Assignment: Research your neighborhood and pair that research with a short, personal narrative, imitating Alex Kotlowitz's style in There Are No Children Here.
The research and narrative will then be posted to a custom map using Google Maps Engine Lite.
Recap: Because of the unpredictability of our end-of-year schedule, I was forced to shorten this assignment. The original assignment involved a little more research, and I would have likely extended the word count and quality of their narratives.
However, the assignment proved to be a success in terms of educating students about their neighborhoods (I was surprised to see the number of kids who didn't know anything about where they lived), and in seeing how many of Kotlowitz's chapters were set up. Thematically, the students were able to add their own voices to the Chicago narrative dominating the media.
They told stories of violence, blight, and destruction, but they also told tales of friendship, love, and trust.
Creating a custom map is a straightforward process. You work in layers (you can see my 6th period "layer" in the picture), and are limited to 100 (I think?) locations in the non-commercial version.
However, Maps Engine (essentially a refresh of the custom maps Google has offered for years) does not allow rich text formatting, HTML, and embedding in the balloons that pop up when clicking on a placemark.
I would love to be able to embed videos or Google documents directly in the map... or at the very least, format text. I resorted to having students post a public Google Doc share link.
I'm hoping to explore more uses of this tool next year, including overlaying images and studying their neighborhood in a little more depth.
Let me know what you think, or if you have other ideas...
#Google #GoogleMaps #GoogleMapsEngine #education #Kotlowitz #Chicago #ThereAreNoChildrenHere #GoogleDrive #narratives #story
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