With a change in the means of using information, teachers and students are getting more and more familiar with multimedia than with printed media, and are vigorously using multimedia. Given the change in the information environment, Internet can provi...
With a change in the means of using information, teachers and students are getting more and more familiar with multimedia than with printed media, and are vigorously using multimedia. Given the change in the information environment, Internet can provide information the fastest and easiest. However, the map curriculum of the social subject division in elementary school is lacking in visual materials, depends only on small visual images published in textbooks, and centers on teachers' explanation of information. The findings indicate that teachers should search diverse necessary picture materials and information on particular themes, and reedit such searched contents one after another to make learning materials, which took a long time and complicated procedures.
This paper aims to address these problems by proposing map education contents using a mashup of Google Maps and social subject textbooks of elementary school (a mashup refers to a process by which information and services provided through the Web are combined to make new software, service or database). Likewise, this aims to provide diverse information on maps concerned in class for students, as well as photo materials and multimedia materials. To induce self-initiated learning and facilitate learning activities with interaction, the research also seeks to enable learners to survey and register the information of their home towns.
For research methodology, first, the research examined Web2.0, Google Earth, Google maps, and related actual cases, theories on map learning, and self-initiated learning.
Second, the research determined the characteristics and types of the Google Maps API, the key technology in this research, and surveyed related cases.
Third, the research surveyed the status of e-learning contents, and their actual cases, reviewed the objects of the social subject curriculum in elementary school, and surveyed the status of map education targeting teachers. Also, it surveyed prior research on map education to work out measures to improve map education.
Fourth, the research worked out measures to mash up Google Maps and textbook units of map education, and designed the interface information for map education contents. With regard to the use of these contents, it planned and designed users' information search process.
The findings indicate that efficient self-initiated learning, through this process, should motivate learners to participate in classes with curiosity and interest. Likewise, learners should have interest in the process of learning with curiosity to be motivated, and if such motivated learners voluntarily search knowledge and information for subject contents, they will be able to interact with visual information and materials. Interaction is a key element for education, and this research pursues an activated interaction between learners and map information.
For the proposed learning method, if a teacher presents a contents unit of the textbook, learners will be able to explore regions shown in the unit through map contents, and to access the related region's diverse theme maps, photo data, satellite maps, and multimedia data. Above all, this method makes it easy to understand the location of various regions. If users can directly register and provide regional information, learners will be able to interact with the information of maps in the unit of the understanding of their towns and regional characteristics, thus improving map learning and producing effective education. This learning will meet the objectives of social subject units.
Also, the research seeks to provide teachers with diverse information of theme map, and multimedia materials, so as to improve map education of the social subject curriculum, and to help curtail the time that teachers take to gather data. This research focuses on designing the interface in social subject curriculum and map education in elementary school and on proposing this model; further research is needed to verify the model according to its application to learners. Also, on the basis on this research, diverse education contents are expected to be developed through the mash-up with Google Maps.