Putting together geotagging for learning content with the GPS enable mobile devices students have offers rich potential for learning. The Associated Press has a report today on how geotagging is emerging for online photos. The report explains:
. . . the growing number of uses for geotagging, which is largely practiced by tech-savvy and professional photographers but is likely to expand. Global positioning is becoming omnipresent as more cell phones and digital cameras have built-in GPS support.
”It’s something that will become integral to the way digital imaging works,” said Aimee Baldridge, a New York-based writer and photographer who tracks trends with digital imaging. ”I think it’s definitely headed for the mainstream.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture with geotagging can add a few hundred more.
Educators should be jumping on this potential as geotagging takes hold. In the future, images students learn from can be digitally linked to myriad materials from the same geographical location. A student can also use her mobile phone or camera to record images that have their geographical location embedded in them. That will bring very broad new dimensions to the classic classroom activity of “show and tell.”
More profoundly, it will build the ability of small pieces of knowledge to call up their own context, which is very, very cool pedagogically.
