Comments on: Slide – Any educator that buys wall maps or globes should be fired

By: Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:52:34 +0000

@Sandy
Wow, the sad part is that I don’t know if that’s a troll, sarcasm, or you’re actually serious

By: Sandy Hirtz

Sandy Hirtz — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:23:12 +0000

I passionately agree that maps and globes no longer belong in the classroom. Neither do textbooks, pencils and paper.

Check out the iSchool Initiative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KgAcx_9jU

By: bob

bob — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:45:04 +0000

Teachers who draw maps on stone walls should be fired…
Teachers who take student outside with paper maps, tell them to turn map to orient to north and out of LAN range should be fired…
Teachers who draw map on ground with stick in dirt as students try to figure out where they are in the woods should be….
I once was in a place in the world where knowing where you are was VERY important and I had GPS and all the tech toys. I still carried a map and a compass.

By: Lekopanye Tladi

Lekopanye Tladi — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:55:23 +0000

I want want to believe that both these technologies (and they are both technologies) have their place in the teaching and learning environment and should be used in any approrpiate situation to facilitate proper learning to take place. I don’t agree that anybody should be fired for using which ever one they feel comfortable and confident with as long as we all appreciate the value we can add to our classrooms if we use both the old and the new. In life we mostly use the old to support the new and nature it to maturity. It happens even in us humans, “I have never heard of a family that kills its grannies when a daughter is born, but instead it the granny who helps raise the child”. So buy paper maps as well as use google maps. We in the developing world do not the luxury of having access to the internet in the majority of our villages, even in towns sometimes, because of lack of infrastructure and where it is present, the cost of connectivity is highly prohibitive.

By: Paul Jacobson

Paul Jacobson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:01:45 +0000

Hi Scott ~ I saw the poster on the New Era Moodle feast in BC and thought: that’s my island!

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/rJ-6jCA1CqFC9zZ0GVSV9GKhzQov6BY3wDzLX-B40Ng?feat=directlink

What you are putting out is actually “dangerously relevant”. Cheers, Paul J.

By: Kirsten

Kirsten — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:08:36 +0000

After thinking about this a bit, I don’t take offense to the word “fired” as I did initially. It got my attention, and I needed to reflect. I am a teacher with over 20 years of experience, and I will be teaching for 20 more. I need to change and adapt my approach to facilitating my students’ learning which means using technology, as well as paper maps and globes, to access geographical information. I checked out the prices of globes and individual maps, and they are expensive. I think it is important for kids to have experience using them as tools and resources, but as I am currently learning, there is so much more I can do to engage my students with Google Maps and Google Earth. This slide just says to me that it is my responsibility as an educator to make sure that I move beyond my comfort zone and own experience as a student, and use the technology that is out there. It is irresponsible of me not to.

By: Jackie

Jackie — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:41:57 +0000

And if something happens to LAN or net or system crashes, then we will not see where are ruins of Babylon and Uruk. I don’t have GPS and I like my globe! I am parent who take kids over the ocean, every year, to see something new and, learn part of world’s history. I can’t afford GPS (saving for trips), and I don’t care since, globe will do just fine for $5.00 and, I can bet my kids will know where on the map/globe is/was any state or country you can name, through history.

By: Andrew B. Watt

Andrew B. Watt — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:47:48 +0000

The slide doesn’t say “no maps”. It says public money shouldn’t be spent on wall maps and globes.

For the $400+ that a wall map of the ancient world costs, I got a Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman world for my classroom…. every archaeological site… every arena… every villa… every aqueduct…. every known latifundia… all in one book. Real data, combined with topographical information.

For the same money, I could have gotten a rather vague map that showed the boundaries of the Roman empire, none of the provincial boundaries, none of the legion positions, and maybe a rough outline of the Sasanid empire. I know which set of maps I’d prefer.

I use GIS, GPS, Google Earth and Yahoo Maps to show the ruins of Babylon and Uruk, and not just their positions on a Europe+Middle East map. I use them to show the route of Vasco DaGama around the Cape of Good Hope, and the ruins of the Portuguese slave trading forts, and the ruins of Kilwa, and the trading harbors of Mombasa and Calicut.

I’d need hundreds of dollars worth of maps at multiple scales do do all of that, from a dozen different government agencies in a half-dozen different governments. And some might be classified. Or I can use a digital projector and the school’s internet connection.

And I still teach my students to navigate with topo map and compass in the woods. That’s the appropriate technology for that environment… as Google Earth is in the classroom.

By: Daniel B. Hink

Daniel B. Hink — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:49:13 +0000

No Maps? Really?

Clearly you are someone who has never navigated cross-country in tall forests, or in high mountains. And if you don’t understand the “why” of that comment then you are way out of your depth even talking about this subject.

When you use technology without understanding what it’s foundation is, you do not understand the knowledge, or its origin.

You are just a monkey who learned how to push the on-off button of the flashlight, you have no idea where the light comes from.

Thankfully people who do care about maps and globes were around to create; GIS, GPS, etc. So you can now causally dismiss that hard earned knowledge.

Do not fetishize technology, it is an ugly habit.

By: Andrew B. Watt

Andrew B. Watt — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

I showed this slide, and the one you did of the kid in desperate circumstances, in my presentation to 80 teachers and administrators in Connecticut yesterday. You can see the presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/ABWatt/welcome-home and here: https://cais21stcentury.wikispaces.com/OCTOBER+20TH+PRESENTATIONS+%26+HANDOUTS There was audible and visible startlement at both slides, and a widespread recognition that every school represented at the conference could do more with less. So your ideas are having an effect. We were running behind on time, so I didn't have a chance to credit you either during or in posting the slideshow, but I will. Promise.