I spent the first part of this week at the ISTE conference  in San Antonio. There were a LOT of teachers, librarians, school IT staff, and, of course, vendors at that show. The total count was more than 18,000, according to their website. The entire convention center was wifi-enabled, so at any given moment, more than half the people in a room were accessing smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Here’s a peek at maybe two percent of the conference (photo taken from a Lerner tablet).

I plan to tell you more about what I learned, as soon as I have time to think through it. But in the meantime, wandering through the displays got me thinking about the eSource materials we created for Elephant Talk: The Surprising Science of Elephant Communication. Author Ann Downer came up with some fantastic resources for this book, and none of them would be possible without modern technology.

The first piece is a Google Earth tour, referencing locations mentioned in the book, as well as places Ann gathered information while she was researching. If you haven’t used Google Earth before, we put together some instructions for you.

Would your students enjoy working in groups to make an educational comic? You can find that assignment on our website too.

Finally, you may also find this list of additional websites helpful as your class reads Elephant Talk.

Each season, our editorial staff puts our heads together to come up with great extras to help you get more out of our new series and titles. To download free resources for a book or series, find the book on our website. If you haven’t registered with us, please do so at the upper right corner of the page. On future visits, you’ll need to sign in to download files. Then look in the right-hand column of the page for the eSource logo. Just under the Font Lens, you’ll see the downloadable eSource files. Click on an individual file or on “download all.”

More on eSource and ISTE coming in two weeks.