I’m back again with another emerging technology review! This time I am going to review Meograph. I found this by accident while looking for something else but it seemed so unique I had to give it a try. This tool is one that lets you tell a digital story using maps, pictures and videos.
This is such and interesting tool! I love that it is using google maps or google earth to maps where you are telling your story, so you can zoom in and see landmarks and even your own house, if you wanted that much detail.
Meograph is designed for all ages. I could easily see it being used in elementary school for students to tell a report and show where events happened. Or I remember in jr. high one of our assignments was to write and autobiography, this would be a great companion to that assignment. However it was also fun to use as an adult! On their website, the example they showed was of a news story, mapping out the events in the story.
This was so easy to use. All you had to do was click the add new event button. Enter the information and your done! You can embed a video and select how long you want it to play for , or just upload a picture to go along with the event. Then just record your narration and you are done!
There are different level for cost options, there is the free version (would I be reviewing this if there wasn’t?) Then 3 more versions that increase in price. The only options you seem to be losing by not paying is there will be adds around your Meograph, but since its free, I don’t really see the problem. As longs as there aren’t any inappropriate adds that will pop up, but I haven’t seen any yet!
Unless you pay for the 2 higher packages, your video does not have private sharing. So make sure you do not include anything to personal! For example in my Meograph, I mentioned the town I was born in, but did not zoom in on my house, ( I don’t want any creepers coming to visit!)
Here is the Meograph I created about my education journey! (I realized the random video in its, is well, unnecessary but I just wanted to play with the feature! ( I recorded it and uploaded it to youtube so it easier to view from this blog, but if you want to see the original click here.)
What an amazing tool. Your example was a great demonstration and I’m definitely going to try this out. Thanks for sharing.
Oops! I meant to leave a more detailed comment so here goes:
FIrst, you know I loved your post from my previous comment. I was impressed by your the project which was a great introduction to the tool.
It would have been helpful to hear a bit more about the steps involved in creating your Meograph. Would you be creating in a lab with your students or in centers in the classroom. Also, what ideas do you have for creating and managing student accounts. That piece can be quite time consuming!
Next, do any project ideas come to mind? If the students are little ones, how would you go about recording their voiceovers?
Thanks for finding and sharing this engaging tool. I cant’ wait to tell our teachers about it and test it out.
P.S. Dr. Seuss is a favorite of mine.
Cayla, thanks for the info about Meograph! This is a really interesting site. I am curious to see what limits it could be taken too. I appreciated your information about the lack of privacy. That is an interesting approach for them to take to give incentive to their users, but a little frightening as well. What capabilities does the site have as far as adding media? I noted you had video and images. It seems like at least with your example that it is almost like a presentation software. Do you think that’s the case?
The site itself says it is interactive. What do they mean by that? Are there tools for collaboration built into it? I appreciated that you used an assignment that you recalled but this piece could have been done with any number of tools. Why does this distinguish itself to you? I think perhaps a better example might be doing something that can’t be done in say Powerpoint or Prezi would demonstrate the tool’s strengths more effectively.
Great find Cayla, this looks really cool. I really like how easy it is put everything together so easily. It seems the creators thought of almost everything; the ability to add photos and videos and the timeline was really cool. I mean sure you could have done this in other software but not as easily as this offers. All you have to do is have your resources together and know what you want to say on each slide and you could put together a really cool story in no time. Like Kellen I was a little lost on the interactive part and the website could offer a little bit more direction on all of the features available.
This certainly has a lot of potential for creating some fun presentation capabilities. Visual stimulation is a great way to explain a difficult subject or turning something that some may view as boring into something fun and enjoyable. This would be a great Brain Based Learning tool.
This could be something fun to play around with on a personal level to bad you can’t just render a video out of it when your done so you could add it your own video but I guess you can always publish it to YouTube and then download it but I’m sure you’re gonna lose some quality.
None the less great tool and it looks pretty young considering it’s still in beta.
Thanks for sharing,
Greg
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Thanks for telling about this tool, Cayla. I found it interesting that it easily links a video into the video itself. I wonder how many levels deep that could go? Did it provide search tools for you to add images or just an uploader? If it is connected to Google maps, it seems like it could also be connected to Google image search as well. I thought you made an interesting biographical use of the tool; just think of all the map points that someone with a wandering childhood (like an army brat) could create. I will definitely investigate this further.
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Hi Cayla,
I enjoyed your post about Meograph. I never heard of this online tool before but it looks promising. A tool that lets you tell a story digitally using maps, videos, and pictures can be vital for grade school students and adults. As technology rapidly advance everyday, Meograph is a tool teachers and students should look into.
You mentioned that you could record your narration within the site. Are there limitations on how long you can record your narration? If so, are there options available to provide longer narration?
I noticed that you have to pay in order to have private sharing. How will you monitor this in the classroom? Will you encourage students not include personal information? This would be a great tool to use in the classroom, but lack of privacy could limit some presentations and paying for everyone’s Meograph doesn’t look like a viable option.
I’m curious to see how you will use this in the classroom. What methods will you use to teach grade school students (i.e. K-5) on how to record your voice/narration? What is the process of pinpointing one location to the next? On one hand, this is a relatively new online tool and it has its limitation. On the other hand, I think it has potential, but you might want to look at other tools like Prezi or Slide rocket.
Great post.
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