blog 2 (may 30)

The librarian teaching us about maps!

On Wednesday, our class made a trip to the maps library where a librarian talked to us about many different kids of maps, and different things that maps can measure. We really liked the cartograms, especially the contiguous cartogram that showed the number of billionaires in each state because it made the information almost shocking to see, and the map took a distorted, but geographic, shape of the United States. Another interesting thing we learned was that many times Alaska and Hawaii are left out of certain maps because they are not attached physically to the rest of the United States. Through the librarian's PowerPoint presentation, there were so many ideas that came to mind of ways to incorporate maps and geography in an interesting and fun way in our future classrooms. Some ideas our class discussed were having students map out the school building, making up a map of an imaginary world, and mapping out where all the students in the class live. We also learned that maps can be an awesome way to discuss different cultures which is an important part every student's learning.

Team LASH exploring maps with the librarian!

After the presentation, we moved on the to actual maps room where there are around 450,000 maps! The maps room was so cool because we were able to be hands-on and explore maps and globes from many places and time periods. As a group, we talked to the librarian about maps of State College, specifically the quarry, and the time period that it appeared. Looking through maps of the same place over many years was such a new and exciting experience, and seeing things on the maps change over time was a really cool way to learn!

Out of curiosity, Hali wanted to explore on her own maps of her home town. She found where the maps of the counties in Pennsylvania were and she actually found maps of her county! She wanted to specifically find her town, but we ran out of time, but the next time she go to the maps library, she'll know where to start! Looking at maps was definitely a very different, but interesting, way to form knowledge. When looking at just one map, we can see a lot of things, but by comparing two or more maps together, that's when we can really see change, and explore why those changes have happened.
While Hali was exploring the maps, Sam look at the various globes the maps library has. She thought it was really cool that there were globes of other planets and the moon. The most interesting globe, in Sam's opinion, was the topography globe. It was exciting to get the feel the ocean floor and the mountains around the world. We think that this globe would be great to have a in a classroom. It could be used in a lot of different ways. For example, if the students are learning about creatures the dwell on the ocean floor, they could feel the part of the globe where those creatures live and get an idea of what it feels like to live down there. Having globes in the classroom is a useful tool to help the students visualize where in the world they are talking about in class.

"Rules and Suggestion for Christian Families"
Audrey found this hilarious!

After we were finished with the maps at the library, we went back to our classroom to use the knowledge and ideas gained  from the maps library to make our own board games! Once we got our game, which was a very funny and interesting game for Christians, we started talking as a group of what we wanted to do. Our board had four main circles, so we decided on having four main locations in Penn State to be "tourist" locations, where the players (Nittany Lions) will have to visit and pick up popular items from each location. We named our game "Lion's Roar Tour"! Going to the maps library helped us develop our game because we learned that maps do not necessarily have to be geographically accurate. Also, as we learned about cartograms, the main/most popular places in cartograms are shown as the largest, so we used this skill to pick out the four popular places in Penn State for our game board. We split up some of the work to do on our own time so that when we come back to class on Monday, we'll have some things prepared. 

Our game board! It will not look like
 this once we're done with it!

Something that really impressed us was how well our group worked together when creating this game. Right when we got our board, our ideas started flowing and we built off of everyone's ideas. What got our ideas flowing was when Hali suggested "it could be like a treasure hunt" and we could "collect a certain amount of items" and Audrey filled in saying "yeah, they could be Penn State things." Pretty soon, we had an overall idea of what we wanted our game to be and how we were going to structure it.We started designing and creating the game right away and Sam commented how "efficient" we were being. In chapter 10 of Katz, we read about beginning a project, and how the more we learn about the topic, the more advanced our project becomes. In our class, we feel that the more we learn about maps, or the Nittany Lion, the more we are able to use that knowledge in our projects and our ideas are able to be expanded. We are so excited to explore more through the field trips, activities, and projects in this class, and for our group to continue to work well together!