Google maps in English. Google Maps (Google maps)

Behind last years Google Maps has grown significantly. Now it's much more than an assistant when we need to know how to get from point A to point B. That's what makes this app a valuable resource to use in English classes.
Today we will look at several effective techniques for using Google Maps in the classroom.

Why use Google Maps in the classroom?

The answer is simple. With Google Maps, you can take your students on a trip around the world without leaving the classroom!
In addition, modern schoolchildren, and even adult students, do not know life without smartphones. Instead of banning the use of smartphones in class, it seems logical to find a way to make them a useful part of the lesson. Using cards is one way to achieve this. And the reasons are as follows:

This is more interesting. Using an app on your phone adds variety to the lesson;

Interdisciplinary connections. In addition to language learning, geography, cultural studies and history can also be taught;

Authentic context for writing and project assignments;

Interactivity;

Teaching students technical literacy.

What to do with them?

Today we'll offer just a few ideas on how you can use Google Maps for educational purposes, all of which can be tailored to suit your class size, students' abilities and interests. Most exercises can be done individually, in pairs or in groups. If you have access to computers or at least Wi-Fi at school, this can be done in the classroom. If not, assign some of these tasks as homework or long-term projects. You can read the rules for using the application.

1. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Using Google Maps, you can combine subjects such as English and geography. And this can be realized with the help of photographs taken in different parts of the world. Divide students into pairs and give them the names of the locations they need to find on the map. Using the function, or by selecting in the program, students must describe the picture. To start, you can ask them: What natural elements are there in the picture? Encourage students to use more precise definitions and difficult words, consulting a dictionary if necessary. For example, instead of a tree, let them indicate specifically what kind of tree it is, maple tree or coconut palm.
The next step is to ask students to describe what actions they see in the picture. If there are people there, who are they, where are they going or what are they doing.

The next step is to ask students to draw conclusions based on their assumptions:
What do they think the humans in the area have done to change the environment?
What evidence can they use to support those conclusions?
What observations did they make that can help them determine the climate and rainfall of the region?
How do these environmental factors affect the way the people in that region live?
Students can present their conclusions to the whole class, supporting them with a picture and explaining why they came to them.

2.Find Out Information

Google Maps is great for reading tasks, especially scanning or detailed reading tasks. You can create activities that require students to find specific information by searching Google Maps and fill out a table with it. Such tasks work especially well with low levels, since they do not require understanding the entire text, but rather the selection of specific information. In addition, such an activity brings authenticity to the lessons. Create a table like this for your students.

Or create a similar table for the area where your students live. They need to find these places on Google Maps and fill in the missing information in the table.

3.Take a Tour

4. Guess the Landmark

Assign each student or group an iconic building and have them use the feature to virtually visit it right from their smartphone. Then ask students to describe what they see to each other. You could also make this a written activity or have them create a presentation about the building. Here are some places that students could visit:

• The Colosseum
  
• Everest base camp
  
• Stonehenge
  
• The White House
  

To get ideas, you can visit 17 Stunning Places to Visit with Google Maps.
This task can be turned into a game by asking students not to name the place right away, but using a description to help others guess where they are virtually located.

5.Make a Quiz

Students are constantly solving tests and writing test papers. Why not encourage them to come up with their own test or quiz? Divide students into pairs or groups and ask them to choose an English-speaking country. Using Google Maps, have them prepare their test. Students can ask any questions that can be answered using Google Maps as long as it is not too difficult or too time consuming. For example, when looking at New York City on a map, you might ask the following questions:

• What street is the Empire State building on?
  
• What is the biggest park in New York?
  

Students can also use to come up with interesting questions by zooming in on the street view and asking questions such as:
Find Number 59th Street. What color is the front door at number 15?
Remind students that they should also write down the answers to their own questions so they can test their peers and you later.

These are just a few ideas for using maps in the classroom. You can adapt them, change them, or come up with your own. Explore the maps yourself to be on the same page as your students and try out all the new methods and tasks.

Do you agree with our list? What do you think is unnecessary? What can you add to it?

Google Maps is the leader among modern mapping services providing satellite interactive maps online. At least a leader in the field of satellite imagery and in the number of various additional services and tools (Google Earth, Google Mars, various weather and transport services, one of the most powerful APIs).

In the field of schematic maps, at some point, this leadership “was lost” in favor of Open Street Maps - a unique mapping service in the spirit of Wikipedia, where every volunteer can contribute data to the site.

However, despite this, the popularity of Google Maps remains perhaps one of the highest of all other mapping services. Part of the reason is that Google Maps is where we can find the most detailed satellite photos for the largest regions of any country. Even in Russia, such a large and successful company as Yandex cannot surpass the quality and coverage of satellite photographs, at least in its own country.

With Google Maps, anyone can view satellite photos of the Earth for free almost anywhere in the world.

Image quality

Pictures of himself high resolution usually available for the world's largest cities in America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Asia, Oceania. Currently, high-quality images are available for cities with a population of more than 1 million inhabitants. For less major cities and others settlements Satellite images are only available in limited resolution.

Possibilities

Google Maps or “Google Maps” was a real discovery for Internet users and indeed all PC users, giving an unheard of and previously unseen opportunity to look at their home, their village, cottage, lake or river where they vacationed in the summer - from a satellite. To see it from above, from a perspective from which it would be impossible to see it under any other circumstances. The discovery, the very idea of ​​giving people easy access to satellite photos, fits harmoniously into Google's overall vision of “easily providing everyone with access to any information on the planet.”

Google Maps allows you to see from a satellite simultaneously those things and objects that cannot be observed at the same time when observed from the ground. Satellite maps differ from ordinary ones in that simple cards have colors and natural shapes natural objects distorted by editorial processing for further publication. However, satellite photographs preserve all the naturalness of nature and the objects being photographed, natural colors, shapes of lakes, rivers, fields and forests.

Looking at the map, one can only guess what is there: a forest, a field or a swamp, while on satellite photography it is immediately clear: objects, usually round or oval in shape, with a unique swamp color, are swamps. The light green spots or areas in the photograph are fields, and the dark green ones are forests. With enough experience in orientation in Google Maps, you can even distinguish whether it is a coniferous forest or a mixed forest: coniferous has a browner tint. Also on the map you can distinguish specific broken lines piercing the forests and fields of the vast Russian expanses - this is railways. Only by looking from a satellite can you understand that railways are much larger highways influence their environment natural landscape. Also in Google Maps, it is possible to overlay maps with the names of regions, roads, settlements on a national scale and the names of streets, house numbers, metro stations on a city scale on a satellite image of an area or city.

Map mode and satellite view mode

In addition to satellite images, it is possible to switch to the “map” mode, in which it is possible to view any territory on the surface of the Earth and study in detail the layout and location of houses of any more or less large city. In the "map" mode it is especially convenient to plan your movements around the city if you have already seen enough satellite views of your city.

The search function by house number will easily point you to the desired house, giving you the opportunity to “look around” the area around this house and how you can drive up/approach it. To search for the required object, just type in Russian in the search bar a query like: “City, street, house number” and the site will display to you the location of the object you are looking for using a special marker.

How to use Google Maps

To begin, open some place.

To move around the map, left-click on the map and drag it in any order. To return to the original position, press the center button located between the four direction buttons.

To enlarge the map, click on the “+” button or roll the mouse roller when the cursor is over the map. You can also enlarge the map by double-clicking on the location you are interested in.

To switch between satellite, mixed (hybrid) and map views, use the corresponding buttons in the upper right corner of the map: Map / Satellite / Hybrid.

If you use the yandex maps api and at the same time have several foreign language versions of the site, you have probably encountered the question of how to display the map on English language.

In general, I would like to say that Yandex and Google maps have built-in technology for determining the country and the map language is automatically substituted for the location you are coming from, regardless of the language version of the site.

Well, for example, if you access the Russian version of the site from America, the map will still be in English. BUT! If suddenly you are faced with the task of making sure that the Russian version displays the Russian version, and the English version displays the English version, then in this case you need to transfer desired language in the GET lang parameter at the time of API connection.

The documentation states that this is called a language identifier and is specified in the language-region format in accordance with RFC-3066

Those. to specify the Russian language, you need to specify the parameter as lang=ru-RU, which is most interesting, the format like ru_RU also works. And it is precisely the type of value that is indicated on most sites.

To specify the English localization, you will need to pass en-US (en_US)

As a result, your API connection script in head will look like this:

But what if you use the same header.php on different versions of the site. Now I will show the simplest example of how this problem can be solved within the framework of CMS Bitrix. This script is of course used in header.php BEFORE the html code begins, even before the tag itself

If (SITE_ID == "s1") ($lang = "ru_RU";) else ($lang = "en_US";) $assets->addJs("//api-maps.yandex.ru/2.1/?lang= ".$lang);

We simply check which site we are currently on and simply set this or that parameter.