We had eleven teachers in attendance and Ronanda Liberty as a guest.  Ronanda is an educational consultant and former principal (and Curt’s wife) who joined us to learn more about our work.  We also welcomed Xiang Li, a graduate research assistant who is working with Sarah to support the geo-literacy study.

Working in grade-range groups to brainstorm and discuss the content focus for their new PuzzleMaps was the main activity.  Teachers considered the following questions:

• What curricular content, in general, are you hoping to support with PuzzleMap?
• What are some of the key ideas and skills that need to be taught to create enduring understandings?
• What standards are relevant?
• What activity and lesson ideas would best connect PuzzleMap to this content?
• How can this information be translated into content for a new PuzzleMap?

The key outcomes from these brainstorming sessions included a variety of interesting plans and ideas:

Trevor, Melanie and Laurel consider their plans

Veronica, a third grade teacher, thought it would be interesting to focus on the different cultural regions of the U.S. and cited an interesting Business Insider article she had read.  The article discusses 11 seperate "nations" within the U.S. that have entirely different cultures.  Another idea from fourth-grade teachers, Kendall, Dominique, Angela and Trevor was to explore the ecoregions of Washington State, which could include content about Native people, explorers, major cities, agriculture and local industry.  They would use an ecoregion map to connect these concepts to the landforms, rivers and geologic deposits in each region.  Fifth-grade teachers, Melanie and Laurel, discussed the idea of making a puzzle of the original 13 states laid over a base map of Native homelands.  This would tie into the fifth-grade curricular focus on US history and underscore the fact that the colonies were developed on Native land.

Veronica, Curt and Ronanda research and deliberate various possibilities

The middle/high school teachers, Curt, Crystal and Matthew, engaged in a lively discussion of many different possibilities for a world map focusing on historical concepts.  A World War One Alliances theme, for example, could examine such issues as imperialism and global colonization.  A future focus could similarly include ideas about survival in a dystopian society.  Those ideas included using a USA map to focus on natural resources, biomes, species and food supplies leading to a thematic exploration of potential dystopia in conjunction with popular Young Adult literature like the Divergent or Hunger Games series.  They also discussed using maps to learn about various social aspects such as religion and language.

This sampling of teachers’ ideas clearly highlights the endless possibilities!  As part of our “Food for Thought” segment of the workshop, we also viewed this excerpt from an episode of "The West Wing" TV series in which representatives of the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality present their concerns to the President's team about the maps currently used in schools.  They advocated the adoption of the Gall-Peters projection in order to minimize the way the Mercator projection makes some nations and continents appear to be larger than they actually are.  The traditional classroom map exagerates the size of the U.S. and places it in the middle of the Northern hemisphere.  This can influence the way we see the world and lead to prejudicial "top and bottom attitudes."

Sarah then gave the group a sneak preview of PuzzleMap Explorer™, a new platform for worldwide "discoveries" that SpherAware is currently developing.  This tool will enable students and teachers to author unique point clues for use within their own classrooms and to selectively share them with other users.  As a regular feature of our monthly workshops, teachers also exchanged updates on how their students are using PuzzleMap in conjunction with other curricular activities.  Laurel and Melanie brought some beautiful hand-made postcards created by their fifth graders and Kendall shared photos of her fourth graders in action:

Postcards and letters from Laurel and Melanie’s fifth graders

Kendall's fourth graders in action!

These artifacts highlight some of the ways in which students are engaging and learning with PuzzleMap.  We concluded the workshop with warm wishes for the winter break and plans to resume our content creation efforts again in January.

Presentation  —  The Workshop 3 slides can be seen here.