A proposition of using Teaching Guiding Activity with the instrument Google Earth to teaching and learning process of the notion of spatial orientation.
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Passos, F.
1UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO Email: felipepassos9@gmail.com
Abstract
A proposition of using the Teaching Guiding Activity with the instrument Google Earth™ to the teaching and learning process of the notion of spatial orientation Abstract: This paper concerns to the organization of the teacher’s work, specifically to the task of arranging the process of teaching. Using the Teaching Guiding Activity (TGA) that is based on Activity Theory’s structure constituted of the assumptions founded on cultural and historical psychology, we propose a learning triggering situation that enables students to appropriate the notion of spatial orientation. The TGA has its beginning from the first group of thinkers after Lev Vygotsky which had Alexis Leontiev as its main exponent. Thus the concept of TGA is constituted with Activity’s elements - need, motive, objective, instruments, actions and operations. These elements are articulated in a learning triggering situation, in this work in a problem form that makes students get in activity to appropriate part of accumulated humanity culture. In order to set up the learning condition we adopt the methodological approach named as the virtual history of the concept. Here it consists in a problem simulating the humanity development of spatial orientation. In this sense, the situation has to enable the appropriation of notion essential characteristics. This knowledge is the content while its appropriation by students is the activity’s goal. In the elaborated situation, besides the statement that gives information on the context of the problem to be solved, the software Google Earth™ is made available as a mediating instrument between the students and theoretical knowledge. Firstly, our paper presents a rationale indicating the absence of systematic methodological processes of teaching and learning with digital mapping interfaces. In a second moment, it discusses the relevance of cartographic concepts for teaching Geography and situates the notion of spatial orientation within Cartographic Literacy process. Thirdly, it describes the theoretical basis and the structure of TGA and, at last, it presents the situation to teach the notion of spatial orientation.