CivieBlog

Love them or hate them, you have to admit that Google does offer us all manner of useful free tools. One of my favourites is Google Maps, especially useful on my odd trips to London (when I never seem to be able to remember my A-Z!)

So, I've been thinking about how we could use this 'real world' tool to help our EFL students and to develop their abilities to give and understand directions. It's actually quite simple to use. You just go to http://maps.google.co.uk/ or http://maps.google.com/ Click on 'Get Directions' and then enter your start point and destination. Click the Google logo below for a quick video tutorial that shows some of the features.

So how can we use this with students?

• Choose a location and destination and get Google Maps to create your directions, then print up a map of London with the two destinations on and ask your students to mark the route on the map.
• A variation on this would be to have the map printed with the route on and cut up the directions and ask your students to put them in the correct order
• Print up a route map and directions and edit out some of the key words, then get your students to write in the missing words.
• Give your students a map showing only the start point and read out directions for them to follow. They have to listen and tell you what the destination is.
• Print out close ups of each stage of the journey and use them as flash cards. Get your students to match each step of the journey to the correct flashcard.
• Print out a route map and ask students to write their own directions for the map (You could give two groups different destinations then get them to exchange directions to see if the other group can use their directions to find the correct destination.)
• To download an example set of directions + route map and blank map to print up and use for these activities click here: Example materials >> (500k pdf)
• To print up maps and directions for yourself just click on the Google maps 'Print' icon.
  

What I like about it

• Google maps is free and really simple to use
• If you have an i-pod touch or an i-phone, there is a fantastic Google Maps widget which you can install (great for mobile learning)
  
• Gives good clear instructions and easy to print maps (just use the 'Print' icon)
  
• A really useful 'real world' tool
• You can use it live if you have a computer room or data projector / interactive whiteboard in class, or just print up materials for use off line.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• The detail of the maps for some developing countries is pretty sparse

Hope you find this tool useful and if you have suggestions for other activities I'd love o hear them.

Best

Nik

Over the past two years, my thoughts around blogging as a learning and networking tool have been slowly evolving.

In Oct 2007, the LCB asked - Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging? I summarized the responses in: Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog

At the time, while I felt that blogging was something good to do, I didn't push all that hard. But, slowly I started pointing to:

• Learning and Networking with a Blog (Deleted Scenes)
• Blogging - I'm Pushing Harder Now

Now I'm starting to feel that blogging is such a powerful learning tool that if I was going to send an employee to a conference, I'd want them to use a blog to enhance their learning. If they were starting on some new learning activity, I'd want them to blog.

Certainly in a few cases (formal learning), I've seen blogs be mandated as part of a course. But, otherwise, I've not seen anyone making it mandatory. I'm also thinking that a conference could be a significantly better experience if blogging was essentially mandatory as part of the conference. See Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation and think about the experience if people were blogging and we used an aggregator - ideally pre and post conference as well.

Has anyone else felt this transition from blogging as a nice thing for a few people to something that you want to find ways to force on people?

And Stephen, before you complain about the words force and mandatory, understand that this already happens in classroom settings. I'm extending that same notion to other settings. But I recognize that few (if any) conference organizers would actually go so far as to make it mandatory for attendees. (Although they might if they really wanted to help attendees learn and network.)

I often suggest learning blogs (see Learning and Networking With A Blog (T+D article) and Personal Learning Strategies). In other words, blogs are a fantastic tool for Personal Learning. I often suggest during presentations that starting a blog at the beginning of any learning endeavor is a great move. I just saw this:

I have decided to take the plunge into the world of National Teacher Board Certification. I am going to record my thoughts and experiences here as a way to keep myself grounded, to have a record of the process and hopefully so that other educators will find this blog and offer encouragement, help and companionship along the way.

I know this happens all the time, but it's a quick reminder that creating a learning blog is a great move.

My twitter status just changed.

Sue Waters - who I met through the posts: Reframing Conference Social Tool Participatio and Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results yesterday walked me through what she had done at a couple of conferences. See her page: mlearn2007 by others and mlearn2007 my notes.

Along the way, she convinced me that Twitter was something that I should stop resisting.

She did this by sending a tweet out that asked how Twitter helped people with their personal learning. She quickly got back:

dmcordell @dswaters Hi, Sue. I'm the only LMS in a rural district. The world is my network with Twitter!

Gregory Thompson @dswaters I use Twitter+YahooTubes+RSS Aggregator and it brings me wonderful content via links every day, a place for inspirational sparks

barbs1 @dswaters love the community of sharing and support for our celebrations frustrations sorrows Huge impact on learning new stuff

onlineteacher @dswaters Twitter is critical app 4 me b/c shared brilliance n human connections brighten everyone's world n I can share n do same (teach)

Sunshinetalia @dswaters because i can stay current with what other educators/ elearning peeps are up too! I get great links to resources & readings 2.

RobynDennis @dswaters Twitter allows us (no matter where we are in the world) to receive *instant* updates on the latest news or topics. Great for PD.

jeffmason @dswaters chat room with hyperlinks, alerts to ongoing conversations and pd opportunities

coyenator @dswaters oops. meant none can keep up individually, together we have a better shot at it

coyenator @dswaters none of us can keep up with emergent change everything individually, strength in numbers willing to share connections, knowledge

tjshay @dswaters Just started Twittering last week, have found countless resources...Websites, videos, etc. Faster than blogs

SarahStewart @dswaters Gives me instant access to group of people to share information & ask for advice

k1v1n @dswaters without twitter I would have never met you. And I learn tons from you.

suzievesper @dswaters - the sharing of collective knowledge and the support of like-minded educators.

Inpi Twitter keeps us in touch with the last discoveries in "webland", gets help for "web-troubles", most of all feeds sense of community

That's interesting both from the content and also from getting a question answered pretty quickly. Not sure how I'll think about using LinkedIn Questions vs. Twitter, but it's still good stuff.

So, I broke down and now am on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tonykarrer

So my current twitter status: I'm still not convinced, but am willing to try.

I received an email telling me that my blog was having problems (showing code all over the page). I quickly checked and didn't see a problem and sent an email back. The response I received was:

Your blog looks fine now. Sorry for wasting your time.

What a misconception. The person had taken the time to report a possible bug on my site. In my mind they are doing me a huge favor.

Most of the time I report bugs. And this extends beyond the online world. If I'm at a restaurant, I will try to tell the manager about an issue - most of the time not to fix it, just to make them aware. Of course, you always evaluate how easy it is to report the issue. If the manager is not around or there's no contact mechanism on the site, then I don't report it.

Generally, people are appreciative of the bug report. But it's sometimes surprising the response you get. It's almost that you are bothering them. They don't want to hear it. No wonder the person was so sensitive about "wasting my time."

So this made me wonder ... is this the norm? Do you report bugs? How do you decide if you spend the time? And, what's your feeling about how they are treated when you report them?

Needing help to Make Me Better is a common issue. April 2008's Big Question was What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?

I appreciated part of Karyn's answer -

"How do you plan to achieve that?" Oh crud, I don't know.

I think this is a common problem. We often define goals and then we struggle with the specific steps to help make me better. One of the beauties of blogging is that you can enlist the support of lots of other people who help you think through things and help make me better.

Take a look at some of the comments in recent posts:

• Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation
• Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results
• Blog Learning

I have really appreciated recent help through comments on this blog. There have been a few new commenters who I truly thank for helping to make me better. Thanks.

April 2008's Big Question was What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?

The responses to this question were quite varied. It was interesting to see that the first two responses both dealt with selling the business value of eLearning.

Shaun tells us:

I need to be able to sell the ROI on learning better. and
How can I better impress the value of eLearning across the organization?

And from his post, its clear he's not unsophisticated around it. Jay Cross will tell you to forget ROI, but I'm not so sure that you can dismiss the notion that you have to explain the business value of what you are doing ahead of it in order to sell it in the organization.

Michael says pretty much the same thing:

Really improve my "elevator pitch" to really convince sceptical behind-the-curve C-level executives that learning and development initiatives are actually going to grow their business, not send it into a Hindenburg-like crash and burn.

I really wonder if we can't help Michael out a bit by suggesting elevator pitches. There's no single right answer here, but seeing a few examples would be good. So ...

What do you say in your organization or to your clients that help explain the business value of eLearning?

In other words, what's your elevator pitch?