Screencasts

I thought of a couple of ways to use screencasting in my Geography class. I would make a screencast showing how to use Google maps. I think this would be very exciting for the students! It would be easy to show them how to add points of interest and to use the satellite view.

Their beginning project would be developing a map that showed the way they travel from home to school. They would also need to add 5 points of interests, perhaps a couple of restaurants and businesses near their home, the library, grocery store, etc.

The second project I would assign them would be to incorporate a Google map into their final project. The end of the year project requires the students to pick a country to do a final report and presentation on. They write a research paper, make a poster, and bring in objects that show places of interest to visit, historical sites, and geographical information (rivers, mountains, etc.). On their Google map they would need to include basic geographical, political, historical and cultural information. If they were doing a Google map of China, here are a few of the things they would probably want to put on the map:

Himalaya Mountains
Huang He River
Gobi Desert
Terra Cotta Army
The Forbidden City
Beijing
The Great Wall of China

The skill of using Google maps would be one more tool in their technological skills and something they could use in the future, also.