Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google My Maps Tutorial”.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at a fairly new tool that Google has made available to anyone with a Google account and it’s called Google my maps. Now. This is different than the Google Maps that most people are familiar with. It’S a great tool and I might do a video on it in the future, but in this particular video today I would like to focus on Google, my maps and the purpose of this is really to create your own Maps. It can be very useful, both inside the classroom, as well as outside the classroom in a business setting or for your own personal use.
So let’s take a look at how this works. First, if you don’t already have a Google account, you need to get one. You would just go to google.com and you can see I’ve already signed in to my Google account. But if you don’t have a Google account, it’ll say something like sign in there in the upper right. You can click it and sign up for a new account once you’ve got that account, you can just go to google.com slash my maps hit enter and when you do it’ll take you to the right place.
So, let’s get started, making a map, I’m just going to click, create a new map and it’s going to take me to a map relative to where I live. So it took me to the United States, and I’ve got a search bar here – that I can use to search for a particular place in the world that I’d like to add to my map. And then I’ve got some tools over here at the left. That are very important. There’S also these tools, underneath the search bar that again are very important, and so those are the things that we’re going to focus on in this tutorial for how to make a map of your own in Google my maps so step one.
For me, in this tutorial is going to be to name my map in the upper left. It just calls it untitled map and I want to click on that and change it to be where I’ve been. This is a map of all the places I’ve been, and, if I want to, I can describe that. I can type that in a description, give me a second to do so great I’ll click Save and now it gives me an untitled layer.
Now. What is this layer thing? First of all, you don’t even have to worry about layers if you don’t want to just at first, maybe you don’t even just think of it as being a layer just think of it as alright, I’m going to start adding some places. But if you want to you can name this first layer and I’m going to do that, I’m going to call this places. I’Ve lived click Save next up. It is possible to import data from a spreadsheet and just automatically pull in some locations, but I’m not going to do that today, perhaps in a future. Video I’ll show you how to do that, but for today I just want to add the first place that I’ve lived. So let’s say I was born in Albuquerque. I could just type in Albuquerque New Mexico. There it is.
I can click and I’ve just used. This search bar to find my first location, it took me there very quickly and I can move around by using the mouse. I can just use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in zoom out and you can use the mouse itself and the left mouse button to click and drag to move things around.
So if I wanted to find the exact spot where I was born, if I wanted to, I could do that. I could just search around and I could find the location and then I could click up here to add a marker. Okay. Now this is not really where I was born.
I was not born in Los Altos Park, but anyway I’ll just click there and drop it in and you can see it now gives me the ability to name this spot. So I’ll just put where I was born. Question mark, and if I want to, I can then put in a description, so I was born on such-and-such a day, so you can put in a nice description of this location and what it means why it’s important click Save and notice. Now, in the places I’ve lived layer, there is one place where I was born now.
I might want to just name this after the place itself Albuquerque. So these are some things to think about. Do you want it to be more descriptive, or do you want it to just be the name of the place? Okay, now step two: I can just go to the next place that I’ve lived, let’s say in South America: okay, so I’m going to fly to South America there by doing a search – and I can just zoom in find the spot now it may be confusing at First, to see this marker here, okay, this marker, I searched for Santiago, Chile and it brought up this marker, but this is a temper marker. It just shows that I searched for this location, and here it is, but that’s not going to permanently show up in my map, my Google, my map that I’m creating okay.
If I want something to show up permanently, I have to specifically add it by clicking. Add marker and then choosing the location in this case, I’m just going to put the name of the place, I’m going to skip the description. I do want you to see that as you’re creating these locations and these markers in Google my maps, you could also add an image or video and attach that to your marker and your location.
When you click on that notice, it gives you the ability to click and drag a file, whether it be like a picture photo, you could drag and drop it there. It would upload it in and attach it to the place marker. You can also access the webcam on your computer.
If you have one you can access your Google Photos. Google Drive all these different sources in this case. I just want to click where it says more and I’ll just do a google image, search and I’ll type in the same location here and get a nice photo that gives people a sense of what Santiago Chile is, like click Save and now look over here at The left I have two different locations. Of course, I would continue to add locations if I wanted to really make this particular my map, but before I go on at all, I want you to see a couple of options as you’re building a Google. My map, you have this option where it says individual styles. What’S that all about right now, these locations that I’m adding each can have its own individual style. So, for example, this one from South America, I might want to click on that little symbol of a paint bucket and I might want to say: okay, South America, maybe all the South America locations, I’m going to put with a yellow marker, and maybe all of those In North America, I’ll put with a blue marker okay, so you can have individual styles, but these individual styles, both of these markers, are on the same layer. The places I’ve lived layer. It might be a good idea to have different colors. It might not.
It might be more confusing, so it’s up to you whatever you want to do, but right here I can just switch from individual styles to uniform style and look what it did now. I have to items to markers to locations both have the same, look and feel now. There are some other options as well. In addition to uniform style, you could do sequence of numbers, so this will number each location number one where I was born. Number two: Santiago. Chile, okay, so there’s some great options here now I can still change the color scheme if I would like, but whatever changes I make will happen to all of the locations that I’ve created. All of the markers that I’ve put in now. At any point, I can go back to any of these markers that I’ve put in in the past and I can click on them and I get some options.
First of all, it shows the latitude and longitude. It also gives me an option to change the style. I could do that here or I could do that here.
I can edit the description or the title I can put in a picture or a video. I can put in some directions to get there and I can also just delete it completely. So those are some nice options to have built right into it.
Okay, so let’s pretend like I fill out this particular layer, it’s good and I’m happy with the places I’ve lived now. I can just add a second layer and this layer I could call – maybe places I’ve visited okay, so just a quick vacation or things like that and again I would need to fly to or search a place. Let’S say Seattle and I can just go there and add that to the map this time it adds it to my second layer.
Why? Because that’s what I’m working on at this point? If I want to go back, I can click on places. I’Ve lived notice. This blue bar it switches, so that’s what determines which layer the new marker is going to be placed upon.
So, if I add a marker now it’s going to be added to this one. But if I click here on places, I’ve lived – and I click add marker. Then it would put it on my original layer and so basically you can create a multi-layered map. If you want to it’s really not necessary and like I say if you’re just getting started with this, maybe just stick to one layer, but as you see right now, I have two separate layers and the nice thing about layers is at any time. You can just turn off one of the layers, just unclick the layer you want to get rid of and it hides all those locations and then you can bring it back when you to come back okay. So this is great for showing lots of information in one map.
You can hide some information temporarily. You can show it and hide other information, so it’s really a cool option to be able to use multiple layers. If you want to do that, a few other, quick things that you need to be aware of, we do have these tools here right under the search bar and there’s some very important tools here. We do have undo if you make a mistake, that’s an easy way to fix it.
You have redo and then we also have here some other tools that are pretty important. We have select when you click on the Select tool, looks like a hand. You can just click on an item to get options: okay, so pretty basic and that’s kind of the default. We have add marker, that’s how we added markers and locations onto our maps, but next to that we’ve got draw a line.
Let’S say I own a lot of property in Colorado. I wish that were true. I could go in and mark the property that I own. So I can click here on draw a line and you can see there’s different kinds of lines, different options, but I’m going to stick with this one add a line or shape.
So let’s say I own this property here, so I’m just clicking and then releasing the mouse and then moving the mouse itself to a new location and then clicking again and releasing the mouse button. And so I’m just creating lines or in this case a shape. Because I created an actual shape, a polygon, it filled it in with a color, as you can see, and I can now name that I could name it. My property put in a description and then save so that’s a nice tool depending on your purpose.
For using my maps, this could be very useful and then we also have add directions which, if you want, you can click that, and you can add a layer. That’S driving directions basically, and you can put in point a point B and save that in as a layer in your Google my map in this case, I don’t really want that or need that, so I’m going to click here on these three circles, those three dots You’Ll notice, when you click on them, you get options like renaming or in this case deleting so I want to delete that and in some cases you can open a data table that shows the data that it’s pulling from the latitude and longitude and things like that. Okay, so I’m done creating my Google, my map and I’m ready to share it, maybe to turn it in. If, let’s say I’m doing, this is an assignment. How would I just finish this off and be done well, one or two final things to consider before you finalize a Google, my map, you should consider these three circles here next to the title of your my map.
I’Ve already shown you these three circles. Those are a little different. Those are specific to the particular layer that you’re working on.
But here, if you click on these circles, that’s where you can create a whole new map copy, a map open a map, delete a map, the entire map, but there’s some other very important things that you can do with these options that are hidden here in these Three circles: one is to set the default map view. So, for example, when this map is opened, what is it going to default to? Is it going to default to this? So you can see all of my locations all of my markers or do I want to default, to New Mexico or to the United States or to some other place, South America. So this is where you make that decision.
Let’S say I want this to be the starting view. I just make it the way. I want it to look and then I go here.
Click set default view and now that will be the default for this map. When you first start using it, there are some other options there as well. There’S an option to embed this map on my own website, let’s say a Weebly website or there’s other website builders that allow you to embed, and so, if you click on that notice, what it does first, it warns me look. This is not a public map. You have to click Share to allow other people to view it before you embed it right. It would be pointless to embed one that is not public.
You can also export to KML. Why would you do that? Because this KML file, that you export is readable in Google Earth and in Google Maps and some other tools as well, and so, if you want to you, can download this, you could send it to someone email it to them and they would be able to import That into their own Google Earth or other mapping tool. So that’s a nice option. You can also print your map just on paper.
If you would like to do that, but back to embed on my site, it wouldn’t. Let me do that. Why? Because this is not a shared map, this is a private personal map of mine. To remedy that, if I want to change that, I just click on share, and it gives me a link and similar to many other Google products. This link is only somewhat useful. It depends on the permissions that I give to this map so right now, it’s private only I can access it, but if I click change I could say anyone with the link would be able to access this map and look at it notice.
It says they can view only if I want to. I could change it, so they can edit. Anyone with the link could help me edit and create this map or make it totally public on the web, but only viewable. You know there’s all these different options or you can have it be private, except for those few people that you allow to work on it. Okay, so I could invite specific people by putting in their email addresses. I could even add a message saying you know. Please help me to finish this map click send and right now they would be able to edit, along with me this map. If I change it, they would only be able to view the map, so these are some great options just so you can see how to embed I’m going to click and make it public on the web, and people can only view it.
They can’t edit it I’ll click, Save and I’m just going to cancel out of the bottom part of that click. Okay. So now, when I go into the map options here, it lets me click on embed on my site. It gives me an embed code and I can copy that embed code and put it into Weebly or just about any other website builder, and I should be able to import this nice map onto that website.
If you want to learn more about that, you could watch my video tutorial about Weebly. So thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy using Google my maps and please consider subscribing to my youtube channel for more video tutorials about technology, for teachers and students, and please come back to my youtube channel at least every Monday. As that’s when I post new videos. Thanks again for watching .