Thursday, Thursday, April 19, 12:00 noon, Frist Multipurpose Room A
Using Maps in Teaching with Ben Johnston
In this session we will investigate the use of Google Maps and Google Earth as a teaching tool. Google Maps have become so common on the Internet partly because they are so easy to create. It is just as easy to plot your own locations on these maps and store information about those locations. Google Maps can be used as a way to organize location-related research notes or as a research archive on which an entire class can collaborate and compile, mapping out for example all references to locations in a novel or mapping the locations of historical sites. The WordPress plugin, WPGeo will also be presented in this session. The WPGeo plugin, available to all blogs on the campus WordPress platform, allows one to associate locations with blog posts and create cumulative maps displaying all the locations described by posts. In this way, a map can easily be used as a navigational element for the blog.
About the speaker:
Ben Johnston is Senior Educational Technologist at OIT’s Educational Technologies Center and manager of the Humanities Resource Center in East Pyne. Ben has been involved with educational technology for over twelve years in positions at Columbia University, Bryn Mawr College, and at Princeton University. While at Princeton, Ben has worked with educators and researchers across the Humanities and Social Sciences to facilitate the use of digital assets, technology tools, databases, and digital video in teaching and research.
