Paper Toys - Build Great Paper Models

One of the "skills" that I've never really acquired is folding paper to create anything other than poorly gliding airplanes. That could all change thanks to Paper Toys. Paper Toys is a website providing free, printable templates and directions for making paper models of all kinds of buildings, cars, hats, and landmarks. The directions are PDFs that you can download and print. The templates range from simple hats and dolls to complex structures like the White House, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower.

Applications for Education
Building some of these Paper Toys models could be a fun hands-on conclusion to a lesson about the places where some of these landmarks are found.

H/T to iLearn Technology. 

Google SketchUp Tutorial Videos and Math Lessons

Yesterday, I saw a Tweet from Steven Anderson that reminded me of a couple of good series of Google SketchUp tutorial videos. SketchUp is a great free program from Google that allows you to create 3-D models to use in Google Earth or as stand-alone models. Learning to use all of the features of SketchUp can take a while. Fortunately, as with most Google products, there are some excellent video tutorials to help you learn how to use SketchUp.

New to Google SketchUp is a series of 28 videos that will walk you through all of the basics of using SketchUp to create your first models. Some of the videos have been updated recently and now prompt you to click through to the updated version. Below I have included the first video in the series.


Although it is not an official series of videos from Google, SketchUp for Dummies has a series of web tutorials that you can access even if you haven't purchased the SketchUp for Dummies book.

Applications for Education
SketchUp can be used all kinds of educational projects like building models of ancient Rome or building models of the moon base that Newt Gingrich is going have people living on in eight years. SketchUp can be used in geometry lessons such as those offered by 3D Davinci. 3DVinci's SketchUp page has some very good resource for mathematics teachers, particularly Geometry teachers. 3DVinci presents a collection of mathematics projects that students can do using Google SketchUp. If you've never used SketchUp, don't worry. 3DVinci hosts video tutorials that will show you everything you need to know to get started using Google SketchUp to teach mathematics.