I spend most of the mornings at La Obra assisting Virginia with ingenios, which are basically an hour to an hour and a half of different academic activities. It is pretty varied, one day we read poems by Federico García Lorca, sometimes we play Trivial Pursuit and today the activity was using Google Maps to figure out how to arrive to a certain place in Montevideo. Most of the activities are centered around how to utilize the computer and technology. For example, using the internet while playing Trivial Pursuit helps the kids to learn what sites are better for information and how to use search engines.
Anyways, sometimes I can be helpful with this smorgasbord of activites and sometimes not. However, not only was I able to help with Google Maps, I had the opportunity to add to the activity. Google Maps has some awesome aspects that not everyone realizes so I was able to share this with the kids. For instance, if you zoom in at a certain distance on certain cities, you can see a 3D view of downtowns. Also, the kids did not know about satellite view, they really enjoyed being able to find La Obra and different places in Montevideo using the satellite view. In addition, I showed them how to use street view and soon we were looking at the outside part of Real Madrid's stadium in Spain. I was even able to show them Platteville, my house and the parts of town that have Google Street View! It is pretty crazy what technology can do! Even though I certainly feel comfortable helping out with these activities, it was really nice to be able to contribute in such a way. Also, some of the kids really took to it and were very excited at the idea that you could see all these different places just using Google.
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