choose the keywords to include as well as exclude and even filter by filetype or region.

Another great search engine to try is NowRelevant.  NowRelevant is a automatically filters the results to things that were posted in the last two weeks.  So, no more reading old articles or research on a current topic.

What to explore a little differently?  If you'd rather watch a video than read an article, try a ClipBlast.  ClipBlast is a video search engine that searches professional video clips from top credible sources like CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC and others.

Trying other sites such as Scribd or Slideshare are a good bet too and usually yield some useable files like Word documents and PowerPoint presentations that you can easily reuse or rework (with attributions, or course). As always, be aware that these sites are not exclusive to education, so inappropriate content may exist.

When all else fails, you can always send me an email :) but these resources should be able to help answer your STEM questions and provide you with additional supplemental resources for your STEM lessons.