Each image of elephants, prides of lions, zebra and rhinos has the local time and date on it so your students can compare time zones at the watering hole with their time zone in the classroom. Teachers and students can chart the times and types of animals who visit the watering hole or keep track of which watering hole camera has the most animal sightings. In addition, in case the students miss an animal sighting, there is a Highlights section where they can view the images captured earlier. For example, create a Favorite, in Microsoft Internet Explorer, of the This Day in History Web site and have students list three things that happened on their birthday. Or have a student e-mail a question to an online expert they find in the Online Expert Resource section on Yahooligans.
Many experts are happy to share information with students.
A colleague's student was able to interview an expert on lasers via e-mail and got wonderful information she would not have had access to without this online expert. If a student is too young to compose an appropriate letter, use student assistants and parent volunteers to type as a child dictates questions. If students are always purposeful when online, you are maximizing the use of technology and the Internet as a productive resource. It is much more useful to have a few students complete a specific online project while others work on a similar project off line than to try to cram all of your students onto the computers for only ten minutes at a time. For example, in my colleague's fifth-grade class, every group of students must complete an animal awareness project.