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Monday, March 29, 2010

Scribble Maps = Geography Fun!



A few teachers from my PLN suggested that I take a look at Scribble Maps. I cannot thank them enough for encouraging me to look around. If you are familiar with Google Maps, this will not be a problem for you to use. The website uses Google Maps and allows you to draw on the map you have focused on. You can draw by hand, create circles or boxes, create text and even add images. This is a great way to use the SmartBoards in the classroom. Take a look at my example. You can save them for later editing or you can save them as JPEG's so you can add them to other documents like this:


Here is one I just did of my High School. It only took me 5 Minutes to draw, save and upload this picture.




You can do all sorts of things with this program. They have Terrain Maps, Satellite Maps and Hybrid Maps that you can use for different lessons. I know many teachers are always looking for different ways to incorporate their SmartBoards into their lesson plans and I think this is a good tool to use with the students. This could also be used in other classes as well. In English, I could see using this to show the students where the story is taking place and adding my own visuals to the map. Perhaps a map showing East and West Egg and adding different pictures from The Great Gatsby so the students can see where the story takes place. You have as many options as you can think of with this cool tool. Take a few minutes and take this tool for a test drive. You might be surprised at the different ways you come up with to use this in your classroom.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the link. I'm a trainer for SMART and I look forward to sharing this.

    Have you used the Transparent tools in Notebook 10.6 with Google Maps yet? Does some similar things and it really quite cool.

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  2. I just LOVE Scribble Maps, it is so much fun to have students put place markers on battle sites, places in literature they are reading, etc. It is a nice way for the kids to visualize what is actually happening in their reading and make new connections to the material.

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  3. I was telling someone the other day about Scribble Maps. Now I will send them your blog post since you did a better job explaining it than I did :)

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  4. Scribble Maps is a great leap allowing analytical diagramming of imagery(satellite)- be it street sections or views, perspectival or aerial. It allows everyone to suggest associations with a place, analyze aspects of place, or create new ideas about a place. I will start using it in class when analyzing sites before a visit to introduce concepts about edges, boundaries, imagery,etc. NEXT.cc is developing a series of journeys on cartography and environmental mapping and will be sure to include Google 's Scrible Maps. Thanks!

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