Mapping
How to Add an Activity to a Maths Map
Dec 5th
This is a short screencast about the Maths Maps, it is my contribution to TeachMeet EdtechRoundup.
SABOTAGE! A Lesson in Open Crowd-Sourcing
Nov 27th
UPDATE: I have had an email from a teacher in Melbourne, Australia who has explained that it was her students who messed up the Paris map. It was by accident and not at all malicious, they were trying to create a Maths Map of their own for Melbourne. I am relieved to hear that it was non-malicious, but it has highlighted some important issues for me.
Last night I checked in with the Shapes in Paris Maths Map to check to see if others had added any other placemarks or activities. Initially I couldn’t find the map – only “Maths in Melbourne” which I hadn’t created. This is when I uncovered the sabotage.
Unfortunately “medg” (from their Google profile – last edited by…) had moved all of the Paris placemarks to Melbourne in Australia. They were able to do this because I set the maps to be (a) Public and (b) Open to editing. As the placemarks are location specific it was a long process to find the exact points the activities referred to.
I have managed to recover the map and even add some new placemark activities about Shape and Space to extend the ideas to “51 Shape Activities”. I suppose I should have seen something like this coming, but never expected someone to go to so much trouble to disrupt the resource. As John Johnston remarked maybe not naive of me just “uncynical“.
View 51 Shape Activities in Paris in a larger map
The Maths Maps have been getting a huge amount of traffic. They are in the public domain and I presume that they can be found in searches of user generated Google maps. The three maps have had over 60,000 hits combined and the Paris map over 25,000. Unlike the “Interesting Ways” series the maps are discoverable and openly public. I think that explains the traffic (which I know is not teachers) and also the higher risk of someone messing them up for a laugh.
I still subscribe to the powerful process of crowd-sourcing to generate resources but will be closing the maps to open collaboration because of the higher traffic and higher risk. If anyone wants to contribute some ideas, and I really encourage you to help, then please just send me your GMail and I will add you as an editor. I think this is the right thing to do rather than always backing up and leaving it open to anyone to mess around with – after all I think that the bulk of the traffic is the public, and not educators.
Make a Coordinates Activity in Google Earth
Nov 9th
I have been really excited to see the interest in my idea for Maths Maps. On Sunday afternoon I had the idea to overlay a simple coordinates grid on the satellite imagery in Google Maps or Google Earth, so children could answer position and direction based questions.
As in so many other cases those who follow me on Twitter helped me out when I was looking for an image to use for the grid. Admittedly I need to brush up on my image creation/editing skills but I was so grateful to get so many people offering help and ideas. Matt Lovegrove a Year 2 teacher in Berkshire, kindly made me some 10×10 grids which were perfect.
After much exploring I discovered that adding an overlay onto Google Maps is not so easy as it is in Google Earth. Here is a how to create your own Google Earth coordinates overlay (and in fact any image overlay!)
Firstly use Google Earth to find a place that is relatively interesting (there is quite a lot of choice you’ll agree!), you will be asking things like, ” What is the position of…?” etc so there needs to be enough in view. You might like to look around the Shapes in Paris Maths Map as it would fit well with this topic, or perhaps the location of your school might be a good starting point. Then follow these screenshots.
You can see an example of the linked coordinates task in the Shapes in Paris map, the placemark is titled “12 Coordinates Questions”.
I also created an example using the school’s location as a starting point in our lesson today. I was able to ask them about the coordinates of our school and even our classroom. I picked up on buildings and shops in the locality and kicked off the lesson using this resource. We zoomed in from space by the way (always exciting) and I told them I had spent all weekend painting the lines and had cleared out the local hardware store of red paint.
Some of the children worked independently today on the Google Earth task and they were really engaged and enjoying the task, we recorded in our maths books, as this was simple and best for us. I hope you are able to follow the idea through for your own group of students and using the screenshots create your own Google Earth coordinates activity.
Maths Maps – Data Handling in Nottingham
Nov 8th
I thought I should bring things a little closer to home with the latest resource in the Maths Maps series. Please take a look at this set of learning outcomes or objectives from the Primary Strategy that might help you figure out what placemark icon you need.
View 7 Data Handling Activities in Nottingham in a larger map
As with the other resources they are all available on the Maths Maps page.
Please consider taking a minute to add a placemark with an activity on something you spot in the city. There has been some great additions already – I look forward to seeing this develop and I hope you find it useful.
Shapes in Paris – NEW Maths Map
Nov 5th
Hot on the heals of Measures in Madrid here is the next addition to the Maths Maps series. Shapes in Paris makes the most of this beautiful city and the maths that is visible in Google Maps.
SHAPE IN PARIS
View 24 Shape Activities in Paris in a larger map
I have had a lot of fun exploring the city from above! One facet of Google Maps is Streetview which gives us a wonderful 1st person view of the city streets. I used this same view to set some questions about what could be seen.
For example, here is a Police car and on the bonnet is the mirrored word Police written in block letters. Some of the letters are great examples of regular and irregular shapes.
From space we have zoomed right down into some lettering which can only be about a metre across! This is the sort of detail that Streetview offers us and our students and I would love to see more Maths Maps questions using Streetview.
In the last few days I have heard from a few teachers in my Twitter network who have used the Maths Maps idea already with their classes and it is thrilling to here it making a difference in other classrooms.
That is the very reason why I share my ideas here.
Google Earth is Our Paper – Part 5: A Week in Review
Dec 1st
Our week of storytelling in Google Earth has finished however I wanted to wrap up my reflections on working in this way. In this post I look back over the process and review the benefits you will reap and any challenges that you may face in implementing a similar unit.
A piece of Google Earth storytelling is definitely manageable within a week (5-6 hours) and in that sense is very flexible. The completed outcome from each child was a set of 6 placemarks that included:
- An embedded Vocaroo audio snippet of a rehearsed and planned piece of the story from James’ point of view.
- A written sentence that was a second draft of that first audio clip. An improved version that built in the language work we had done as a class to support the story.
You can see these two story elements in this screenshot of a child’s work.
If you would like to hear the audio, see the other 5 placemarks and the work as a whole then you can download the KMZ file here. During the week I worked with a supported literacy group and here is the audio work we completed together.
Challenges of digital storytelling in Google Earth
- Saving - this has been the biggest issue for us as the children will encounter temporary files saved locally in Google Earth. This is especially true when working on different laptops over a period of days. As the placemarks were the same, it led to confusion. If I was to do another unit of work with GE I would ensure that the children save work with their name included and I would also purge the local files at the end of every session. Another option is to explore the use of Google Maps.
- Uncertainty - as with most applications the more confident you are as a user the more you will get from it. Google Earth has a lot going on with various menus, folders and windows. The children often ran into a sticky spot if they could not find the item they were looking for or generally felt unfamiliar with the layout. If I was to repeat this unit again I would probably ensure there has been equivalent hours put in before hand that doesn’t just orientate them to the basics but allows them time to work with files, saving and the various layers of information. This would raise their level of confidence, consequently the layout of Google Earth would not be a hurdle to better storytelling.
Benefits of digital storytelling in Google Earth
- Visual - beginning with such a rich visual stimulus as Google Earth imagery gives the children such a different experience of storytelling then what they are used to. In this unit we benefited as a class not being straight-jacketed to a written, paper based plan. We were free to roam and explore the imagery we had, there were constraints that we agreed, but the plot was there in that imagery waiting for us to tease it out.
- Control - the children had control over the way they explored their story. They moved, tilted and zoomed, they controlled how their journey looked to them. I walked around the room during the week and they were all exerting this control over how the narrative space looked to them. I suppose in a small way this personalises the journey for them.
- Discovery - we began with a single location, a place I believed would be good to tell our escape story. It needed that decision, but from there we decided as a group what would happen. The snakey line you see in the example files or images could have easily taken us in another direction. The children discovered the elements of the story we included. In the first sessions we explored the local area in pairs and the children noted and discussed possible places of refuge. One child shared with us, by zooming in on the SMARTBoard, the building yard that we eventually chose to hide in as James. At that point int he lesson we had not even decided which way to turn from outside his house – but it was clear that the yard would provide us with lots of opportunities so we included it our escape. Let the children find their path, their journey – let them discover what is out there and allow the plot to be formed as you go.
- Embedding Media – Google Earth placemarks allow a whole host of media to be embedded in support of your story. We have added a simple audio player but you could easily have some drama work filmed and uploaded to a video hosting site, then embedded. That would be a great extension to what we have done and not too difficult either.
- Geotagged Narrative – beyond the huge variety of imagery children have as a starting point the sense of making your narrative happen in situ really appeals to me. You have to consider the tense that you work in, however the combination of narrative types in one place is a huge benefit to working in Google Earth. You could have written, spoken, filmed and drawn media all in the very location it is occurring.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 4: Improve the Story
Nov 26th
In today’s literacy lesson, the third in our Google Earth storytelling unit, we made the leap from audio or spoken parts of the story to some written work.
The use of the mapping in this story has provided us with a structure through the escape route we chose and also it has provided us with a rich visual stimulus for story content. The bushes James has to break through in his bid for freedom have caused scratches and bruises and ripped his clothing. The building site we have seen has caused James to be covered in dust and mud. In our story he hides between two large lorries and we stretched out with our senses (Jedi style!) and saw workmen chatting on a tea break, heard drills banging into the ground and the smell of diesel fumes from machinery. All of this has been generated from studying the satellite imagery in our story location.
Over the last few days we have been working on generating a bank of good vocabulary for the escape, which we have on our WOW WORD display. Through discussion and thesaurus work we have gathered lots of verbs and adjectives that have already proven valuable for the children to use in their stories. We have also tried to generate lots of different alternative sentence openers – many of the recorded audio sentences began with “I”. We used the verbs we had generated and coupled them with adverbs to generate powerful sentence openers. Again these are displayed on the wall for the children to see and use in their work, and in fact many of the improvements made today included many of the examples you can see.
![P271108_16.07[01]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/3062194918_f968467886.jpg)
Today the children used this language work to improve the sentences they had begun in their Vocaroo audio. Underneath the code for the Vocaroo player they added <p> for a paragraph and then wrote an improved version of their audio. We encourage them to make small changes to the original sentence, so just add a WOW word or begin the sentence in a more interesting way.
Here is an example of what one of the placemarks looked like and a second image of what the same item had included in the placemark properties. You can listen to the audio for this example here. The children coped well with writing in this way and had no problems with the coding as it is so simple.
The combination of audio and written text has allowed the children to really improve their writing. I have always been very encouraged when the children have used Voicethread and I think that a technology based audio element can be a powerful way to scaffold the writing process.
I believe that in this unit there have been a few ingredients that have contributed to improved storytelling:
- Google Earth’s imagery provided the class with ample inspiration for what to be creating in their story – they could see and explore it in front of them. They were not looking at a piece of paper and trying to drum up something.
- The confidence and comfort that they have with the main character and the background to the story.
- A clear and purposeful backbone to the tale – James is escaping.
- An agreed escape route. The whole class can then discuss the various moments in the escape. The sharing and peer support is vital.
- Easy audio recording has provided the children with a quick avenue into generating story content. There is no password/login/signup/complex method/knowledge/skill barrier to using Vocaroo. The children were recording their ideas immediately.
- Audio and text situated on the image at where it happens in the story brings, often disparate, storytelling elements together.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 3: Consolidate and Empower
Nov 25th
In our writing sessions today I took both classes, all 60 Year 5 children, over two sessions and we continued and completed our work begun yesterday. The children were completing the task of adding 6 audio recordings to the correct placemarks in Google Earth, please see Part 2 for details of the process.
This post is concerned with some issues that have arisen from working with Google Earth and some classroom strategies I have found effective during my work with the application.
Consolidate
There is no better way for children to be successful then to have time to complete their tasks – today was a chance for them to consolidate the process they had begun yesterday and to once more practice embedding code in the Google Earth placemarks. All too often we want to rush the children onto the next great thing, it was useful today to take a breather and just ensure we had done a good job of the audio we worked on for our escape story.
Although a powerful and popular application, Google Earth is not used daily and so some children struggled to find their way around the different task panes and views. Having more time allowed them to become more confident.
As both classes were running into difficulties about what they could or could not see. Often they would think that all of their work had gone, or it has just disappeared – when in fact the placemark had just been unchecked in the Places window. Today I consolidated their basic understanding of the task windows and how to switch between them. I demonstrated the different possible views you could have within the Places window – and pre-empted some of the possible problems based on situations that may or may not have already arisen.
An issue that is well worth knowing about prior to working in Google Earth on a class laptop set is that of multiple content. For our escape story we have 7 placemarks and a path that loads up and is visible – when another child begins their own work another set of the placemarks is loaded up. Today some laptops had 3 sets visible. Children were saying they could not right click any of the placemarks but they had not realised (as the placemarks are identical) that there were multiple placemarks on top of each other. Again I reinforced checking only those placemarks which you need to be visible in the Places pane.
Empower
One of the disadvantages of working in Google Earth is that it is intended to work on a local level – as in the placemarks and items saved in My Places remain on that machine. This causes every laptop to have a different looking Google Earth Places pane, which naturally leads to some confusion. It is worth spending some time keeping on top of what files should and should not be there. My children would be using different laptops everyday and it is unfeasible to try and work with the same one everyday which would have been a time sapper of an organisational problem. Saving work is a little tricky due to the nested nature of the placemarks and content, however this is what we had to do.
I gave myself a good slice of time at the end of each session over the last few days to walkthrough the saving process with both classes.
- Any opened work from a network drive will begin life in the Temporary Places folder.
- Find the main folder for your work, all of your placemarks should be below it in a list. Select it.
- Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
- Click “Save to My Places”.
- The folder moves up and out of Temporary Places.
- Find the main folder for your work again. Select it.
- Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
- Click “Save as…” or “Save place as…”
- Navigate to your network folder.
- Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.
- Save.
- If saving over the top of previous work allow it to replace the older file.
- The slightly tricky nature of local content in Google Earth and saving work can cause younger children to get a bit disorientated.
- Take plenty of time with younger students to demo and walkthrough the save process to a network folder.
- With panes and folders open or closed the views can be very different on different machines so it is worth having confident children to help support their peers and to try and pre-empt some issues.
- As everyone in this set of activities is altering the same placemarks, multiple copies can arise and can confuse. Ensure the children only have one set of placemarks checked.
- Take time to consolidate Google Earth skills and confidence – use outside of the writing time and just allow them to explore. Reinforce the basic layout and structures.
- Encourage a general sense of independence in problem solving – ask 2 friends for help before an adult. Do not underestimate the impact low level informal peer support can have on a technology rich lesson or environment.
- Empower those confident students to actively support their peers, call them experts and make them feel special.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 2: Add your Voice
Nov 24th
Your talent scouting has hopefully provided you with a great location for your class narrative and perhaps you have even plotted the journey the main protagonists will take during the tale. What’s next? Today we continued our Google Earth storytelling as we added audio to the placemarks.
In my opinion children’s writing, whether digital or otherwise, can be greatly improved through the use of purposeful speaking and listening activities about the narrative prior to doing any individual work. Photostory and online resources like Voicethread provide us with a great set of tools to allow technology to further impact in this process. My aim in planning this unit was to include audio within the children’s Google Earth placemarks, I wanted their rehearsed, spoken parts of the story right in the place it happens.
Noel Jenkins must have been on my wavelength as at much the same time he posted on the excellent Digital Geography about the use of Vocaroo and audio notes in Google Earth. Vocaroo is simply ideal for classroom use and it could not be any easier to use. No login or sign-up, no profile or saved content – just hit record and then grab the code to embed elsewhere. Here is how to add audio to a GE placemark.
My class of 30 9/10 year olds went through this process today as we explored the 6 placemarks in the story we wanted to use for the story. I wanted to keep these the same for everyone so that we had some control over what people were doing and so that we could also share ideas amongst the class. They found the process simple, the audio is not great, but it is so easy to do it’s worth it. The Vocaroo site held up very well with 30 children working on it at much the same time.
It was a great lesson and the children will have some more time tomorrow refining their audio and perhaps adding a second piece of audio improving and building upon the sentences they did today. I worked with a small group of boys on a shared story – we had so much fun telling parts of the escape and adding chicken sound effects for the location in the last image above. I encourage you to give this a try and the clear potential for a huge variety of stories situated in Google Earth is boundless!
The next steps will be to refine some of the audio as I said and to begin to add some written text in the placemark that is scaffolded by the use of the Vocaroo recordings.
This is part 2 of a series of posts documenting our Google Earth Storytelling unit.
