The Tech Savvy Teacher

“The World is Round…and full of technology!”

In our day and age we take it for granted that we know the Earth is round, that it is the third planet in the solar system, and even that we know what a solar system is! I remember my teachers trying to bring this concept to life when I was an elementary school student. We made a model of the solar system out of Styrofoam balls, hanging them in a cardboard box with string and paperclips. Then we further explored the surface of the earth by making 3dimensional maps out of clay. I spent hours on my map, trying to mold the mountains just tall enough and the valleys just deep enough. I couldn’t wait to use the water color paints to make the land green and the water blue. I loved these activities as a kid, and I still use them in my classroom with my students. But just as people in the age of Columbus had to adjust to the idea of a round world, today we have to adjust to the wealth of technology at our fingertips and learn how to implement it into our classroom instruction.


The following acticity shows just one way to implement technology using World Wind, a program by NASA. World Wind allows its users to explore the surface of the Earth, moon and other planets from space.

Grade 3, Science standard 1: Students will understand that the shape of Earth and the moon are spherical and be able to list the differences in the physical appearance of the Earth and the moon as viewed from space by observing, classifying, inferring about, processing and analyzing data.

Help students navigate through World Wind to answer the questions for thier mission. Here are some tips:

This is the default screen you will see when you open the program.

Navigation in World Wind is fairly intuitive. Click on a spot and drag the mouse to move around the world.

To zoom in, roll the wheel in your mouse forward/up, and backward/down to zoom out. If your mouse doesn't have wheel, then hold down the left and right mouse buttons as you move the mouse forward/up to zoom in, and backward/down to zoom out.

The layer manager allows you to add and remove features for the program. To make it easier to see the land on the Earth, unselect "global clouds," circled in yellow.

To switch to view the moon, open the file menu, and click moon. This will appear:

The moon is navigated just at the Earth was. If you don't want place names to show, uncheck it in the layer manager on the left of the screen. On the top of the screen are icons that will give the user a better look at features of the moon up close.

This is what it looks like zoomed in on the moon.

You can see how easy it is to use technology in the classroom! As a student, wouldn't you have loved playing with this technology to supplement your styrofoam model of the solar system and your 3-D clay map? As a teacher, can you see how this technology makes abstract ideas concrete? Stay tuned for the next edition of The Tech Savvy Teacher: Mapping the world and more with Kidsperation...