Examples from QUEST
Examples from QUEST Partners, Educators and Students
"Make Your Own Mashup Maps," is an article about map making from NSTA's Science Scope
Fantastic Mapping Resources
Ready to Get Started?
Sign into your Google account. (If you don't already have one, create one!)
Warm Up
Go to Google Maps and
- locate your home or school.
- zoom in and zoom out.
- click on and drag the little yellow man from the zoom tool onto a street and "walk" around.
- switch from map view to satellite view by clicking on the square in the top right corner.
- hover over the square in the top right that says "Map" or "Satellite." Check out each of the options: Traffic, Photos, Terrain, Webcams (and more!).
Let's Make a Map!
- Click on "My Places" and then "Create New Map."
- Are you or your students collaborating on a map? Add collaborators.
- Create placemarks, lines and shapes.
- Add text to your content bubble.
- Adding a place or location from your search results.
- Things to know
- Sometimes funky things will happen. This is not your fault.
- Sometimes you will create a placemark and it will disappear. This is not your fault (usually).
- Do you want to see what your map looks like? Click "Save," then "Done."
- If you want explanatory text for a video, enter all of the text in the content bubble at the same time you embed the video. If you go back in to edit a content bubble (i.e. add text) after you have embedded a video and closed the content bubble your video may disappear. It will look like it should be there--the HTML code will be there--but the video doesn't show up. If this happens, just re-paste the embed code.
Using Media in Your Map
- Where media in your map comes from:
- Images can be anywhere on the Web, they just need a specific URL.
- Videos can only be embedded from YouTube.
- Insert images into your content bubble.
- Embed video into your content bubble.
Using Mobile Devices to Collect Content for Your Map
- Photos can be uploaded straight to the web using the Flickr app or social media apps.
- Videos can be uploaded straight to the web using the YouTube app.
- Capture notes from the field using Notes, Voice Memo or something similar.
Wrapping It Up
KML Files
- USGS KML files
Video Tutorial
View a video presentation of this workshop from the 2012 ISTE Conference.
Not a Science Teacher?
Find mapping resources for other disciplines here: