I have been lucky enough to watch a few classes recently, and so the technology I am going to write about in this issue is not something I have used yet myself, but, rather, something I saw being used in a lesson. It is called Tripline, and it is very simple to use: it allows you to create an interactive map where you or your students can mark out a journey, add pictures and text related to the different places and then ‘play back’ the journey as a presentation. It offers opportunities for research, writing and giving oral presentations.
How Tripline works
Unfortunately, you do need to sign up (at www.tripline.net) to use this tool, though it is free to do so. Once you have signed up, to create a record of a real or imaginary journey, click on ‘New map’ and give your map a title and a short description. Then click on ‘Create my map’. Now you can begin to add the places you want to include in your journey. Don’t worry if you’re not sure about the final order that you want; you can move them around and re-order them at any time. As you begin to write the name of a place to add to your map, a list of possibilities will appear, making it easy to find the right place; just click on the right address and that place will be marked on the map. You can repeat this process as many times as you like.
Once you have added all your places, click on ‘Save and exit’. Now your basic map is ready and, if you scroll below it, you will see that there are icons where you can add information related to the different places you have chosen to include. You can add all sorts of details: for example, the dates you were at the places, pictures, a description of what you did and even links to websites. It is very well-formatted, and there is room to write up to 3,000 words for each place you visited. Once you have finished, scroll up to the map and click on the arrows to move through the journey. You will see that the map draws a little red line as it marks out the places you visited, and also displays the information.
How you could use it in class
I can see massive potential for using this in class. The fact that you can ‘play back’ your journey means it is very good for both writing and speaking. Students could easily use it to create an account of a journey they made on a school trip, a trip with their family or even a recent holiday. They could also use it to re-create the journey of someone else – for example, Christopher Columbus or perhaps Amerigo Vespucci. It doesn’t even have to be an explorer. Many historical figures have moved around and lived in different places. Why not plot out the life of Van Gogh, Benjamin Franklin or John Lennon?
I think this would work really well as a project, with the students working in groups. They could first find out about a famous explorer, by using websites like http://famous-explorers.org, and then they could mark on their map the places the explorer visited, providing further information about their journey. After they have made their maps, the groups could play back their presentations to other groups and provide an oral commentary as they go through the explorer’s journey.
An alternative could be to put the students into groups and ask them to imagine a fantasy journey. They could decide on the places, find images to represent each place and then write out an imaginary diary of what they did. You could help by providing some questions to scaffold the activity. For example:
- What did you visit?
- Where did you stay?
- What did you eat?
- What was the weather like?
- What did you think of the place?
- Would you recommend it?
You could increase or decrease the degree of scaffolding, depending on the level of the students. Afterwards, they could present their fantasy visits to the rest of the class.
What I like about this tool is that it could be used in so many ways. It would be equally useful for presenting personal information and for incorporation in a CLIL curriculum, as the students could use it to trace the journeys of historical figures they were learning about.
The key to making it work is a good set of instructions that say clearly what the students are expected to do. This should help avoid the problem of them simply cutting and pasting information from the internet. It is also a good idea to get the students to present their complete maps to the class, as this will require them to describe their work orally. It would also help to make sure they understand and ‘learn’ the information they find during the research stage. Giving the students time to practise giving their presentations to a small group before they do it in front of the whole class really helps to build their confidence.
Help video
I have created a set of videos to show you how to use
Tripline: http://goo.gl/Ym4utJ