Thoughts - What I Do For Fun, Besides Maps.
I do have a life beyond maps and map-making. Yesterday, I worked on computers in my classroom. Regular readers know that I am a middle school teacher in my other life. On my summer breaks I spend time in my classroom preparing it for the next school year. This summer, I am installing three donated Dell Optiplex Pentium III computers. I am not a computer nerd. I am a map nerd, not a computer type.
I have loaded them with operating systems, programs and even got them to talk successfully to my wireless router. The students will have three, Internet-ready computers to work with next school year.
The students will prepare PowerPoint presentations on people and events within World and US History. They also conduct Internet research on assigned projects. I use a laptop connected to a projector to teach the students history lessons. Every major unit is prefaced by a Google Earth Tour of the site(s) where things happened. For current events I use Google Earth and we tour the "hot-spots" throughout the world.
The students also work with maps. They routinely create political, physical, and thematic maps. Every chance I get to use a map to teach, I do it! I feel the students need to visualize history upon a map. I love that part of my job.
Finally, I will continue teaching a few students, in an after school program, the gentle art of map-making. I teach them how to make maps from the base image to the final product. It is great fun and the audience is always eager to learn. I use my experiences to teach them the methods to employ in order to generate a quality map. It is great fun.
So goes my fun summer. I also take my grandchildren for a swim as often as we can. It is a great way to beat the heat.
I think Google Earth is a great thing for use in the classroom. When I was in Grad school, I helped out a professor who taught an intro Geography class and he was showing powerpoint slideshows of the area covered that day along with music from that region. He and I worked on some animation stuff for a "fly-over" effect instead of just a slide show. Unfortunately, we didn't have the resources we needed and were a little bit ahead of the game for it to work out (we ended up with some things that ran in Macromedia Flash).
GE lets kids see the world in a setting that is familiar to them (the video game-like environment) and allows you to customize the maps as needed (historical markers, etc. that might not show up on current imagery.)
Good to see that you are using GE for teaching :)
Posted by
Brandon |
7/18/2006 01:42:00 PM
Thanks for the comment. I love to use GE in my Social Studies classes. One of the most memorable uses began with an introduction of the Indian subcontinent. After the introduction, the student's began working on seat-work. I kept GE active and told the students we would travel from India due north. I set the speed at a slow pace and wow! The students were so curious that we all put aside the seat work and traveled north from India instead. It was great!
Posted by
Mr Minton |
7/18/2006 07:43:00 PM