In this project, students and teachers will create a MyMap of their own that illustrates where they are from. Students should use pictures, videos, and short dialogue to inform their maps. The students are free to share whatever they feel comfortable sharing. This may include homes, schools, favorite restaurants, or general cities. We ask students to have at least five points with at least one picture and a short paragraph for each.
In creating this map, we hoped to help students get to know each other better, build classroom community, and better understand geography. Additionally, students learned how to use and manipulate their own MyMaps to tell a story – ultimately furthering our goal of digital literacy.
This project helped us learn the background of our students to help us better understand where they are coming from. This is crucial for teachers and students both to understand each other as we begin to form our classroom community.
Great idea to leverage MyMaps to help students tell their story with word and image. You photos give a sense of place that extends beyond words. ( As in Lauren’s wall of corn!)
This is such an awesome activities to help you as the teacher learn about your students and their background as well as allowing them to learn more about you. This gives you a connection point with your students to know about their backgrounds, interests, and potentially cultures without pushing them to share more than what they are comfortable sharing with you. This is also cool because it gives you a starting place to build connections with your students but can also help students build peer relationships with those that have similar backgrounds/interests or those who have completely different backgrounds/interests that a peer wants to learn more about.