Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Schools : Olympic Games London 2012 : resources & ideas





Olimpic Games London 2012




Google doodle Opening Ceremony London 2012

"This is our time... When our time came we did it right... London 2012 will see the very best of us."
Lord Coe




OG London 2012
Young English fans
http://static.guim.co.uk/

Olympic Games 2012 just start and will end during Summer season in Europe and some other continents.

In the United States and other countries, the students come back to school perhaps the final part of the Games. They will be talking about their heroes, the athletes from different sports. 

Teachers are already preparing their lessons and they will include the Olympic Games into school curricula, for sure. They can't lose this wonderful experience! Such a great resource for different curricula.




Olympic Games London 2012
credits: Getty Images
via BBC.co.ok

I'm sure that a lot of students will want to talk about it. English students are the luckiest because some of them are at the Olympic stadium with their parents watching live. 

But there will be a great number all over the world that are watching live on television or on the Internet, day by day, their favourite athletes and sports. And the most curious will know a lot about OG to share in the classroom.


Teachers have been watching the Olympic Games too, and they are wondering how they might include the OG London 2012 into the curriculum. 

As I wrote before, along July and August, I will write about some subjects that could interest teachers for the next school season.





London 2012credits: Mark Makela/ ZUMA Press/ Corbis

  • Ideas & Resources for Teachers:

Here are couple of ideas and resources to evaluate and share in your courses about London 2012.

  • Sciences: The Olympic Flame
How do you create the perfect flame? - An interesting question to start a Science course! 

Well, the Ontario Science Centre explored the technology behind the Olympic torches - past and present shown on the video below:






Wow! That is great! You can't miss this digital resource to explore the technology behind the OG flame! I am sure that your students will love it.

  • Geography | Sports:

Google Earth:

The Google Earth Blog has pushed out July 27 a short list of Google Earth tours based on the Olympic Games in London. The list includes a fly-over 3D imagery for much of London, including the Olympic Park area.

"Google's Olympic Games London 2012" page includes London street view, Teams (students will choose teams by country), Medals, (the distribution of Olympic medals) and Doodles (every day a sport doodle since the open ceremony).




Fencing
Google Doodle London 2012


Doodles:



Rhythmic Gymnastics Google Doodle London 2012
https://www.google.com/doodles/

Google is publishing a Doodle every day since the Opening illustrating some of the 36 sports present at the Olympic Games 2012. The Olympic Games Doodles will be an excellent digital resource to include into school curriculum.

Teachers could use Doodles to start a lesson in Sports and/or Geography curriculum inviting the students to explore the page and find all the stories about the games. It might be a simple but good motivation for cross-curricular projects.




Synchronized swimming
Google Doodle London 2012

Examples: 

Sports: To take it a step further, you might ask students to make a research why a country produces exceptional athletes in a given sport. For example, you might challenge students to find out why United States are strong in swimming or soccer.

Don't forget to teach about values!




Google Maps

Geography: Google Maps of medal distribution will start a simple Geography lesson. Invite students to browse for medal winners by countries, then research those countries. A good intercultural activity.






BBC Olympic Sports Live 2012 will be a fantastic daily reporting to explore. There are 36 Olympic Sports that your students can choose.

During the Games, you have the Official London 2012 website to explore or get inspiration by news or stories to motivate your students in your lessons.

For example the Lithuanian swimmer young teen Ruta Meilutyte said on Tuesday that she was "shocked" (in a good way) to have won women's 100 meters breaststroke gold medal on Monday. 

At just 15 years old, this Olympic star had to do it the hard way, surviving a fierce challenge from American Rebecca Soni, the reigning world champion in the event. Such an inspirational true story!






Diving
Google Doodle London 2012
https://www.google.com/doodles/



  • Going further: 


Sports: Diving (Vocational or Further Education)

Competitive diving is included in the modern Olympics since 1904. Read this incredible article Not making a splash: the anatomy of a perfect Olympic dive by Sian Barris.




JoyTunes app

  • Music: app

Did you know that before sport, there was music. Music as a prelude during the 19 days of the Games London 2012

iPad has a new app! Piano Summer Games from JoyTunes. The app provides directions and feedback for playing the national anthems of forty countries.

Awesome! Propose your students the choice of a national anthem. Then, play on the piano at the Music classroom and ask your students to play on their own iPad. 

Students and teachers can download the Piano Summer Games app hereThey can compete between groups in the classroom using JoyTunes by earning points for playing the anthems correctly. 






They will do wonderful progress in Music curriculum. JoyTunes could be a good piano tutor for students who have iPad.  

  • English Fiction:
As the opening ceremony got underway, its sense of magical realism started to remind us many of recent fantasy films or English fiction and fairy tales. 

The Lord of the Rings featured strongly in initial history of Britain about how much the "green and pleasant land" reminded people of the Shire.




J.K. Rowling
Opening Ceremony London 2012

There was Harry Potter saga in part driven by the participation of JK Rowling reading a short text in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012, July 27.




Mary Poppins
 credits: Mike Blake / Reuters
Although the Harry Potter character Voldemort was not officially part of the proceedings, he was linked to Mary Poppins when a flashmob mass of Mary Poppins clones appeared to vanquish one of the odd monsters in the ceremony.
  • Curiosities:
Inventor of the protocol upon which the Web is based, UK scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, live-tweeted from the stage. This is real social culture!





Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Students might to learn more about the inventor of the World Wilde Web
  • For fun:
Sometimes, at the end of a lesson, we must give some 2 minutes for relax. In Portugal, we have lessons of 95 minutes. It's important to make a break and let the students have 2 minutes of fun in the middle (45 minutes) learning and playing.











James Bond and the Queen

"Good evening Mr Bond," the Queen said on the clip, before they left together, apparently heading towards the Olympic Stadium in a helicopter.








  • James Bond & and the Queen:

There has been a great speculation if James Bond participad at the opening ceremony, and about what his role would be. At the Overture, we all watched him collecting the Queen and brought her to the ceremony in a spectacular manner. Oh! My! Just awesome!

In a combination of pre-filmed and live footage, James Bond escorted the Queen to her helicopter.
Then, above the stadium, Bond escorted the Queen out of the helicopter with a parachute. This was rapidly packaged into image macros of the jump captioned with mimetice acronym. Social media users were very enthusiastic about this episode. And we as well.




London 2012
credits: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

Other resources:

  • BBC page entitled Your Olympic athlete body match is a funny page: adding details for height and weight, students can match with some athlete. No matter what they hang up, they are probably a similar size to an amazing world-beating athlete! 
  • Quiz: London 2012 The Olympic quiz here


Enjoy, preparing your lessons! I am sure that you will have wonderful plans and your students will be happy to learn in a funny way the curriculum.

G-Souto

31.07.2012
Copyright © 2012G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Licença Creative Commons
Schools : Olympic Games London 2012 : resources & ideas by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

References:

Credits: video Ontario Science Centre | Youtube
            video Apple | iTunes


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