Summer Homework

Most people think teachers are spending their summers relaxing on the beach, reading trashy novels and just enjoying their time "off."  I am spending my summer working doing all those things AND taking a class to improve my abilities to integrate technology into the curriculum.  One of my assignments is to explore Google apps.  
I started with Google Reader, because I am obsessed with organizing things and this is a great tool to organize all of the blog bookmarks that I check regularly.  I also worked on learning more about Google Maps.  This will be a great tool to help my first graders use technology to enhance their learning.  I am so excited about all the ideas I have to use this tool with my class!!
They could create a map with all of  the community helpers locations indicated.  So, instead of just talking about community helpers and learning about them through books, we could identify the actual locations in our community and record them on a map, making the unit more concrete and real!  
They could also create a map that indicates each child's address.  Each year I find that first graders have a hard time learning their addresses (they confuse town, state and even country!).  Being able to add a pin to our class map would be a great incentive for them to learn their address.  I can just hear the excitement now as each student gets to add a "pin" to our class map and see where their house is in relation to other classmates and to the community helpers we will have learned about.  
You can view the example map that I created here.  It is a map of community helpers in our town.