902 CUE Workshop - A Trip Around the World with Google...

Post date: Dec 21, 2014 8:09:57 AM

I love Google Maps! Students do as well. At the beginning of the year I have students fill out a simple Google form with any places they visited over the summer. We then load this information into a Google Map. As I have said before I wish my school was a GAFE school so my students could do more than just explore look at maps that I have created and create their own.

At times I have found Googles Maps to be Googles clunkiest app. It is not always easy to use and I could see some potential issues or difficulties with students creating their own maps. I was happy to see that Maps have been added to Drive recently.

You can add so many details to your pins on a map. For example during the session Scott had us all pin our school to a map he had created. When I pined mine I also added a student made video from YouTube highlighting our school. See screen cap below and click on NYC Museums for link to map, my school is Wilson Middle.

Here is the direct link to the video for those that would like to see the student made iMovie on the school. Wilson Middle School

Even though my school is not a GAFE school I have found several uses for Google Maps and ways to create maps with student help. One of the ways we create maps of information is through the use of Google Forms. I create a Form for students to fill out asking such information as First Name, City, State, County, Fact. One important thing to remember when doing this is that you can not have any punctuation in any of the responses or the information will not load. I've created a video to demonstrate how this works.

Just for fun here is the street view in Google Maps of Wilson Middle School on my side of the campus.

At this point with Google Earth one of the main things I have used it for is the viewing tours that others have already created. At my school the biggest issue we have is with our bandwidth and internet speed not being able to handle to many students on Google Earth at one time. If the up grades in infrastructure that are planned happen I can see using Google Earth more for instructional purposes.

Google Maps and Earth can both be powerful tools in the classroom. While our session on these two tools was good it left me a little unsatisfied. Most everything we did I already knew. That being said we were given a page of resources so I'm hopeful when I have time I can explore those more and expand my knowledge and use of Maps and Earth.