On the 12 and a half hour flight from Chicago to Tokyo, I kept watching the map of where we were flying and I thought it would be a great lesson to create a Google Earth or a MyHistro tour for students about where I was traveling. You'll become familiar with those tools in your tech session this week. We could spend a little class time going over how to create a Google Earth tour if anyone is interested. We'll also look at that when we talk about geography. I also thought there would be good connections to citizenship by talking about passports or even chronological thinking concepts like sequence of events of a trip like this for young students. Do you have any ideas about how you might use the logistics of travel as an opportunity to learn?
I'll update when we arrive in Bangkok!
Here's a picture of teachers blogging with their students from Singapore at the airport. We had a great time talking to students! The kids thought it was really cool.
I also think that it would be great to use Google Earth to create a geography lesson. You could create a map that shows the stops you made along the way making pins where the airports were and providing a description about how long it can take to get to each place. This will be a great opportunity to show students how far away they live from certain locations and how close certain locations are in relation to one another. Students, especially in the younger grades have a hard time grasping distance and this will be an interesting way for them to look at it. I think it is also a great opportunity to introduce the concept of time zones to students. They can compare their time zone to the locations presented in the map and see the differences. I'm glad you had a safe flight!
ReplyDelete-Kirsten Gervais
Thanks, Kristen. I'm hoping to put together the Google Earth trip as an example for our class on geography. Have you used the program with students? I'll do a little tutorial if you and your classmates are interested.
DeleteI also think this is an awesome idea to use Google Earth in the classroom! Thinking about the simplicity of using the tool for examining geography, traveling, and cultural lessons is awesome. Students can map out simple vacation trips they take with their family over breaks or on weekends. Students can discuss the different locations of various places they talk about in class, and they can also talk about the physical land features of the areas as well. We used to use Google Earth in classes to determine how far one person's house is from school versus another student's house. Sounds silly-but it really increased our interpretive and analytical skills. Having that concrete display of area locations, physical features, and even political lines is awesome. This tool could be used to distinguish between the different types of maps, how to use maps, and how to even calculate distances (mathematical context) also.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post, Jocie. Using Google Earth to calculate distance within the community is not silly at all. It's a great way to help students recognize distance which is often a difficult concept for young students to grasp. I promise to put something together for this on our geography day. Google maps is a less complicated tool that would also work well with young students.
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