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Teaching MyMaps Assignment

Last week was the start of a new grading period at my school so I decided to teach them how to post icons onto Google Maps. I had the students sign up for a Gmail account, had them work with a partner to find five things to do in their neighborhoods or city, and then sowed them how to use google maps. Basically, I recreated the first day of ITEC 814 with my students! It took three days. The students really liked all aspects of the assignments, especially personalizing their iGoogle page, and for the most part, they had no problems with using the icons to place on their maps. Some of them did have a hard time placing lines from location to location though. Sometimes they got too close to the icons which ended up moving the icon, others had a hard time with getting the line to start or to stop. I also had a hard time with this when I did this assignment for the first time, so I did warn them about those potential problems. I work with kids who have learning disabilities and they often get frustrated easily, but even when they had a hard time with drawing the lines, they keep with it, so I was very happy. I think they really liked the assignment and they saw it as something fun, so they didn't give up easily. I definitely want to incorporate more of these types of assignments in the future!

What I think about Google Tools

A few of my friends have told me about Google Docs and some of the other tools that we learned about in class today.  I always listened politely, smiled, and completely dismissed what they said. I never was really interested because I figured you had to be really computer and technology savvy in order to use the tools they mentioned. (Secretly, I always wondered how they even knew about these features!) 

But now that I (a technophobe) have successfully used Google docs, iGoogle, and Gooogle Maps, I am so excited. 

First off, I love how very simple they are to use! Who knew!!! 

Secondly, being the total teacher dork that I am, I love how I can incorporate these things into my lesson plans. I also like how if I were to truly incorporate some of these features into my job, the students would have to take responsibility for their own work, which is something I am constantly trying to get them to do! 

I do have some concerns though. The computers at my school and in my classroom are absolutely archaic! The collaboration tool was not too successful for me when we did the Google Maps activity. I am worried that it would fail miserably at work! Other concerns are that a lot of my students do not have internet access at home and there is no wireless access at my school so we would have to sign up for the lab in order to do a lot of these activities. These last two aren't huge concerns though because I am going to start off small. This is not going to be something that I use on a daily basis (yet) so these two concerns are irrelevant at this time! And in terms of the collaboration tool failing, I think I just need more practice and I also need to realize that sometimes it won't work smoothly and that's okay. The important thing is for students to try and to learn patience! Something we could all use!