A birthday Celebration!

Looking for a reason to have a birthday party? How about one with educational ties?

This Friday, February 11, is the 200th Birthday of Sacagawea’s babyJean Baptiste Charbonneau. The baby, also known as Pomp, was born at Fort Mandan in North Dakota. This is where Lewis and Clarkwintered during the Corps of Discovery’s journey to the Pacific Ocean.

I

f you are following the journey of the Corps of Discovery, you have stalled in North Dakota. Lewis and Clark spent more time in North Dakota (since they wintered here) than in any other state during their journey. During the past several years we have been putting together resources dealing with the Corps of Discovery journey, specifically the time spent in North Dakota.

We brought Bernie Dodge to Minot, ND to do a week long workshop onWebQuests. We concentrated on making webquests dealing with the Corps of Discovery’s Journey. What an experience, having Bernie here for a full week working directly with a group of 20 technology leaders!

During a technology conference several years ago the banquet speaker was Amy Mosset. Amy is a Mandan-Hidatsa member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a nationally recognized scholar, consultant, and cultural presenter on the life of Sakakawea. She talked about “networking” 200 years ago – to a bunch of “techies” who thought you needed wires to network. Amy explained that the Mandan area was the central hub for information among the Native American tribes. Tribes from the Great Lakes, the Great Plains and the Rockies traveled to this area to trade. Artifacts that Lewis and Clark traded while at Fort Mandan beat them to the Pacific Ocean!

I

f you or your students are wondering about the weather conditions in North Dakota during the winter, they can check one of three weather stations that we have in our school district at Ramstad Middle School,Memorial Middle School, and Central Campus High School.

You can view a VR movie of Fort Mandan or a replica of a earthen lodge that Sacagawea would have lived in at Knife River Indian Village. The VR movie of the earthen lodge was done by a member of our technology staff.

A few other resources dealing with Pomp’s birthday:

Fort Mandan’s Birthday Celebration and a birthday party at Grace A. Dow Memorial Library, Midland, Michigan.

Chris Webb, another member of our technology staff, created VR movies of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, ND.

I have “furled” my Lewis & Clark resources (select a filter for “Lewis & Clark.”) and I will be adding to them periodically. If you have any good resources to be included please drop me a note.

Car 54 Where Are You?

Google has just announce a new map resource – Google Maps. It can be found on their “technology playground” page where they have project prototypes that are not quite ready for “prime time.”

At first glance it seems to be easier to use than MapQuest, MapBlastand Yahoo! Maps.

It seems to be much easier to navigate, allowing you to drag the map with your mouse or navigate by clicking on the arrows or zoom control.

They do have the maps tied into business locations, but since they are providing this for free, they have to make money somewhere 

I

f you only think that Google is a search engine, click on their “more>>” link to get to their Google Services page. There you will find other resources such as Blogger.com, Picassa Photo Organizer(Windows only), and Keyhole (provides 3D images of our planet).

BTW – in case you are not familiar with “Car 54 Where Are You?” it was a TV show back in the 60’s