Group 4 Technologies – Google Maps, Online Timelines and Museumbox

Google Maps

Google Maps gives the ability for students to embed maps detailing information relevant to the topic. I did note that in my Terracotta Warriors Glogster, the map used did not retain the correct location for the tomb of the first Qin Emperor. Whilst accessing Google Maps I was able to re-do the map to put in the pin but could not find a way to edit my Glog to put this in. 

Whilst I would have needed to adjust the size as you can see the pin is still there. This would be useful in the teaching of especially SOSE, not only from the historical perspective but if presented into a scaffolded design in the classroom would allow them to familiarize themselves with the tool such that they may recognize that this might by something that could be incorporated into their PowerPoint of in my case Glogster.

It is worth recognizing that whilst the students would enjoy the use of the Glogster program over the PowerPoint, it may not support as much higher order thinking as the PowerPoint. That is not to say that this element would not be incorporated to any extent but rather not to the same extent as a PowerPoint.  A way to support this might perhaps be with the inclusion of a posting in an on-line Blog.

There are other programs that can also be useful for the teaching of subjects like Geography or its various aspects within the SOSE curriculum. 

Another page that perhaps could be incorporated is an oldie but a goodie, THINKQUEST as this is a program that would allow students to enter into the site for on-line collaboration like in a Wiki but also allows the creation of Blogs that can be posted onto the site. The students are also taking part through this activity in a Competition. 

An example of what the students were able to create can be seen in from the 2012 Winner from China and Singapore of the competition who won laptop computers, prizes of up to $5,000.00 for their school and a trip to THINKQUEST live. Their presentation about world hunger was an amazing collaboration of resources, ideas utilizing significant online information and knowledge to analyze the causes of world hunger. Sadly for Australian students the Thinkquest competition is timed to coincide with the curriculum in the Northern Hemisphere and therefore its use here would be more limited. 

For this purpose attempts by the Australian Council for Education in Computers were made in 2010 to establish an Australian arm but it does not seem to have got off the ground and you are simply re-directed to the international site (ACCE, 2010). This would be a limitation in respect of the use of this tool.

Online Timelines

I also got onto Dipity as if I can ever work out how to use this tool it would be extremely useful in logging a timeline for whatever you are seeking to teach. Unfortunately I am really struggling to work out how this works. Guess I will have to look at the Technical Manual to see if it can clarify this for me.

I did however access an additional Timeline generator program through Soft Schools. Timeline Maker is basic but rather limited in what seems to be able to be added in. 

There are however other programs like TimeGlider which also produce effective and cohesive Timelines as well as tiki-toki which produces amazing interactive timelines. 

The greatest difficulty might be recognising the limitation that you or your students may have as users in respect of these items and whether they will be able to use them effectively. Any of these programs would be wonderful for a teacher to use for history projects to expand upon and allow the students to explore an aspect of history. They would not only learn about the subject that they were doing but they would expand their ability to use an ICT tool. Here is an example of a timeline created for World War 1 on TimeGlider:

Probably the one aspect to be concerned at with these multiple abilities would be the age of the students and whether they would become overwhelmed. It is at this point that a focused and strongly scaffolded learning design would be effective.

Museum Box

Really the idea for this seems to be what we previously classed as Time Capsules. So it is like an on-line Time Capsule put like they do in Museums everything that relates to that particular topic in included in separate boxes. This allows a museum’s cataloguing system to work effectively. The classification system that is incorporated in Museumbox might be of assistance if students were presented with say groups of items that had been washed up from a shipwreck. Some might just classify them individually both others would consider where and how they were classified.

Here is an example from a student Museum Box:

Within each box further information can be included:

I really enjoyed looking at the cataloguing within the boxes. It was interesting particularly how the boxes could have layers within each box. I did not really get this at first examination of the tool but after playing around was able to work it out. Museum box allows text, audio, video, pictures, PowerPoint’s and PDF docs to be used in the created of the media cube (Daniels, 2012).

This is a fascinating tool and as can be seen in Museumbox itself clearly form the number of box’s that are being created that reflect aspects of the curriculum (e.g. Ancient Japan) they are useful in the teaching of History in Australian Schools. The only difficulty that I found in the use of these tools was particularly learning that each box that was presented was effectively a rubric that would have further information embedded into it. I can particularly see how students in higher levels of schooling would enjoy and use this program. Being interactive it would be much more likely to maintain their interest than perhaps simply for example a written assignment.

Bibliography:

On-line Resources:

Australian Council of Computers in Education: http://acce.edu.au/acce/acce-projects/thinkquest

Carlo Daniels, Tech Insights – Museumbox, 03/02/2012: http://www.wiu.edu/coehs/techinsights/blog/?p=985