This week I chose to investigate a Web 2.0 tool called Panoramio. Panoramio is a website that showcases photos from around the world. Using Panoramio is very simplistic, however, I feel it could be a very powerful too when studying Geography or Social Studies.
You don’t have to be a member to use Panoramio. When you arrive at the webpage you simply enter the name of the area you are studying, click search, and are directed to a page that shows that area on a map and gives you thumbnails of photos available to look at. You click on the photo and it is enlarged. It also has a menu on the left hand side of the page that shows all the photos available for that area and you do not have to find the pictures on the map.
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| Type in your city or country |
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| See your results! |
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| Menu of all the pictures available |
Another neat aspect of the website is that you can view the pictures from either a world map or from a satellite view. I love letting students see the satellite view so that they get a real feel of what they lay of the land is.
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| Map View |
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| Satellite View |
If you do choose to create an account, the added benefit is that you are able to upload photos of places. Think of the benefits of this! We all have very diverse classrooms, with families from all over. The students LOVE to share where they are from, where they have been, etc. Now the students can gather family pictures of different places, bring them to school and discuss them, and then they can be uploaded to your page. At any point in time, you can log into your account and watch a slideshow of photos you have uploaded. Creating an account is easy. They pulled my information from my Google account and all I had to do was create a screen name.
When studying places around the world, we have often times shown pictures from a book or magazine. I know that I used to use Google images all the time, but now Google images has been blocked by my school district due to inappropriate content when searching. Now students can interact with geographical places using a map powered by Google Earth. They can see pictures that you might not usually find when researching certain cities, as these are photos that have been uploaded by individuals that have visited and we all know that different people take pictures of different things! They have the opportunity to add their own photos and make their learning more personalized.
Next time you are studying a certain city or country, I hope you will remember about Panoramio and give it a try!
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| View of Central America |
-Heather
I love the idea of this tool. My students really enjoy looking at maps and are just beginning to understand how things are different throughout the world. Many of them haven't been far from home, so this would allow them to see other places.
ReplyDeleteThis would have been a great tool to use when we talked about Martin Luther King, Jr.. I could have pulled up Washington, D.C. as we talked about the "March on Washington". I will definitely use this in my classroom. It will finally make the maps come alive!
Thank you!
This is so cool Heather! I was teaching my sixth graders last week about cultures and this will be a perfect tool for them to use in their research!
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