Finding Your Way Online

Objective Students will be able to navigate and familiarize themselves with websites that provide directions for highway travel to promote strategies for easily finding directions when traveling.

Introduction Ready for a road trip? Never been there before? Have you ever had trouble reading those complicated road maps and even more trouble trying to fold them back up? You may have to waste precious time to pull over and wrestle with a huge state map. The solution to these problems is online. You no longer have to fill up your glove compartment with bulky, complicated street maps. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can have a detailed, neatly listed page with directions to your destination. Many years ago there were only one or two sites available on the Internet that provided this service. Now there are many accessible sites to get directions for traveling. Discover and enjoy an easier way to follow directions these days!

Activity Explore the following sites that provide the service of offering driving directions.

Expedia.com An online travel agency with map features. 11/19/05

http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?qscr=mrfn&&zz=1132418147109&

Yahoo! Driving Directions Online driving directions. 11/19/05

http://maps.yahoo.com/dd

MapQuest Offers directions with maps for North America. 11/19/05

http://www.mapquest.com/directions

MSN Maps & Directions Online driving directions. 11/19/05

http://map.msn.com/(yeekbwblh22tqr55naojpgfl)/DirectionsFind.aspx

Maps On Us Provides online maps and driving directions. 11/19/05

http://www.mapsonus.com

Rand McNally Provides online maps and driving directions. 11/19/05

http://www.randmcnally.com/rmc/directions/dirGetDirectionsInput.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1767505634.1132440713@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgaddgfglkfllcefecggfdffhdghf.0&cmty=0

Google Local Online driving directions. 11/19/05

http://maps.google.com/

Assignment As you view each site, enter a beginning location (please use your home address) and a final destination (address of a friend, relative, business, or other location you may wish to visit). Please use the same beginning location and final destination for this entire activity. If the site offers fastest vs. shortest routes, view the routes for both of these options. Are the routes the same or different? Sometimes shortest doesn’t necessarily mean fastest.

After receiving the results at each of the sites listed above, you are going to consider which site you thought was the best and which was the worst. Write a brief explanation about your decision and include a link to the site you liked the most and a link to the site you liked the least. Make sure to include in detail why you liked or disliked the sites. All sites have the same basic set up (entering beginning location and final destination), but each yields results that differ in a variety of ways. How do the sites vary in their results? Consider maps, fonts, directions, etc. Are there any discrepancies between the directions given by the sites?

Rubric

unacceptable	developing	acceptable
Paragraph written without listing links to most and least liked sites. Answers are one word or too short with no explanation of how or why conclusions were made. Answers make no sense in regard to the activity above.	Paragraph is written with links to most and least liked sites. Answers are present but do not provide detailed insight into conclusions.	Paragraph is well written and includes both links to most and least liked sites. Expected answers are medium length responses about information discovered during the activity. Detailed explanation is present as to why or how conclusions were made.

Submission Post your results as a Word document or save as a web page. Email the document as an attachment to the instructor or link the Word document to your index page and email the instructor a hot link to the activity.

ISTE Standards

This course activity addresses the follow on ISTE Standards – II. PLANNING AND DESIGNING LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND EXPERIENCES A. Design developmentally appropriate learning opportunities that apply technology-enhanced instructional strategies to support the diverse needs of learners.

A complete listing of all ISTE standards can be found at:

National Educational standards for Teachers - http://cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html