MapSkip With Year 5
Two year 5 classes and I were playing and learning with MapSkip last week.
GOOGLE ACCOUNTS PROBLEMS
The week before we explored GoogleMaps and had a look at well known locations around Adelaide, eg Our School, AAMI Stadium, Glenelg Beach, the Clipsal Racetrack, etc. In the last 10 minutes we had a bit of a race to see who could find a landmark the fastest. Then we created our own Google accounts so that we could “edit” our own maps in the next lesson. Well, I have to say that having students sign up for a Google account was not easy. The security image was difficult to read; the password difficulty was really fussy and some boys were not receieving email confirmation – they all have their own school email address. In the end, I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle – to be fair to Google, the problems could be at our end – and decided that I would use MapSkip next lesson.
CREATING MAPSKIP ACCOUNTS
It was easy to create an instant Teacher account at MapSkip. They then advise teachers of three ways to have students use MapSkip. I chose the way where I did not have to enter an email address, and had to fill in the form on the left for each student. It was a very simple process and it would be great for some other sites to use a similar approach. I was able to make the student’s password the same as their username (which is the username they use to log onto our school network). With student accounts being linked to mine, I initially had them set so that each time a student added to a map, I was sent an email. Well, after a mere 30 minutes, I had more than 50 emails from MapSkip, so I soon turned that off!
USING MAPSKIP
Two weeks prior to this we had made a list of 10 things we like about living in Adelaide, so the boys’ task was to show each of these on MapSkip. Once they were logged in (which went smoothly for all for their first use), they needed to locate one of the places from their list on the map. They could navigate (just like in GoogleMaps) using the hand, zooming in and out or by typing in a location in the search box. It was interesting to see that some boys had trouble negotiating where they thought things were or which direction to go to get somewhere – maybe they spend their travel time playing psps instead of looking out the window!
Once a place was found, merely clicking on the map would place a hand marker where you can type in a name for the place. As you can see, a lot of boys placed a hand somewhere on our school. After that they can add a “story” about that place.
Other students are able to comment on places that their peers have added and at present, I have blocked outside people from adding comments.
ISSUES
Like all classes, we had one or two boys who strayed from the task and wanted to write silly or annoying comments/stories, or the two boys despite a long explanation about cybersafety and not giving out personal details, marked their houses! This posed a problem as I wasn’t sure how to either edit the story/comment or delete the place marker.
HELP FROM MAPSKIP
After a little searching around I decided to use the “contact us” link at the bottom of the page. My simple message was “Hi, I have created student accounts linked to mine and they have started writing stories. Is there a way to edit them or delete comments?” I have to emphasise how impressed I was with their response. I sent my comment at 3:18pm Australian time and had a reply within 5 hours (not sure what time it was wherever MapSkip is). This is what constantly amazes me about Web2.0 tools – the reply quickly and politely and I’m not even paying for it! I’m sure we all know software companies where you pay for software and don’t get a response that quickly.
Their suggestion was to sign in as the student, loctae the place and there will be an edit button where stroies can be edited. Then they went on to say, that they realise that teachers may want more control and that they would fast-track changes to the teacher interface!! And, they thanked us for using MapSkip!
Our next step is to embed our maps into our blogs, or if that can’t be done, to have links or maybe a screenshot to them.
Overall, I have really liked using MapSkip. It has been easy, the boys have enjoyed it and also found it easy, and the support has been great. Are you using MapSkip in your classroom – can you tell me how?
