Content-specific technology integration project

Idea: My project will address World Language Goal 1: Beginning Standard 1, Objective 7: Ask and answer questions, and Standard 2, Objective 6: Comprehend and respond to simple personal written communication such as notes, invitations, and letters. I am using Google Earth with placemarks in places that played important roles in Mozart's life. Students will go to each of the locations and answer the question(s) that they find there. In the process of getting to know Mozart in German, they will also be writing answers to questions about information about themselves that directly relates to the information they have just read about Mozart. Not only do they get more acquainted with an important historical German-speaking person, but they also practice their ability to describe themselves. They will turn in a paper in which they will have answered all of the questions. Then they will form small groups and pick an influential German-speaking person. Each student in the group will be responsible for gathering information about a specific place that played an important role for their influential person. They will need to put together a brief description of why that place was important in German as well as find an applicabe picture online. These they will submit on the class blog.

Project link: http://germancapps.pbworks.com/f/my%20project.kmz
I would use this activity during a unit on getting to know others. In the process students should learn some important vocabulary and phrases that will help them to ask others about their lives as well as describe their own.

We will use Google Earth as our technology to help connect the class to a place that is geographically distant from the classroom. Students will have to read, respond to and then generate some of their own discourse in the target language while learning about German-speaking culture, stressing their content knowledge. Pedagogically, this project gives small groups a valuable context in which they can feel more connected to places that sometimes seem like random names rather than real places.