Sunday, January 12, 2014

Okay, Thing 11: Mapping & Geolocation Tools I had already seen the Google Maps new interface video once before. It is not very inspiring to me as I don't use Google Maps to find restaurants, etc. I tried to follow the interface tour, but I somehow messed it up somehow. I did learn that when you jump browsers, Google does not follow you! Handy info since they seem to be able to track everything. (Just a reminder to those of you who are not as paranoid about internet snooping, unclick the "Stay signed in" box so that you are only signed in to google when you want to be.) I also just learned to create my post in Word and then paste it into Blogger, because Blogger started saying it couldn’t save my post. (Not that I was ready to publish, yet!) That was something Jan Tunison recommended at her presentation on using Edmodo at NERIC Technology Awareness day. It seems like a good idea to maybe save everything that seems important that you have on a free website as a Word doc, too. I have also learned that Google Maps says that Internet Explorer does not support all of the cool new things in Google Maps. They recommend Chrome of course, but I didn't get that message in Firefox so it must support the new interface. My tech guy, Dave Holmes, is always trying to get me to use Firefox or Chrome, but Firefox is too annoying for school since I can only have it up on one computer at a time. What with budget cuts, I am usually signed on to both circ desk computers at once so I can work on one and go over to check out books, look up things for teachers, put books on hold, etc. on the other when I don’t have any help in the library. Okay, I went into Chrome to take the new interface tour. Not an impressive tour to me. As I play around, I noticed that while Google has taken unbelievable street view photos of my neighborhood, most of the photos at the town I work in are clearly not Google in origin. They are still shots, not 360. It makes sense that no one wants the school in too much detail, (you can only see the bus garage), but I am surprised about the main road. I looked into Photosphere. Interesting that there is something easier with Android that with iPhones. I went with the Android phone, but sometimes feel left out if I am not near other techies. Still, with my students so young and not supposed to be using cell phones at school, I don’t see much use for it in an academic sense. Also, it seems more just a fun thing to do than a really curriculum relevant thing at the elementary level. I could see the Jr high which at times has field tripped to local history sites adding info via Photosphere as a project. I did add my favorite vacation spot to the collaborative map labelled "Wendy's favorite vacation spot." Very inventive title, no? I checked out History Pin, What Was There, and Sepia Town. Sepia Town does not seem to have anything local. History Pin has more. To me it seems like What Was There is the best for our area. I don’t see real curricular connections, but it would make a great Scouting project. In the past, before Common Core and all of the standardized testing, I think that teachers would have felt like they had the time to use this as a local history project. I could see people going to the relatives, local museums, public libraries, historians, etc. to get a photo to scan, identify the location, and upload. That would be cool. The My Histro site seems especially good. We had tried timerime with our Professional Technology Group, but that doesn’t seem as focused as My Histro does. I will definitely mention this to Tech Group. Library Thing Local is interesting, but not much use for school. GeoGuessr is similarly just amusing. I think that some of the Shepard Software geography games are much more appropriate for school use. Free iPad apps might be cool IF we had any tablets in the school building whatsoever, but we don’t! The QR code ideas might be cool, but they aren’t appropriate for a school where the kids are not supposed to be using cell phones at school AND we don’t have any tablets. Finally, I did take a Lit Trip course in the spring. I have a curricular connection for it, but I haven’t gotten back to it. This reminds me to do it and I hope I can get myself to take the time. Well, if I hope I get faster at working through future Things and more succinct at posting about them. Final thoughts... How do I get Blogger to let me have line breaks in my posts? All of my paragraphs ran together!
Okay, time to get to work. I joined Cool Tools with the hope of being as inspired as I was when Polly taught the CDLC course that necessitated this blog. However, the November start with the Holiday crazies at school, at home and in the community was just not feasible for me. I hope to catch up between this weekend and next.