This is the second idea for using a hand-held GPS in a classroom.
Get the students in small groups to draw out a word or phrase on graph paper. They convert the word to vectors, for example North 20m, South 10m, West 10m, South 10m. They can use the GPS to try and follow each other’s co-ordinates and discover the original words as they are revealed on the GPS “bread-crumb” track display. This idea might be a bit fiddly with a GPS without an electronic compass.
A variation on this idea would be to get students to walk around a large open space to create huge virtual words in the GPS tracklog. These can be uploaded into Easy GPS, edited and saved as a GPX file, and from there into Google Earth or Google Maps, via GPS Visualizer
Download Google Earth example file
This idea is still rather conceptual! I need to tie it into some actual learning objectives. Observing your virtual graffiti from space is quite cool though.
Update 30/4/06 I’ve found the GPS Drawing web site, which takes the whole concept further.
Here’s something similar:
http://www.magnalox.net/log/no.php?lid=10233
It depends on the accuracy of GPS. If You had two GPSes, one covered may be in a pocket and one on the head
You should see a difference.
Could that be a learning objective ?
Hi Volker.
Strangely enough I discovered Magnalogs just yesterday and saw it’s potential immediately. I’m going to try and make a decent magnalog over the next couple of days, it’s a brilliant application. I can see it bringing virtual field trips to life!
Interesting………..A new effort taken here…..I hope the students will enjoy a lot by doing this …Thank you….
Fan of Don Lapre
larisa@larisajoyreilly.com