GE-Teach: Compare Side By Side Maps!

Comparing and Creating Side-by-Side Maps with GE Teach

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

You know what has been really fun about the Presidential Primaries so far? I don't either, but as the traveling circus goes from state to state, and the candidates talk about issues affecting our globe, we have an excellent opportunity to engage our students in real conversations about how geography, political and physical, impact economic and political choices. What impact can we see on the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina based on issues like demography, population density, and migration? Is there anything about geography that makes one group of candidates more popular in the northeast and another group popular in the south?

GE Teach is a fairly basic web 2.0 tool that you could give to your students to explore those kinds of issues. Furthermore, since GE Teach is built on Google Maps, you can have your students simply use the maps provided inside the tool, or they can import and analyze their own maps from Google. In it's basic form, GE Teach lets students compare different data sets in side-by-side or layered maps, or it lets students annotate and determine measurements for distances and altitudes.

If you are thinking of working with teachers from other disciplines, GE Teach is a simple tool that can be used to start conversations. What better way to discuss science, history, politics, language, and statistics that with comparative map data?

GE Teach is a relatively new tool, and it continues to change as it's creator, high school teacher Josh Williams adds and improves features. While it is fairly intuitive, it is easy to get lost playing with the maps and layers. The site offers several tutorial videos, and I would suggest starting with them instead of hunting and pecking on the site. But my best advice is to turn your students loose. Let them explore and create with the site. That might actually provide a leadership role to some of the students in your class who are great with these kinds of tools but who haven't always been seen as "academic" leaders in your class.

Here's Mr. Williams' intro video. It is almost 9 minutes, but provides a great overview to all of the basic capabilities of the site:

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Can you think of a good lesson using GE Teach? Tell us about it in the comment section below.