Monday, March 26, 2012

Need A Geography Project?

An elementary teacher asked me today about how to make a travel video (with arrows flying across the map and everything) on her pc like  Apple's iPhoto will do on her Macbook.  The question threw me back three years to a Discovery Education Network institute I attended in Boston.  My group wanted to create a video that included all of our home towns, some state facts, and we had little time to do it.

Enter TripWow.  Officially found at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com , TripWow is incredibly easy to use.  Just upload photos and tag each one with the city it was taken. You can rearrange them, add captions to them, and even choose music other than the automatically geographically-centric music that plays during the show.

I sat down and in ten minutes made the video below. Super easy!


Our Field Trip to Mexico And Beyond Slideshow: Mrmartinsclass’s trip from Austin, Texas, United States to 4 cities Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Panama City and Amazon River was created by TripAdvisor. See another Mexico slideshow. Create your own stunning free slideshow from your travel photos.

Extensions?  All of my photos were taken from the Creative Commons in Flicker. I should cite each individual picture, but the Creative Commons exists for people to share and use photos in this community. There are over 35 million photos there and you are free to use them in the classroom!  Search the Commons for countries or historical locations to put into your geography trip.

What a great way to show Coronado's trip across North America, the Oregon Trail, or supplement a Google Lit Trip with a video about the places the character traveled.   How would you use this?

hm