Images above of .... Have a guess!
Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Spatialworlds website
21st Century Geography Google Group
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
Virtual trips in the classroom
Over the years I have been talking with geography teachers about virtual tourism and the potential of spatial technology to take students to places all around the world without actually going there. Such virtual trips are a great way to develop student understanding of places and to feel like they actually have gone there in some way. We cannot recreate the sounds, smells and feeling of a place but we can certainly acquire amazing visuals and associated information on a place from a range of tourism focussed Internet sites. Maybe the smell and feeling is to come but I am sure the sound aspect would be easy to recreate. In this posting I will list some of the most popular sites for such "virtual tripping" by students in the classroom.
* Tripwolf is a travel guide and a travel community – all in one! On tripwolf you will find the contents of professional travel reports from renowned travel guides combined with up-to-date travel tips from thousands of travelers from all over the world. Discover travel information about 50,000 places.
* Go Planit is a great travel planning site for students to explore.
* Discover America is a useful planning site for American travel.
* Travel DK is a personalised guide tool which allows you to pick n'mix information on sights, attractions, hotels, restaurants and shops.
* Yahoo Travel is a great travel organisation site.
* Gogobot is a trip planning tool which taps into social networks.
* Geolover is a new application that lets you very easily pick a destination in the world; then you’re shown key attractions at your choice; next, you pick the ones you’re most interested in seeing, and finally you’re given a unique url address showing your list. It would be nice for a geography class, and students can write why they chose the destinations and attractions they did.
* Stay.com lets users easily “drag-and-drop” attractions they want to see in different cities in order to create their own unique downloadable PDF travel guide. You can also read the PDF without having to download it. Students can just post the url and still view it on the Web.
Tripline is a great map-making application. You just list the various places you want to go in a journey, or a famous trip that has happened in history or literature, or a class field trip itinerary, and a embeddable map is created showing the trip where you can add written descriptions and photos. You can use your own photos or just search through Flickr.
* GeoTrio lets you create a virtual tour of just about anyplace on a map. You type in addresses or locations and easily create multiple “stops” that show the Google Street View snapshots of the area. You can also upload your own images.
* Tripomatic lets you create itineraries for your trips.
What amazing technology is available now for virtual tripping - let's use it in our geography lessons!
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