Map Mashup in Children's Literature

Inspired by the website on Google Lit Trips, I decided to create a Lit Trip of my own based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books for a 3rd or 4th grade language arts class. The placemarks on the map include brief summaries about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family, and an overview of the book or books set at each location. I also found web sites created by the historical societies at each of these cities related to Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books, all of which provide historical background, and information about these locations in the present day. This mashup could serve as a resource for either an in class study of one of these books, or for students' independent reading. This is a technology tool that has the ability to connect literature, biography, history, and geography. Pretty cool, in my opinion. I'm always interested in ways to make literature more accessible to students. I also love tools and activities that make connections across the curriculum.

For older students (upper elementary and middle school), if given lessons in class about how to use Google Maps and create their own mashups, this technology could be used by students themselves to create book reports and other projects. When creating a book report about a book that has a variety of locations discussed or just a unique setting, Google Maps could be a useful tool. Students could also create their own maps in science and social studies to map out important historical events, geographical locations including cultural information, landforms, and geological sites around the world. For myself, I know that locating places I'm learning about or reading about on a map can definitely help increase my understanding, allowing me to explore distances from one location to another or even where a place is in relation to where I live. Map mashups are even more useful because of their ability to include links, photos, and other supplementary information right on the map. This makes this technology interactive and also keeps a variety of information all in one place. I would like to think that students could gain the same understanding through map mashups in the classroom, whether they are teacher or student created.

Here is my map based on the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder:


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Notable Education Blogs

This blog, the Class of Ambrose,was created by a 5th grade teacher at a school in Detroit. I took the time to look through this blog mostly because it came from a Michigan school in a grade I am interested in teaching. This teacher has clearly made good use of this blog to provide his students with information and resources to benefit their learning. Some of the early posts provide information for both students and parents with clear instructions on how to use blogs, along with links to other important technology. For example the teacher posted a link and instructions for families to download Firefox for their computers. Other things I liked about this blog were the posts announcing upcoming test dates and project due dates with study information included, descriptions of the GLCEs for 5th grade and the applicable GLCE for each topic they studied, and YouTube videos of lessons he had done in class for students to re-watch should they need a refresher on the material covered. I like how he lets his students know so much about the GLCEs and lets them see exactly which GLCEs they are covering in class and when. The YouTube videos seem to be a particularly useful tool for math, giving students the opportunity to see a math lesson a second time. He also provides his students with other math help resources.

The next blog, Simply Teaching, is written by a New Hampshire 4th grade teacher, posting his experiences in teaching and providing advice and ideas to other teachers. He focuses a lot of his posts around ideas for teaching that meant to be simple, but useful and effective. He provides price and product information from Amazon.com for many of the resources he uses, his goal being to show items that teachers can get for their classrooms that are less expensive. Other posts provide reviews of books he has used in his classroom, both resource books for teachers and fiction and non-fiction books for students. I really liked this aspect of his blog, since I'm always interested in other opinions about good books for children at the grade level I hope to teach. I find that blogs are great places to get the word out about good books, both in education and in general. This is definitely a good blog to check out for ideas on many aspects of teaching.