Category: Where-16

I solidified from this activity my views that collaborative learning is so helpful to students. I also solidified that my personal learning comes very easily when I am able to fiddle with whatever I am learning and teach others.

Visualizing Place – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

I can use this technology to give kids access to a “PowerPoint like” site for free. Haiku Deck also does a better job of being more readily shareable as well as being more user-friendly than PowerPoint. It does have less features however so for me this would be a toss up on which program to use dependent on what I wanted my kids to be able to do.

In terms of the assignment I could use this for an “about me” project if I kept the same formatting. I could also use the “mymaps” app to teach kids about their hometown geography and help explain the concept of “place” in a geographical sense.

I had a fun time using Google MyMaps to create a map of my dream vacation, which I was finally able to take about two years ago. This map shows our adventure as we traveled around Mexico City, and across Mexico to the Yucatán Peninsula.

I like how MyMaps allows you to zoom in and out, seeing the whole scope of our journey as well as the individual places we visited within a neighborhood. I liked being able to differentiate walking, driving, and flying paths as we used all three modes of transportation frequently.

The only hesitation I have is the inability to upload and use your own photos. I had to be coached through a publishing process to add the photo of myself, and I would have used many more of my personal photos if this ability were integrated into the program. However, I appreciate how the program only allows the use of photos in the public domain. This eliminates a lot of stress and hassle for students and their teachers!

I would be interested to use this in teaching my two social studies courses this year. Students could use this tool to attach historical or current information about a specific country or city, add relevant news photos or videos about current events in those places, or draw lines between places to highlight specific connections.

I really like this tool and I like that you just set us loose on it. I have had this idea about some differentiated activities that can be used as final projects in social studies and this would fit in well there. I was going to offer ideas like making a travel brochure for a specific location served by a time and space travel company, making a journal/diary, writing a newspaper covering news from a time and place, or making a short subject documentary. This would be a good project option for that project. Unfortunately, technology is severely limited at my current placement. Most of my students have access to the internet, but not all of them do.

So where am I from?  I think it would be overstating things to say I’ve made some great insight about myself from this activity, but it is always interesting to reflect on myself.  What makes me, me?  What titular events have formed my personality and shaped my psyche?  Which memories, which activities, do I remember as particularly powerful – and why?  Not all questions I have answers for, but ones I find interesting to ask just for the fun of it.

Where I’m From – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;

But how to use this technology in my future?  In the short term: not immediately.  My placement isn’t tech un-friendly, but it’s by no means an structured with tech heavy lessons in mind.  Most of what we do will be discussion, activity, and project based.  My CT and I have begun discussing ideas, and she likes to make the activities accessible in class, which means no laptops, no phones, and no tech.

But broadly, I have ideas.  I rather like my CT’s discussion and/or project based approach to a social studies curriculum.  While it’s not terrifically feasible in my current classroom, with it’s lack of dedicated classroom laptops/tablets/devices and strict no phone policies, if I had the resources, I could think of uses.  Googlemaps of historical movements of people – have students make ones based on economic migrations, wartime logistic trains, ocean trade networks, paths of marching armies, or the spread of specific ideas or groups.  With Haiku Deck, students could create quick and dirty in-class presentations to link concepts together and show they understand how ideas relate to other ideas across visual AND writing mediums.

These are just two immediate ideas, of which I could brainstorm more with time.  But broadly, I think what this lesson showcases is how technology offers excellent opportunities for highly specialized and approachable lessons.  As we continue into the information age, the number of resources available for specific lesson tasks will continue to grow.  Specific websites can be selected for activities, which might include scaffolding or structures to support student learning, and which can be as specialized or as broad as the website creator’s intent.  Creating an engaging slough of tech-based activities for students can be best understood as looking into a host of websites and finding what fits the specific parameters you’re looking for.

I specifically found the video learning segment of this lesson a bit frustrating.  I like to read for comprehension, and the variable speed of the explanations, difficulty going back to read, and necessity of listening for instructions meant that the videos were an ineffective way to grasp the processes.  I found it easier to experiment with the software, read instructions while using my prior knowledge of general web UI to make inferences, and ask for personalized help when I had questions.  I found myself pining for formal written instructions, but made do by using my prior knowledge and engaging with the task experimentally.