Understand the World Outside the Classroom Using Apple Maps

Are you wondering how you can give learners of all ages the opportunity to “travel” outside of their classroom to document and gain a visual sense of place and geography, whether it be neighborhoods in their own region or a country on the other side of the world? Looking for a vehicle to discuss how geography impacts culture and daily life? Apple Maps provides a simple yet powerful tool to meet these teaching and learning needs!   Students can create Guides to tell the story of a community.

Questions to Engage Students in Observation with Apple Maps

Gaining a visual “birds eye view” of an area allows students to make observations and have conversations that address questions such as:

What do you see? What do you wonder?

What are the similarities and differences between different neighborhoods and regions including 

• Vegetation  
• how much? 
• how little? 
• what type?
• Buildings & structures  
• how dense or spread out are they? 
• Highrise, lowrise, or mix?
• architectural style?
• what cultural or geographical factors may have influenced construction
• proximity to 
• water sources, 
• highways, etc.

How might the above features of this area

• have led people to settle here?
• impact people’s day-to-day lives?

Documenting the World with Maps:

Grade 3 students studying local History and several distinct neighborhoods in Los Angeles use Apple Maps to create a Guide that includes all the neighborhoods the class is exploring as well as a Guide of the specific neighborhood they studied which includes links to landmarks in that area.

Use the directions in the video above or the text below to learn how to create a Guide in Maps

Directions: Create a Guide in Maps

Arrange the “view” for your map:

• Open Maps
• Tap the Globe in the upper right corner,
• Tap Satellite
• Tap the 3 dots and uncheck Show Traffic

Create a Guide:

On the left, under My Guides

1. Tap New Guide - type name of your neighborhood - tap Create
2. Tap Add a place -
3.  in the search bar type in the name of a landmark 
4.  tap + sign next to landmark, tap done
5. Add another place:
6. Tap + sign - in the search bar type in the name of a landmark 
7. tap + sign next to landmark, tap done
8. Repeat step 3 until all landmarks have been added

Take a screenshot of your neighborhood:

Press the home button and the power button at the same time to take a screenshot of your neighborhood map that shows:

• the black strip on the left with the name of your guide and the names of the locations in your guide
• all of the locations on the map (pinch to zoom in or out to get the area you want the viewer to see)

Click here for more details on how to take a screenshot on iPad

Click here to learn more about Maps

Taking the learning further:

Once students have created a guide and taken a screenshot, here are ways they can extend and share their learning in multiple ways.

Add more detail to your map:

In Photos, use annotation tools to add details to the screenshot of your map

Create a presentation about your region:

Add the screenshot of your map to Keynote and 

• Insert audio descriptions of the entire region and/or the locations in your guide
• Use the drawing tools to annotate on top of the map
• Use live video to give a “tour” of your neighborhood and important landmarks
• Add shapes to your map that link to slides that share more details about that location

Add multimedia to your map:

In Freeform, add your screenshot 

• Insert audio descriptions of the entire region and/or the locations in your guide
• Use the drawing tools to annotate on top of the map
• insert images of your neighborhood and important landmarks

Transport viewers into your region

In iMovie, use the the green screen effect to transport viewers to the region and inform them about important historical or cultural features of that region. Utilize the screenshot of your map along with images of other important landmarks to bring your narration to life.

Other ideas:

Use Maps to travel to your current home or to the town where you were born. Record audio to descibe your community.

Explore Flyover tours in Apple Maps to get an overview of locations of interest. (Note: not all locations have Flyover tours.) Search and select a location and look for the Flyover icon.