Accessing images from all around the world was impossible some years ago. We are talking about huge amounts of information in photos taken by satellites, or produced by geographers and earth scientists. Such information wasn't available to everyone in a practical way.
We will require students to create an online map in Module 2, A world of music, to illustrate the geographical history of some instruments from around the world. Some of these instruments, such as the ukulele, travelled thousands of kilometers—it was taken by Portuguese sailors to Hawaii.
Google Maps Engine (https://mapsengine.google.com) is one of several online map services available, that allow us to search and navigate in this sea of geographical information.
Besides that, it also makes available various tools that make these maps more interesting for teaching and learning. These tools are markers, lines, and shapes; these are the digital equivalents of the elements we would use in real, paper-based maps, to represent information about them. The advantage here is the possibilities that multimedia brings. For example, we can use this in activities to:
- Display places of interest with multimedia placemarks (earthquakes, volcanoes, schools, animals from several biomes, historical buildings, events such as battles, and so on)
- Draw lines and areas on the maps (illustrating routes or regions, for example, the trip of a Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama from Portugal to India, administrative regions, or the plan of a study visit to a nature reserve)
After we log in to our Google account, we just need to go back to Google Maps Engine and click on the New map button.
We will now need to complete a form, giving the title of the map and a description, and hitting the Save button:
Adding a marker is very simple. The first thing to do is to find a place where we want to put it. For this, we have two options:
- Drag the map in any direction with the mouse (keeping the map clicked), and use the scroll wheel to zoom in or zoom out, or just use the navigation interface to the left of the map.
- Search for a place in the search field. Google Maps Engine will add a green marker to the destination. Click on it and then on the Add to map link.
Google Maps Engine has several types of maps that we can display—road maps, satellite imagery, terrain information, and in some cases, street views and traffic information as well. To select the appropriate one, we should select a base map from the left menu, as shown in the following image:
Now, let's take a look at the marker. There's a toolbar for adding elements to the map, on the upper-left corner of the map region.
We should click on the Add marker button on the toolbar, next to the hand tool, and position it where we want to add the marker to the map.
Now, in the provided pop up, we can insert all of the information that we want to include, in the title and description fields.
To suggest a connection between placemarks (for example, a route), we can add lines to our map, connecting the placemarks. After clicking on the Add line or shape icon in the toolbar, we just click on the starting point. Next, we can click on as many additional points as we wish. In this way, a line will be drawn between the points that we select. When we are done, we just need to double-click at that location.
In the upper-right corner of our map, we can see a Share button:
If we click on this, we can add collaborators like we have seen in Google Drive.
To embed the map in Moodle, we first have to change its privacy settings.
We should select the Public on the web under Visibility options: and hit Save and then click on Done.
Now, to get the embed code, we should click on the folder icon on the left and then click on the Embed on my site option.
Just a quick reference of Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) to finish this section on online maps. This is a computer software application that uses the same map data as Google Maps. It has more functionality than the latter (you can work in 3D, explore the Moon, Mars, and sky maps, insert GPS data, and take measurements).
