Map Project
Give a Kid the World
To celebrate the release of The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman (Harcourt ISBN: 0152061185) in paperback, Oliver has a new job as Tour Guide
The Oliver K. Woodman Map Project
- Snap! Photograph Oliver at landmarks across the US and world.
- Upload! Drag and Drop Photos onto a US or world map
- Click! Share the World with a Kid
Why celebrate with maps? Author Darcy Pattison grew up on a 1000-acre ranch in New Mexico and her family never traveled because they had livestock to care for. Well, she remembers one day-trip, driving 100 miles to a swimming pool and she was too scared to swim.
Birthday Celebration. For her own kids, limited finances made travel difficult; instead, the world came to the Pattisons. They hosted exchange students six years, with students from Estonia, Poland, France, Venezuela, Finland and Mongolia. When the Polish student married, the whole family traveled to Europe and attended. Her son’s 13th birthday celebration was at a restaurant on a fishing pier on the North Sea in northern Poland. Her passion is to help kids understand that they are citizens of the world.
All geography lessons should be this much fun!
Kirkus Reviews * Starred review for The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman
Snap
- Get Oliver. Download the new, simplified Oliver K. Woodman pattern and instructions.
- Make Oliver look spiffy. Cut out Oliver. There’s no reason to cut exactly, but cut a rough outline. Color, if desired. Laminate, if desired.
- Snap: Traveling? Snap photos of Oliver at a landmark, an event, or just meandering along.
Staying home? Snap photos of Oliver at your favorite places.
Upload
Go through your photos and choose the photos you want to share. You do not have to upload every photo you take. In fact, it’s better to choose just a few of the best.
- Create a Flickr account. Go to http://www.flickr.com. Click on “Create an Account.”
If you already have a Yahoo account, you can log on and use that information to create a Flickr account. If you don’t have a Yahoo account, follow instructions to create one. Take the time to look around Flickr and see what is available. The links at the bottom are helpful. - Join. When you’re ready, come over and join the Oliver K. Woodman Flickr Group!
Follow instructions to Join the group. You will see that to add pictures to the group site, they must be geo-tagged, marked in such a way that they will appear on a map. Don’t worry, Flickr makes this simple.
- Upload. At the bottom of the page, click on You/Upload.
Follow instructions to upload the photos you have chosen. There are several ways to upload, so choose the easiest tools for you. - Geo-tag.
Grab a kid for this part and let them drag and drop: it’s fun and they’ll learn some places on the map!
The group requires that a photo be geo-tagged. Once tagged, parents/teachers/kids will be able to see on a map all the places that Oliver has traveled.
My favorite way of geo-tagging is to open the Organizer Map (At the top, click on Organize; then, click on the Map tab.) Simply drag and drop a picture onto the map where it belongs. It’s also a great time to let kids participate.
Click
- View the Oliver K. Woodman’s Group Map (Notice: If a user sets privacy to friends only, the photos won’t show up until you log on. If you log-on, you can see all the photos in the Group.)
- Explore! Let Oliver show you and a kid around the world.
Screenshot of Flickr map. Pink dots indicate a photo is available
Click the pink dot in Madrid, Spain to show Oliver at a local landmark.
Even if you only share ONE photo with ONE kid, you’ve made a difference!
FREE Lesson Plans
For more ways to use The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman in your classroom, Download the FREE Lesson Plans: Includes social studies, math, language arts, art, maps, states, games, activities and more.
Resources
Here are Flickr’s tutorials on Geo-tagging:
- Flickr’s FAQ page on using the map and geotagging.
- Basic Primer on Flickr’s Map and Geotagging
- Using Flickr’s Organizer to GeoTag
- Flickr’s Help Video on GeoTagging
More Teacher Resources
From the National Council of Social Teachers
Powerpoint presentations from the 2007 NCSS Annual Conference Best Practice in Elementary Geography:
- Brill, Judy and Gus la Fontaine. “Google Earth: A Virtual Globe for Elementary Geography.” Social Studies for the Young Learner, Volume 21, Number 4, March/April 2009. This professor-teacher team, Judy Britt and Gus La Fontaine, describe using some of the latest imaging technology with first grade students.
- Gandy, Ka. Developmentally Appropriate Geography (PowerPoint)
- Jukel, Shelli, Jill Strong, and Janna Hannon. Using “The Great Mail Race” to Learn About Communities (PowerPoint)
Learning about communities, writing letters to connect. Good images to illustrate the parts of a friendly letter. - Philips, Judy and Gale Ekiss. The World in Spatial Terms: Mapmaking and Map Reading (powerpoint)
Lesson on making maps from a bird’s eye view, including legends.
