Noel Jenkins @ Court Fields

Sustainable house game

build the house

Check how well your building is designed here:

Design Quality Analyzer

You need to vsit the Mapzone site. Visit the Homework Help and try the quizzes and games in the MapTivity section. If you get stuck, look at the MapAbility section.

You next task is to comment on the Mapzone site by using the comments form. I am particularly interested in the things you like and any improvements you would make.

If you’ve tried to use Google Earth to find your house in Wellington and been disappointed, have another look now!

Yay!

Other exciting news is that thanks to a generous donation by 3d connexion, we have a class set of Space Navigators to fly around in Google Earth. Come along to D3 and have a go!

We’ll be using them in lessons, but don’t forget the Artwork Earth competition as well.

This competition is open to everyone from Year 7 to 9. All you have to do is find a special place on the Earth, capture a picture and add a suitable caption. The idea is to visualize the Earth as a pice of art. Here’s an example:

There will be prizes for the best ones. I’m looking for originality, creativity, inspiration and a good choice of words to accompany the image. I’ll publish the best ones as well. To get going, do the following:

How to:

1. Start Google Earth, or use this site: NASA Our Earth as Art
2. Browse around until you find a spectacular place.
3. Make a screenshot. (Cntrl + Print Screen)
4. Crop the image if necessary.
5. Upload the image to the Flickr Motivator tool.
6. Add a suitable title and (optional) caption.
7. Download the finished image to your computer.
8. Email it to me at: NJenkins@educ.somerset.gov.uk
   

Some helpful resources:
Download Artwork Earth Google Earth placemarks (you need Google Earth)

See these places on a Google Map

The original teaching idea comes from this web site.
Can you do better than this?

I’m not sure I could. However there will be a prize for the best entry.

Closing date for entries to be emailed to me: 5th July

Following the very successful homework on urban models, and an exhibition of the work attended by Mrs Faull and the other senior teachers, we carried out a peer assessement of some similar work done by year 7 in St Ursula’s School, Greenwich, London.  Click this link to see where their school is.

Having posted pictures of some of the best work on this blog, we looked at models from the London students and recorded our thoughts. These were made into a short video. The videos can be seen here:

Video made by St Ursula’s School

Video made by Court Fields School

Here’s a sample of stunning homework by Year 7. Click the thumbnail for a larger version.

By MV This model is composed of different photos arranged to show the urban zones.

By VC The model shows old grafitti-covered factories next to a railway and a canal.

By PC This is a visually stunning series of panoramas arranged to show perspective with extra labelling done in Paint.

By KT This model has been designed to be viewed at night by shining a torch from beneath the buildings!

By AW Detached houses are arranged in a crescent - typical of houses in the outer suburbs

By SG The different zones are carefully modelled using tiny cardboard buildings

Year 7 students at St Ursula’s school in London have also made some models. We will do some peer assessment next week and let them know what we think of their work.

This is the web site that I showed in the lesson about the origin of place names.