Waffle Bytes

Teachers - check out the US Census Bureau's Statistics in School (SIS) .  A plethora of resources for you - and since it is a .gov site, they are public domain (free to use). Find Activities and Resources A variety of activities searchable by either curriculum area or grade level are provided free on the site.  New activities have been added designed specifically for the 2020 Census.  You and your students can also find: Maps, Data Access Tools, Historical Documents and Images, Constitution Day resources and more.   Seeking Ambassadors Apply to be a teacher ambassador by October 24. Making sure ALL children are counted is especially important for education. 2020 Census responses will drive decisions on how more than $675 billion in federal funds will be distributed each year for the next 10 years to educational programs. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistics in Schools (SIS) is looking for ambassadors in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samo...

Carmen Sandiego is back - have your students use Google Earth to learn a bit of geography while chasing her down for the Crown Jewels!  Then have them research cities, landmarks and airports and create their own version of the game. You can find the game 2 ways - if you go to Google Maps, a message will appear asking if you want to Catch Carmen Sandiego - If you go straight to Google Earth, there is a new red button to begin the game - First you will get a splash screen - When you start the game, you get your assignment - Then move into a split screen with Google Earth on the left, and the game elements on the right - Gathering information, you then "fly" to the next city based on the clues - Nostalgic for some, but it can still be a great way to introduce kids to some cities and landmarks they may have never heard of.

What: Map Michigan Contest! 2019 Who:  High School (grades 9-12) and Middle School (grades 4-8) students When:   Entry form due by March 22; submission deadline is May 15 Prizes:  10 - $100 prizes for each level Learn more at  https://bit.ly/2zsTv16ArcGIS  Synopsis From MDE Memo #172-18 : Details for the ArcGIS Online United States Competition 2019 in which students create and share maps about their home states are now available. "The competition is open to students in both middle and high school who can analyze, interpret, and present data via an ArcGIS online presentation, web application, or story map.  To participate, a school must complete an entry form by March 22, 2019. A school may submit up to five projects to the competition website.  Submissions must be received no later than May 15, 2019." Software is freely available for K-12 instructional use from Esri.  To learn more about how to access this free software go to http...

  There are many cool things that can be done with My Maps, but this is one that uses Google Sheets.  Often when students are reading a novel, they have no location context to put cities or places that are mentioned.  There are teachers that have been using Google Lit Trips for many years, but what if you are unable to use Google Earth?  What if you want a simpler activity that students can complete quickly? What if you want something that is accessible to students in their G Suite Drive? You can build a quick activity using Google Sheets and My Maps.  Here's how: 1. Set up your Google Sheet Provide headers for anything you want included on the pop-ups for the markers on the map.  Here I have set up so students can add the following: Place, Description, Chapter, Location, Support Link 2. Fill in the data This can be done by you, or you can share the sheet with your students and have them fill it in.  Any cells can be left blank, with the...

The United States Drought Monitor site tracks drought status throughout the United States.  In addition to the current map, there are additional maps - even an animated map to see changes over time.   (Part of the Useful Site Flashback series - sometimes we forget about the good websites out there!)

Great find of images, primary sources, and a variety of other resources for school use! From the site: "DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA —photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more— are free and immediately available in digital format . The cultural institutions participating in DPLA represent the richness and diversity of America itself, from the smallest local history museum to our nation’s largest cultural institutions. Our core work includes bringing new collections and partners into DPLA, building our technology, and managing projects that further our mission through curation, education, and community building."

There is an addition in your "More" area when creating items in Google - it's called Google My Maps. This is a great place to create some customized maps which can be saved and shared just like other Google items in Drive.  Some applications - creating a map of schools in your league mapping traveling routes viewing where students in your class are clustered a map of local historical sites mapping locations in a novel students are reading The easiest way to create a map is to use or create a Google Spreadsheet with the data.  Make sure to use headers on your spreadsheet for importing purposes! My friend Joe Rommel over at Berrien RESA has blogged here about how to import this into a Map - Your browser does not support iframes.

Thanks for this gem from Greg Miller at Wired - The USGS has a new online map viewer that display maps that cover the entire country and are FREE to download.   Here's from Greg - " Hunting for historical topo maps on the USGS site used to be confusing and annoying. It involved a lot of clicking on what you hoped was the right thing, squinting at the tiny preview maps, and twiddling your thumbs while the enormous full-sized version downloaded. And then starting over when it turned out to be the wrong thing.... Now, browsing and searching for maps is much more intuitive. You can type or zoom in on a particular place, limit your search to maps of a particular scale or from a particular range of dates. You can download them in a variety of formats, from JPGs (fine for printing out a nice map to put on your wall), to KMZ files (to import into Google Earth), to GeoTIFFs (for the power users who wants to import maps into GIS software). There’s even a  YouTube tutorial  that...

MapAList is a FREE "wizard for creating and managing customized Google maps of address lists."  What use is this to you?  Here are some ideas - ELA - your class is reading a book and have students input locations mentioned in the book, now they can see a map of these locations; or create a map of everywhere your students' Flat Stanleys have traveled. Social Studies - your class is studying a long term event (say, a war) and you can build a map of the locations you are studying; OR for younger students, you can display a map of where the students in your class live Because the data is stored in a Google spreadsheet, the map updates automatically as you add or change items within the spreadsheet. You do need an account to use MapAList, but that is because it asks for permission to connect to your Google Account.  Once setup, it keeps an list of any maps you have created so you can update or change them.  Maps can be either private or public, and you can e...