Welcome to GeoQuest!

Welcome! You are about to begin an exciting journey in Geography! I've created a quest of sorts that requires you to work through five themes of Geography. At the beginning of every theme, you will be given a hint that will help you to create your final project. At the end of each theme you will need to complete a task before moving on. You can comment, ask questions, and respond to themes on the student blog located under the "Home" tab. You will be told that you have been teleported to some other location on the earth and it is up to you to use your hints and work through each theme to help you create an informational page about the country you were teleported to. This page should include the country's population, language, government, climate types, tourist attractions, and a few pictures of the people and sites of the country. To begin your quest click on the "Intoduction" tab. Read each hint carefully and make sure you complete the required task before you move on to the next theme. Good luck!!

Educational Value of Animoto

Recently I put together a video for U.S. Geography using the Web 2.0 tool Animoto. Honestly, I was dreading the idea of using this tool and was thinking it was going to be complicated to use, but it was so easy and so much fun! If I had that much fun using this tool, I can only imagine that students allowed to use this to create work for a class would greatly enjoy getting to work with technology. While students may see it as fun or games, they are really learning how to collaborate, communicate, and create lasting products on a global scale. Animoto is a great tool that even students who don't view themselves as creative would enjoy. This site lets you upload photos or videos, text, music, and style of your video. Then you can arrange the information and Animoto will put it all together for you. It's great! I can see kids getting excited about research topics now because they can take their research and put into a video that synthesizes what they've learned to help others understand their topic. This is a great tool for collaboration, summary and synthesis, and authentic learning and producing. My Animoto shows different landmarks around the U.S. and my students love trying to figure out which state each landmark is in.

Make a video of your own at Animoto.