Using Sketch Up 5 in combination with Google Earth it’s possible for students to visualize urban management schemes such as the one proposed for Plymouth.
Suitable building sites can be identified in Google Earth and transferred to Sketch Up to be turned into 3D images. They can be exported back into Google Earth and annotations added as placemarks to explain the decisions. It would not be dificult to teach the necessary ICT procedures and the task would call on many geographical skills as well as creativity and Citizenship. Here is an example:
The task is described in detail here.
I’ve been obsessing for hours trying to identify the land use zones of Plymouth. The idea is to create a series of layers that will illustrate the extent to which Plymouth conforms to urban models. The main problem is that I don’t know the city that well. So far I’ve created a .kmz file that contains the land use zones that I have guesstimated from the high resolution Google Earth data.
The file includes an Ordnance Survey map overlay (sorry for the copyright breach OS!) and a link to the nearest Geograph pictures. Download the file here
The technique is quite simple, relying on the drawing tools available to users of the paid version of Google Earth. It’s just a question of drawing and colouring polygons, and students can be taught the method in seconds. Note that opening the folders allows you to turn sub-layers on or off. I hope that this will end up being a useful teaching resource for GCSE and A level. I’d be very grateful for comments on the accuracy of the work in progress and suggestions for improvements.
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