Fourth grade students in Ms. Cousins’ class at Davis Elementary created their own Virginia geography maps to show the different places and features they need to know (VS.2). They used Google Maps Engine Lite to place markers on and around Virginia identifying the five regions, the five bordering states, and the 4 major rivers. They also labeled the important cities for each river. Take a look at a student example here. They caught on quickly and enjoyed color coding their different place markers. Since it’s a Google Map it’s fully scrollable and zoomable so some students, like this one, even went further and identified their school and their country of origin. Students can go home and show their parents and study the information in a way that’s personally meaningful. I’m hoping this will be a tool, like Google Earth, that teachers use all year long in their geography lessons. Let me know if you’d like me to show your class how to do it.

Creating Google maps with students is a great way to teach them about geography and history. Recently Google rolled out some changes that make the process simpler, and they call it Maps Engine Lite. So today I tried it out with the fourth graders in Ms. Anthony’s class at Holladay Elementary who have been studying the Indian tribes of Virginia (VS.2). They created maps showing where the tribes lived and added a description so that when people click on the regions they would be able to see which tribe lived there and what language they spoke. The maps are customizable in many ways. Students can choose different base maps such as satellite or terrain view. They can change the colors of shaded regions and pick different place markers. Each map gets its own link, so students are able to show their parents the maps they made and study at home (or anywhere). Take a look at two student examples: Kimber and Steven.