Thursday, December 4, 2008

Postcards Around the World Lesson

I originally posted this topic as a comment to Alison's original post. I am reposting it as my own post as Alison requested. This will make it more organized when we are making comments to posts. Thank you Alison for the guidance! I am learning so much.

My response was:
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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andrea,

Congratulations! I tried to post my own blo but I couldn't do it.

Like you I think that these tools make books come alive and help students understand the topics better.

Susana

Doug Emmerich said...

Andrea, I could agree more. My issue with text books and maps has always been their failure to capture the lay of the land. I love the way you can get down to the level of a very low flying plane and really see the land. You may not be able to go the land from whence the postcards come from, but can "google map tour" them when you learn where they are.

Vickie Watson said...

Andrea,

I agree with you about how Google Earth will enrich lessons. We do a lesson about Christmas Around the World(we start next week). I can't wait to show my students the countries we will be studying.

Vickie

Alison Knits Some Love said...

You are all learning at a fast pace. I'm throwing a lot at you but you are such a supportive group, you are getting there with ease. Thanks for re-posting. I hope you will be able to use these tools in your work situations! Alison