ITRT Summer Camp – VSTE

Hey there VSTE ITRTs!

Here are links to the resources used in today’s Google Earth/Maps, GPS session. I tried to cull things down a little bit to keep it from being overwhelming. If you want to check out all the links for Google Earth feel free to browse my del.icio.us account. There’s lot more stuff there.

Google Earth

First, you can get Google Earth for free here so go get it if you haven’t yet.

Basic Google Earth Tutorials

KML Files

Lesson Plans/Example Files (stuff I showed you)

The Next Level

Google Maps

A lot of features similar to Google Earth. It will allow you to embed video in the information bubbles which is nice and I like the ability to put the maps in different web pages (like Quia).

6 thoughts on “ITRT Summer Camp – VSTE

  1. Do you know of a program that will allow users to create fictional maps? I have a project rolling around in my head, and creating a “fake” map (a la fantasy novels) would be a really cool part of it.

  2. Dana,

    You could make an image overlay for Google Earth in a graphics editing program and you’d have essentially what you want although you wouldn’t have actual 3d terrain (unless if mimics earth’s mountains etc.). I’ve considered doing something similar with the maps from the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings.

    If you’re looking for normal flat maps- of course you could use any graphics editing program (or even Word in a pinch). Depending on age you might give them pre-created enivronmental “pieces” to assemble.

    I’m intrigued what are you trying to do?

    Tom

  3. My students in British lit. read Brave New World for summer reading, and I am considering a utopia project. I have to look at it and make sure it’s really assessing the objectives or big ideas I want them to take away from the book (and I’d like to get some feedback from some other teachers), but my thinking was that if they did create utopias, they could make maps of their utopian societies to go along with the other pieces. It occurred to me that they could probably do this with Sims or maybe even Second Life (don’t know much about Second Life), but I wanted them to use something that they could all have access to without buying anything, which is when I thought of you. You seem to know a great deal about free programs educators can use for such purposes. I’m not a geography teacher, either. I suppose they could use Google Maps or Google Earth. After all, Brave New World is our own earth re-imagined in a future time. There’s no reason why they couldn’t create markers for their new utopia’s capitol and major centers — for example, as in BNW, they might have a place designated for dissidents, or they might have a place set aside for manufacturing certain items, or perhaps even a big storage place for illegal books. Just sort of thinking about it at this stage. What do you think?

  4. Hey Tom,

    Snappy video. One question, aren’t you worried about the link to ebaumsworld.com? I would be hesitant to show the video you’ve created (well, to students anyway) because I would not be willing to risk one of them getting in trouble for visiting that site and then them being able to say I told them about it.

    Is there liability there?

    Watching your back…

    Chris Craft

    Incidentally, a “ninja” intro to that video woulda been nice. Heh.

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