March/April 2008
World Tour with Online Maps
How do maps help students think about the dynamic interactions among people, places and environments?
Satellite imagery of the earth has been around for fifty years, but only in the past few years has it become readily available from any computer by means of a number of interactive geography tools. Some of the most accessible and easy to use are Flash Earth, Google Earth, National Geographic's Map Machine, and Virtual Earth . All of these tools allow students to see the world in astonishing detail.
The Interactive Tools
Not surprisingly, one of the best resources comes from National Geographic. Map Machine is an online atlas that links the user to street maps and satellite imagery from a simple search on a place name. Tabs at the top of the screen let students choose among road, satellite, and physical maps, as well as map overlays with climate, population, or other information. Teachers who want students to use particular images can save the URL's of individual maps for later access.
Flash Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth are both web-based interactive map sites with navigation controls that let students "fly" over the landscape, zooming in for detail or zooming out for a stunning aerial view. Both have a map options that can show political boundaries, roads, and other features. Virtual Earth has a particularly useful feature: educators who register for a free account can build "collections" that students can tour, with links to photos, articles, and other online resources.
One of the richest online resources is Google Earth, a free download from Google that allows the user to zoom in on any location on the planet. Google Earth contains links that users around the world have added to the virtual globe, including Web links, articles, and photographs. Teachers can save easily place locations they want to re-visit with students. Different "layers" of detail can be added, including borders, place names, or 3D images, depending on what the viewer wants to see. Google Earth also pairs up with content providers like National Geographic, the National Wildlife Federation, the Smithsonian, and the United Nations, allowing users immediate access to more information about what they are seeing in the satellite imagery. There is plenty of user-generated content, too, contributed by the enormous Google Earth community—though of course, the usual problems with the accuracy of a resource anyone can contribute to must be considered.
Integrating the Tools with Curriculum
Interactive geography tools help students to relate geography to other content areas in the curriculum. When we took our third graders on a "world tour" of places featured in stories they read in the classroom, they could see the pond in Boston, the location in Mexico, or the city in Vietnam where the stories took place.
Our Social Studies curriculum for third grade focuses on the continents, maps and globes, habitats, and the similarities and differences among cultures and nations. "Understanding the geography of the interdependent world" isthe statement from the NY Learning Standards for Social Studies. The third grade teachers and I identified places familiar to students, such as Boston (in a shared story), or Mexico (part of their butterfly unit in science), and created an online tour called The View from Space, which I linked to the library website. We zoomed in on different kinds of habitats such as the rainforest or tundra, to gain an understanding of the characteristics of those places. Later in the third grade year, we used the same tools as part of the study of Europe.
First and foremost, students using interactive geography tools gain a sense of what the Earth is really like. They can see the shape of the continents, and compare the size and location of the United States with Japan or Australia. Looking at the globe spinning on the computer screen, they can really see just how much of the planet is covered by water. The students also get a sense of scale: using Google Earth and similar tools offers children a glimpse of how big the earth really is, compared to the small slice of it that makes up their daily world. Our school is in a town near one of western New York's Finger Lakes. When I zoom in on New York State, the kids frequently assume that Lake Ontario is "our" lake, and are shocked that little Conesus Lake is barely visible from that altitude.
Children under the age of eight often think that the world has always been pretty much the same. Using online maps and satellite images, the children can see how places change. One sharp-eyed third grade teacher pointed out that a view of downtown Rochester NY on Google Maps clearly shows our 11-year old ballpark; toggling to the same view on Flash Earth shows an empty lot. When we looked at the pond on the Boston Public Garden on Flash Earth, we were able to toggle between the Google Maps view of the pond in winter, and Virtual Earth view of the same area in summer. The kids could see right away that the season of their arrival in the Public Garden would make a huge difference to the ducks in Make Way for Ducklings.
Science units are a natural for geography interactives, too. I made a "collection" on Virtual Earth, marking the locations of six different ecosystems the children would be learning about in the course of the year. I asked the children to zoom in, record the colors that they saw, and answer questions about the one of the six ecosystems they were exploring. Children who zoomed around Uluru in central Australia could see from the reddish brown color that it was an area with limited rainfall; children zooming above the cloud cover could see the opposite was true in the Amazon basin. Students who zoomed around an image of the Antarctic saw black, grey, and white. The question I asked was, "Why are there no big herbivores living on land in Antarctica?" Seeing the icy expanse, the children could easily see that with no plant life, there could be no elephants, deer, or musk ox. In fact, the lack of detail in Antarctica turned out to be the most interesting thing about it. One third-grader pointed out that he couldn't zoom in as closely in Antarctica as in other regions. I asked why he thought this was so, he responded that nobody lived there "except penguins," so there wasn't anything to zoom in on.
Interactive Geography and Critical Thinking
The most important concept students can learn with interactive tools is that people affect the world, and the world affects us. Geography plays a huge role in the growth of civilizations and the way people live. A third grade student using Virtual Earth can see the urban sprawl of greater Miami near the Florida Everglades. The "thinking question" I gave the students for this region was, "What will happen as the city gets closer to the Everglades?" One third-grader's response was that the National Park would get "all garbage-y." Another student thought that the animals would have no place to go if people started building houses right near the Everglades.
When our third grade students began their study of the European continent, one of the first things they saw when using National Geographic's Map Machine was how many places in the world are named after places in Europe. The student who searched the term " London" got nearly two dozen hits. This led to a thoughtful discussion of why there are so many towns named Amsterdam and Paris. The children suggested that people who moved to another country named new cities for the places they left behind in Europe. Another suggested that immigrants hoped their new cities would become as famous as their European counterparts were.
During the same unit, third grade students used Map Machine to examine maps and photos of a European city, and gathered some information to share with the group. One student reported that Prague had a big river running through it; another noted the same was true of London. I asked how many of the cities we explored were situated on rivers. The children scrambled back to their computers to check, and we discovered that Paris, Warsaw, Rome, Brussels, Kiev, and many others were all located on the banks of a river. This led to a discussion of why this might be. The students suggested that the rivers supplied water for drinking and for farms, fish for food, and transportation.
One of the most useful tools for examining human impact on the world is Google Earth. By clicking on the links provided by the United Nations Environment Programme, the user can compare "before" and "after" satellite views of areas in the world. A view of the Aral Sea today compared to an image from the 1980's makes its depletion shockingly evident. Looking at the overlay for the Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River in Turkey, one can see a pair of images, one from 1976, and one from the 1999. Students can see the growth of green land to the south of the new reservoir.
Interactive geography tools give students a sense of their own place. They are fascinated by the Flash Earth view of our Primary school. They can see our town, and the nearby lake. Zooming in, they can see the bus loop, the track, the parking lot, and the school next door where the "big kids" go. I showed the children the little dark spots on the building that mark the skylights on the roof of our library, and then clicked a spot a little to the south and told them, "I'm clicking on the computer lab where we are right now." One small comic immediately put her hand on her head and said, "Ow!"
Resources
Microsoft Virtual Earth - http://local.live.com/ Zoom in and on on map, satellite, or combined images of the earth. Registration isn't required, but by signing up for an account, you can create "Collections" of places for others to view.
Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/ Free download.
Flash Earth - http://www.flashearth.com/ Pulls satellite imagery from a variety of sources, letting the user toggle back and forth for the best view.
National Geographic Map Machine - http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine
More map links on my wiki: http://squareone.pbwiki.com/INTERACTIVE
Third grade geography lesson: http://classrooms.livoniacsd.org/agordon/Webquests/Third/SpaceView/SpaceView.htm
Anne-Marie Gordon is the School Library Media Specialist at Livonia Primary Library in Livonia, NY.
