How Do YOU Go Places Around the World?
Celebrating Our Differences, Exploring Our Similarities
by Gayle Berthiaume and Kris Vassos
Students can learn how they are similar to others around the world while studying a specific curricular content area. This lesson is about transportation; however, the same concept/approach can also be applied to other areas such as signs, food, and holidays. Since different schools may study transportation at various ages, or explore them more in depth, the lesson can be modified to meet the needs of the students. Once the teacher has downloaded the photographs, they can be used in any student projects, such as the included iPhoto and Pages books, as well as with iMovie HD projects, GarageBand podcasts, Pages documents, Keynote reports, and so on.
Essential Questions
Objectives
Materials / Resources
Engaging and Effective Activities
Assessment Methods
Enrichment/Extension Activities
Translators
by Gayle Berthiaume and Kris Vassos
Students can learn how they are similar to others around the world while studying a specific curricular content area. This lesson is about transportation; however, the same concept/approach can also be applied to other areas such as signs, food, and holidays. Since different schools may study transportation at various ages, or explore them more in depth, the lesson can be modified to meet the needs of the students. Once the teacher has downloaded the photographs, they can be used in any student projects, such as the included iPhoto and Pages books, as well as with iMovie HD projects, GarageBand podcasts, Pages documents, Keynote reports, and so on.
Essential Questions
- • How are people around the world alike?
• How are people around the world different?
• What factors make our lives similar to or different from those in other countries?
• How do people around the world use transportation?
Objectives
- • Students will explore the concept of transportation through the use of digital media.
• Students will select transportation digital media from an iPhoto library.
• Students will classify the digital media in various transportation categories.
• Students will create a book using transportation photos.
Materials / Resources
- Prior to the lesson, the teacher should collect and download transportation photos from around the world for the class to use. This digital media should be imported into iPhoto. Audio clips may also be downloaded into iTunes.
• Global Photo Gallery [http://web.mac.com/kvassos/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html]
• Digital camera
• Computer and basic knowledge of computer usage, Internet, trackpad, and the Dock
• iLife [http://www.apple.com/ilife/]
• iWork [http://www.apple.com/iwork/]
Engaging and Effective Activities
- Note: Prior to the lesson, introduce enabling terminology and concepts such as transportation, vehicles, air, land, and water. Upper grades can include how different types of transportation have influenced the location of cities; for example, major cities developed near water and ports.
1. Discuss transportation with the students. How do they move from place to place? How many different types of transportation can they list? Prompt students to include modes of transportation other than land vehicles.
2. Using a globe, map, Google Earth [http://earth.google.com/], or the maps.google.com website, look at different countries and ask students to predict the types of transportation people living in other countries may use.
3. For homework, have students keep a list of how they move from place to place over the weekend. For example: How did they get to their grandparents’ house, to the movies, to their friend’s house, to the park?
4. As a group, create a tally of the various modes of transportation the students used over the weekend. Ask the students why they used one mode of transportation over another. For example, why did they use a car to go to the store instead of riding a bike or why they walked to a friend's house instead of riding in a car. Discuss how why we travel may make a difference in the way we travel.
5. Now that students have looked at how they move from place to place, they will examine how similar their modes of transportation are to others around the world.
6. Either in groups or individually, students will use iPhoto [http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/] to select and group together three examples of various modes of transportation from three different countries. (This part of the activity can be varied to meet the needs of the individual learner. Prior to the lesson, the teacher should select an iPhoto theme that allows text captioning below the photos. Depending on each learner’s ability, students can either just place the photos in the iPhoto book, or be required to caption each photo with the country and type of transportation. Older students may also be required to research and write more information about the modes of transportation.)
7. Using these photos, create an iPhoto book [http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/features/books.html] or a Pages book about transportation showing the different modes' similarities and differences.
iPhoto Tutorial [http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/iphoto/new.html]
Pages Templates [http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/iwork/pages.html]
8. After students have created their books, use a map, globe, Google Earth, or Google Maps [http://maps.google.com] to examine the locations of the vehicles the students chose. Discuss the similarities and differences the students discovered. Refer back to the students’ original predications of how they thought others around the world used transportation.
9. As closure, discuss how location and purpose influence how people travel around the world.
Assessment Methods
- • Teacher observation
• Create a rubric for the student project.
Enrichment/Extension Activities
- • Older students may be given a choice of iPhoto, iMovie HD, a GarageBand podcast, Keynote, or Pages for their transportation presentation.
• Download the transportation audio files from the Apple Learning Interchange. Use the digital photos and audio files to create a GarageBand podcast or Keynote presentation that matches the correct sound with the mode of transportation.
• Using a digital camera (or scan in photos or drawings), have the students take photos of modes of transportation from their community or area of the world.
• Find the countries of the transportation photos on the map using Google Earth [http://earth.google.com].
- • The level of expectation can be varied to meet the educational needs of each student. Some students may be required to use photographs from more countries than the basic requirement or to include more information in their text captions.
• Have an older class or volunteer assist those who need help.
• Record the directions using an iPod with a voice recorder.
Translators
Student Projects
Audio
Transportation List
Transportation Photos
Download these photos by Option-clicking the photo on a Mac, Right-clicking the photo on a PC.