Animations and Simulations

This week's Digital Technology group consists of animations and simulations.
For my History students I have chosen to investigate the Google earth/Google maps technology.
I've created a virtual tour for ancient history of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Near East.

Essentially this technology allows students and teachers to view any location on earth- on their screen or smart phone- immediately!
Users can save locations, add Placemarks, add a selected region (within a user drawn polygon), create paths, insert images to particular locations, create tours, and many, many more features. Users can also choose "layers" to view which include: oceans, other users' photos, 3D buildings, water bodies, weather etc.
Together Google Earth and Maps allow for teachers to take their students on virtual excursions around the world to view relevant locations, buildings and populations. The incorporation of "street view" completely transforms the task of learning about the Colosseum. This new technology allows you to walk your students through the arches of the Colosseum, and thereafter explore for themselves the smoothness of the marble, let them wonder at why small specs of marble remain scattered across the structure, hope they will inquire on the topic and suggest they guide themselves to the Palazzo Barberini to conduct their own investigation when the do. Students can explore the Colosseum's hypogeum and imagine which crevices temporarily housed the lions? Where did they keep the giraffes? Was this really water tight? What is that? This aspect of the technology accommodates the Redefinition aspect of the SAMR model.

SAMR Model:

Teachers could use this technology as a simple substitution for happy snaps or encyclopedia photos, they could augment a task by having students view an object or location from a variety of angles, weather conditions, or times of the day. Teachers could redesign a task by having their students discover how many churches, rivers or mountains exist within a location then discuss the possible reasons and implications for the people who settled there. Or, Teachers could have students "visit" various locations across the globe- have them zoom in and out to identify large-scale geographical features and the intricate differences in the textures of building materials then seconds later have them on the other side of the world investigating a different civilisation in order to compare the two, thus completely redefining the task.
For an Ancient Civilisations lesson I have created the guided tour below.

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