This
week I was one of roughly 70 teachers fortunate enough to attend the 2014Google Geo Teacher Institute in Mountain View, California. The event was
two days (July 22-23) of sessions and workshops focusing on how teachers can
use the array of Google geo tools with their students (Maps, Earth, Views,
Street View, Maps Engine, Tour Builder and Time Lapse to name a few). The
format for the institute is similar to a Google Teacher Academy except with an emphasis
on the geo tools. John Bailey, Program Manager for Geo Education at Google is the organizer and he
did a great job of creating two days of high level professional development. There
will be a similar institute held in a couple of weeks (August 5-6) at theGoogle offices in Pittsburgh.
A
combination of elements made this an amazing professional development
opportunity. First of all the participating teachers are a diverse group.
Not only were participants from a combination of K-12, higher education
and administrative roles, they all came from all over the United States as well
as abroad - one participant traveled from Australia to attend this week.
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| Me standing in front of a Google Street View Car on Google Campus |
The
second interesting aspect is the quality of the presenters. Some of the
presenters are teachers with a strong background in Google Geo Tools who have
presented at Google Summits and past institutes. The remainder of the
staff for the institute is made up for Googlers - project managers and members
of the Google Edu team. It is a rare opportunity to sit in a session
about Google Tour Builder and have a conversation with the individual who
created it!
The
final element is, appropriately enough for a geo workshop, its location.
I have spent the last two days on the campus of the Googleplex, the mother
ship for an edu geek like me. It provides just a small slice of the
Google workplace atmosphere.
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| Google Campus |
The resources for the individual sessions, along with the names of the presenters,is available online here. It was tough
for me to decide which sessions to attend.
I wanted to attend them all and over the next couple of weeks I will
spend time going back to this site and checking out the links and tools
included on each page.
So
what did I walk away with after two days in Mountain View? Here are my
“30,000 feet view” takeaways - appropriate as I type this aboard a plane flying
back to Kansas City. I hope to post more specific blogs in the future on
specific tools and how to use them in the classroom.
Getting
past the sizzle and making it real in the classroom
Several
times this week while exploring these amazing tools and apps I had to get
myself past the “whiz-bang” aspect of the tool and think about how my students
can use this in class. I felt there was a conscious effort, many times
vocalized in sessions, to think about building real world activities that
maximize the tool. We also have to realize that you can’t force a tool
into a classroom, no matter how amazing, if it doesn’t fit. Sometimes it
is OK to let a tool soak in and someday in the future a way in which to use it
your classroom will make sense.
Google
is listening to teachers
Often
during the week Googlers asked us, the teachers, how we use the geo tools with
our students and then asked us for suggestions on how to make it better.
I give Google a ton of credit for taking the time to listen. The
project leads for Google Earth spent an hour asking us about how we use Earth
and what features we would love to see added in the future. For example,
there was quite a bit of discussion on the desire to have Google Earth
available in the web browser to allow users of Chromebooks to use the tool.
They said they are truly working hard on solving issues like this and I
felt a vibe that in the future issues like this will be resolved to help the
millions of students who are now using Chromebooks in their school.
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| Google Campus |
Maps
can be an important part of the story
It
is impossible to separate geography from physical experience. Events
happen in places and sometimes the physical environment of a place helps shape
the event itself. It is great to see tools and resources like Google Lit
Trips and Tour Builder being utilized to add geography to books, trips and
stories. One of the new things I will introduce to the my 8th grade American
History class this year is the “Big Map”. Students will create their own
custom map in Maps and then add the locations of the events we discuss throughout
the year as we explore the colonization of America through the end of the Civil
War. I will also allow students to create their own personal layer on the
map - places they have visited, want to visit, lived, favorite team, etc.
I want to blog more about this later but I want to create a connection
for my students between the geography of the places we study throughout the
year with their own experiences.
Maps
can democratize data and be a powerful force
Rebecca Moore - Engineering Manager of Google
Earth Engine & Earth Outreach - shared several stories with us describing
how Google maps have been used to help educate communities on potential
developments, removal of landmines in war torn countries, slow the
deforestation of the Amazon and track bear sightings in a California
neighborhood. Here is a link to avideo of her giving a similar presentation. I think that the most powerful
aspect of making maps which display data is that it ultimately translates the
data into a different language - a visual language that generally more people
can ingest and understand. She describes numerous ways that Google maps
have impacted world leaders, politics and environmental issues - all using
tools which Google has made free and accessible. Now my challenge as a
teacher is to explore ways I can use these tools to turn the data and content I
teach into maps which will help my students understand what I am teaching in
new ways.
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| Example in Geo for Good presentation by Rebecca Moore |
Google
Maps are social and we are contributing content, are your students?
Back
in the day, and I speak as a roughly 40 year old man, we had our maps handed to
us. Rand McNally and National Geographic created the maps and we just
bought them and used them. Today we are contributing to the map. We can
create maps with our directions, our own place marks, our own images and links
attached to a pin. This summer I have played a lot with one of Google’s
new geo tools - Views. Views allows you to post 360 degree pictures,
commonly referred to as “photospheres”, and publicly share them on Google Maps.
I have added almost 100 views to the Google Map this summer. Some
are of my own community and some are from vacation. I even took some out
here in Mountain View. Here is a photosphere taken on the Google Campus
this week during lunch. I have had a blast taking and sharing these views
but I also want my students to be taking these photos and being the
contributors to the Google Map. I am working on a project that will help
students take photospheres of all the locations in our county listed on the National
Registry of Historic Places. I also want to help my students create maps
that could be of value in our own community. How about students
collaboratively creating a Google Map which shows all the locations in Liberty
which provide free wifi access. That is a map that students, and people
in the community, could really use in their daily lives.
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| Google Views - See Geography in 360 degree Images |
Give
a man a fish, teach a man to fish…
The
previous point is a good bridge to this point - don’t just hand students this
content, have THEM create it. I could make a lot of cool maps and
visualizations and just show them to my students but I need to fight the urge
to do this and instead try to create it with them. Without getting too
far off the intended path of this blog post, there are a lot of connections on
this topic to the maker movement in education. Students not only will
find more value in a map they helped to create, they are also learning about
the process which can then be applied later in different ways. As someone
who typically likes to “control” my classroom this is sometimes a struggle.
Giving the tools to the students and having them create is often messy,
loud and in general scary to a lot of teachers but something we need to do
more.
So
there you have it - my big picture reflections from an incredible week at the
2014 Google Geo Teachers Institute in Mountain View. Thanks again to John
Bailey and everyone who made this a truly memorable week. I leave the Googleplex with more tools to
empower my students and a lot of new friends that I can add to my personal
learning network and share ideas.
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| "Tonight, we ride!" - Taking a G-Bike for a spin around the Google Campus |
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