Digital Images and Mapping
I have been reading a lot about digital pictures and the "entrypoints" images provide for new ways of learning. For me, I hear digital images and the first creative application that comes to mind is digital storytelling (excluding typical ways of documenting). However, a close reading of Glen Bull's Teaching with Digital Images opened new ways of thinking about digital imagery's role in classrooms. I highly recommend this book.
The book left me thinking about Ning, a web 2.0 application that I wrote about in a previous post. Ning allows users to create their own applications for collaborating and sharing information. What sparked this connection was a Ning tool that incorporates blank Google maps and user-created digital images to display visual connections to other people, places, and/or things. The cool thing is that the map can be whatever you want it to be! It is entirely open-ended!
I created a "GeoMap" for the new school that I will be working for this fall. Will the teachers and students use this map to describe their local community? Will the teachers and students use it track and monitor (visually) local wildlife over a period of time? Will the teachers and students use it as the platform for learning about new areas within Atlanta? Will the teachers and students partner with another school in another state that uses their own "GeoMap" as a way of sharing and communicating? Will the teachers and students upload historical pictures that correlate to modern locations (reinforcing the fact that history is an important part of life today)? I don't know, but it could be cool.
Here is the link to Trinity's Geomap. I hope that teachers play with the zoom on the left, change the map type on the right, and choose to participate!
Technorati Tags: maps, photos, & education
The book left me thinking about Ning, a web 2.0 application that I wrote about in a previous post. Ning allows users to create their own applications for collaborating and sharing information. What sparked this connection was a Ning tool that incorporates blank Google maps and user-created digital images to display visual connections to other people, places, and/or things. The cool thing is that the map can be whatever you want it to be! It is entirely open-ended!
I created a "GeoMap" for the new school that I will be working for this fall. Will the teachers and students use this map to describe their local community? Will the teachers and students use it track and monitor (visually) local wildlife over a period of time? Will the teachers and students use it as the platform for learning about new areas within Atlanta? Will the teachers and students partner with another school in another state that uses their own "GeoMap" as a way of sharing and communicating? Will the teachers and students upload historical pictures that correlate to modern locations (reinforcing the fact that history is an important part of life today)? I don't know, but it could be cool.
Here is the link to Trinity's Geomap. I hope that teachers play with the zoom on the left, change the map type on the right, and choose to participate!
Technorati Tags: maps, photos, & education
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