Tour the United States

Technology resources

• Computer lab with internet connection
• PowerPoint or some other presentation program.
• I would suggest backing up the files in some way so you do not loose the work in the event of a hard drive failure.

Pre-activities

Students will need to have some instruction on PowerPoint or whichever program you use just prior to starting this project. I usually start with a small presentation on families to introduce them to the various tools, colors, clip art, graphic items, and text options. I keep this to about 3 - 4 weeks at most and have the students make a title slide, a slide that shows their family members, a slide that shows family pets or other important family items, and a credits slide. Students create all family images using the drawing tools. For the pets, they can begin to use clip art or graphic items. This presentation is just an introductory so completion is dependent on time available.

Activities

1. The activities are done in conjunction with the media specialist/librarian, classroom teachers, and the computer teacher (if there is one). Coordination is key to the success of this project so frequent or ongoing meetings should be expected and desired. The meetings between computer teacher and media specialist/librarian will need to happen more often than classroom teachers.
2. Classroom teachers introduce the students to the states and begin the exploration of learning about the various regions culminating with assigning the states. This is done in conjunction with the media specialist/librarian prior to the start of presentation software instruction in the lab.
3. During the time the students are beginning to research their states, the students work on their family slides (from the pre-activity) in the computer lab. Once the students have completed their family slides, the students can start creating their state presentations using the checklists provided.
4. Using the checklist, students construct their presentations using the file naming structure that you tell them to use. I have the students create a state folder in their server folder where everything related to their state will be stored or downloaded into during the entire project. This organization is crucial so the students will know where the images are located once they downloaded them from their state’s web site.
5. Students will use the checklist to create their presentation. When downloading images from the internet, please have them record the web address and the date they downloaded it so they can cite it later. (See the Learn More section in the sidebar for information on copyright).
6. PowerPoint skills are taught as the slides are constructed so students build their skills through continued use of the many tools.

Assessment

• Students may be assessed using the criteria found on the checklist.
• An extension of the assessment would be for the students to use their new state knowledge to design a new state license plate or quarter. This extension would let the teacher know if the students internalized the information learned rather then just copied and pasted without having it stick. Teachers would need to create a rubric for this sort of extension to gauge the level of knowledge needed as well as the creativity involved. This extension could be added to the stack as a new card.

Comments

This is a great project if you can manage the time and have the equipment to do it. We have used Alpha Smarts to do some of the word processing in the classrooms so it was not taking lab time to word process.