This week we are back with another presenter. We had Kirsten come in to guest speak for our class and she was lovely. She brought a lot of great points in about different learning for students and certain resources that can help our students. She talked a lot about nature and what that looked like based on what land looks like now and what it used to look like. She gave great resources to help students learn about nature such as google earth or Minecraft. Minecraft will always be a great hit for students but it can actually be a great resources because all the things they have to build have names and you have to use your natures resources to create a living for your self. I thought it was super cool to think about mine craft that way and to find an educational purpose in such a fun game. Looking at google earth is super awesome as well because there are so many different tools that can help you learn on there. I know I took a geography class last year and we used google earth a ton. We used it to measure glaciers and to see the difference of what they look like based on different years. it was really fun to play around with but we also learned a lot about measuring and looking at different time lines.

Another thing we talked about was certain picture apps that can help us learn as we go. So if you take a picture of a certain plan outside you can get an answer on what kind of plant it is which can help you further your research. I ended up just using my phone camera as it has a special feature that allows for the same image identification as the apps do. It was very cool to see. Another app like this is one my dad has that points to the sky when a plane is flying by and it tells him all the details about that flight. I think that is another awesome way to use technology to learn.

After we had a lot of discussion we moved on into groups to visit the gardens at UVic. I thought this was awesome because it felt like a little field trip. we were able to use those different apps to capture a picture of the nature and it would tell us what it is. The knowledge that the different apps and cameras gave us cause a lot of discussion which I thought was great as well! It was so nice to walk around nature and utilize these awesome resources. I cant wait to use this as maybe a body break for my students and have them go outside but they are actually learning tons from checking out the different plants around us.

I am so thankful Kirsten was able to come in today and teach us so much about all these amazing resources! Thanks Kirsten!!

See you next week!