Google Maps and Your Classroom
Google Maps features include a few different ways to view the maps, you can see the street view, aerial view, terrain view, or satellite view. You can look at maps in two dimensions or three dimensions. You can get real time travel information and also projected times based on the usual traffic patterns at the time you wish to travel. Routes can be mapped out for walking, bicycling, bus or driving. You can also create timelines. Google maps can be shared, embedded, and printed. There is a tour feature as well.
One of the advantages to the use of Google maps is that it allows students to take a tour of a place with which they are unfamiliar. It can help create a better visual image about the setting of a story or an area where some historical event took place. It allows for creativity in creating custom maps and timelines.
Some of the disadvantages include that while you can look back in time to see how an area looked in the past but you can only go back a certain number of years. Also, we must keep in mind that Google Maps has only been around since 2005. Google maps users can add information that they feel is missing. Be prepared, once children know how to find their house they want to show you it over and over. Accuracy is limited and you do not get up to date information, such as when roads are blocked or closed.
I recommend using Google Maps in your classroom especially for 1st graders and above. Yes, it can be used all the way through high school. For young children, a simple and fun thing to do is to find their home and walk the neighborhood where they live. Young children can also walk some of the regular routes which they use frequently. You can certainly use maps to map out a path or see how long it takes to travel from one place to another. Maps can be used to create your own maps, learn about and reinforce longitude and latitude studies and even to have a latitude and longitude scavenger hunt(Utecht, 2015).
Google maps can be used by students to calculate distance and area(Professor Logan, first video 1.6).Google maps can be used by students in a technology or financial planning class to plan vacations. It will help them see how close or far different attractions are from each other and maybe even help them decide which things to see and which things they do not want to visit. Older students of art might walk around a historical town and describe the different architecture of the buildings. Students can look at economic impacts of areas over the last 10-15 years. How does the economy of an area affect the appearance of the buildings?
Pause for a moment and think. Are you using Google Maps in your classroom? How might you be able to use Google Maps. Come up with an activity and test it out. Best wishes and happy planning.
Resources
Utecht, J. (2015, March 5). 10 ways to use Google maps in the classroom. The Thinking Stick. http://www.thethinkingstick.com/10-ways-to-use-google-maps-in-the-classroom/
Ruth, thanks for your comprehensive review of Google Maps. For years, I've used it for years to print directions (thankfully its accuracy is definitely improving), to see street views of homes, and to find nearby place locations. There have actually been one or two occasions when I used Google Maps to locate sound churches for friends from my own church who were planning vacations far from home, and my usual go-to church directories were turning up nothing useful.
ReplyDeleteBut I was never aware of all the applications of which it's capable until this week. I am in awe of Google's capabilities at this point.
You mentioned that you can use Maps to help create timelines. Can you shed any more light on that? For a Social Studies person, it sounds very interesting! Many thanks again.