For this weeks assignment, use a mapping tool to find an application to your professional life. Post your ideas and screen shots or links in a blog post. Respond to two of your peers posts. You will find this area fun and enlightening. Hope you have fun. Alison
14 comments:
Hi, everyone. I work at the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) and there is now a "Dynamic Mapping Initiative". I would love to get more involved with this initiative and maybe by learning more about mapping in this class and from all of you, I can also talk to the individuals who made the maps on the NDIC webpage. Take a look at the link below to learn more about NDIC's mapping feature.
-Rebecca http://www.ndicgis.usdoj.gov/ndicmapping/
Hello all! At first I was thinking about how great Google Earth would be for our social studies and science classes and then I thought more about the different math topics I teach and how I could use Google Earth. One of the topics we work with our students on is estimating area. We usually give students random blobs (there's even a cool lesson plan where students find gum blobs on the ground) and estimate their areas. How great would it be to estimate the area of countries and do some comparisons between different countries.
I will play around with doing that and try to post some images, but for now that's what I have!
Denise
I think I mentioned earlier about my company checking into the copyright scenarios with using images from google maps & street view. In the past if an auto claims adjuster couldn't get an idea of an intersection or parking lot layout, he or she would have to ask each of the parties to submit their own diagrams and/or photos. Now with these tools, my adjusters (students) can pull up the map & street view to get a clearer picture of the positioning of the vehicles in an auto accident, which should create more questions to ask about positioning and how the accident happened. All of this with the party on the phone, pulling up the scene diagram on their dual monitor. My company has blocked google earth via our firewall, but before they did, adjusters were using it in a similar way.
Denise,
What a great idea to use Google Earth for a math class. It sounds like your class is great fun!
Rebecca
Hey all!
I know there is a lot of potential for these little website activities...I looked at two that I thought had some relevance to activities we recently completed, and I'd love to see how they work next time around.
The first was using the Gmaps Pedometer. I wanted to see how detailed of a map I could pull up of Outdoor Lab, and was able to see most of the individual trails, not to mention the entire site. So I thought it would be cool to have the kids log on when we get home, take their schedule from the week, and track their hiking distance at least, and maybe their calories burned to see how active their week was. I tracked one of my hikes just as a test, and I think they would enjoy reliving some of their classes from an overhead view.
The other dealt with volcano maps from UNAVCO. We're dealing with volcanoes in our geology unit, and it would be neat for the kids to pull up maps of the volcanoes around the world and see how the layout of the world affects these structures.
Just a few brief ideas.
Rebecca, Interesting map site. This could turn into an assignment for my students. Thanks for sharing it. Alison
Denise, Cool idea, estimations are a skill we were just notified to use, kids are not doing well on standardized tests in this area. Anything you do on GE will keep the interested! Alison
Chuck, I think your company might want to unblock GE and get a professional license, I think this is $400/year, not too much, then use away. A friend works at a bank, they use to have to send out people to determine if foundations had been poured, roofs put on before cutting checks to contractors. Now they just look at the house using GE pro. They save a huge amount of money. The pro gets you daily updates. A thought to pass along. Alison
Sean, I love Google pedometer, great math tool, it also tracks elevation. You should also look at the earth crust age on Unavco so cool to see the newer crust at the ring of fire and where the crust is older. This should improve understanding of how our earth evolves.
Rebecca - I really like the NDIC website - good info. I would also like to be involved in more technology initiatives with my comapny, but unfortunately all of those jobs are in San Antonio.
As far as to Allison's comment about making the investment - You are preaching to the choir on this one. During our department webcast today we had the head of our member experience department & a lot of technology initiatives are underway. I already noticed that we have gadgets available on iGoogle - a company calendar & a quick access box.
This is an amazing tool. Last year we did "Postcards around the world" and sent postcards to numerous different areas in hopes that they would send postcards back to us so that we could study different regions. I think geospatial mapping would be a great tool to show the kids more detail about the places we received postcards from. This would make the locations come to life for the students and we could determine just how far away each location is from us. What an exciting opportunity for the students and for me! I, too, will see if I can find some sites that we might actually explore. I will let you know what I find.
Andrea
Hi, classmates,
I am amazed because of the possibilities these tools offer. For instance, in Google Earth I found Ancient Rome 3D. It offers a great opportunity to teach art, emperors and political history. One can also use it to create an autentic context in a theather play or to write an story. Kids can learn about history, politics or daily life imagening their own story walking through the buildings.
In a future, I will use these tools to recreate the context.
Another tool I will use is UNAVCO to make the geography topics more palpable to the students.
Susana
Denise,
This looks like a great idea. I always had problems with math so anything that can do math funner is a good idea to me. I will always support any combination between a math topic with another subject.
Susana
Andrea, I think this would be a fun addition to your post card project. You could help students look for geographical elements - desert, rivers, cities, rural, types of houses, if there is street views available- clothes, ethnicity, types of plants... this would all enhance student understanding of other places and people. Alison
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