For our last club before the mid-term break, I thought it would be fun to play some Halloween games.
We’ve been talking about Cultures around the World this week in school, if you’d like to do some more exploring during the school holidays – here is a wonderful game for you to play.
In this game, you are helping the Curator of the Museum to collect some wonderful objects from around the world to display in the Museum. You only have a few days to collect as much as you can though, so plan your trip well!
I’m visiting the Year 2 classroom today, as they learn about the world around them, and about animals – to do a Science Project together on the computer!
We’re going to visit the country of Mozambique in Africa, to help a group of scientists tracking wildlife at the Gorongosa National Park.
What Continent is this?
Where is Mozambique
What Ocean is off the coast of Mozambique.
This is where we are going today – to Gorongosa National Park, to work together with some scientists using our computers!
We’re going to be helping a group of scientists see how the wild animals who live in this park are doing, after years of war when soldiers were in this park and hunting the animals for food. Now the war is over and it is protected again – but how are the animals doing?
How do you think that scientists can study these animals, when the park is so very very large, and much of it is hard to reach?
Let’s find out more about the kinds of animals that are living here.
So how can you and I help these scientists from our computers?
We’re going to take a look at these photos, one at a time, and tell the scientists what animal we see there!
I will need your teacher’s help in grouping each of you in partners in the Computer Room.
One of you will have a list of animals on your computer screen, with their names, and some information about them if you click on the picture.
The other partner will have the WildCam Gorongosa Science Project open, and together you will be looking at a photo, and helping to identify what animal it is.
We have the afternoon together, so let’s see how many animals we can identify and work together with Scientists. YOU are doing real science!!
If we’ve got some time later in the day for a 10 minute video, we can see some more of the park and take a look at more of the animals who live there.
Lets talk about some of the amazing things that Computers enable us to do. The Year 2 class are learning about the world in their “All around the World” topic this term, and we’ve got a great way to explore the world right on our computers.
We have maps on our computers! And not just the kind that you unfold on paper, but we have maps with pictures of where we live. Today we are going to have a look at Google Maps during our Computer time, and I’d like to tell you how these maps were built.
This is a car with a very good camera on top of it, that takes photos on four sides at once. These photos are matched against information about where that car is driving, and are woven together on a “Google Street View” map. Take a look at one of the places that a car like that has driven!! Do you recognise it?
But there is also a way of looking at the map called “Google Earth”, which is photos from much higher up. Here is what a Google Engineer said about how these maps are made: “Most people are surprised to learn that we have more than one source for our imagery. We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth’s surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes – even kites.”
It’s pretty complicated to weave all of those pictures together in a way that looks smooth, and doesn’t make you dizzy when you’re looking at it. The people that do this work are computer scientists.
Here’s an example of a map image taken from the air. Do you recognise it?
Computer Time
Now it’s your turn to explore these maps. Click on any of the two map images above, and take a look around your world! Do you find anything funny or surprising? Can you find your way home?
