I’ve just completed a new resource on the diamond trade. The resource uses Google Earth to locate some excellent images by Kadir Van Lohuizen.
The latest high resolution coverage of parts of West Africa allows students to find evidence of alluvial diamond mining.
Alluvial diamond mining, Sierra Leone
Using Google Earth, students can trace the journey that a diamond might make across the world, estimating the total distance travelled. I’ve made several suggestions for other teaching activities.
I’m very happy to host submitted teaching resources for this topic, and comments are welcomed. My thanks to Kadir Van Lohuizen, Sally Hindley, Tony Cassidy and Mike Jones for their help with this resource.
Thanks to Ogle Earth, I came across the Planet 9 site with some intriguing demonstrations of their 3D work. Perhaps the most useful, especially for teaching earthquakes, is the amazing textured Google Earth model of the Transamerica Pyramid. I really recommend a look at this (large download though) - another glimpse into the future of digital representations of the urban environment.
click to enlarge
Also on Ogle Earth a mention for the Google Earth airlines site. The BIG news here for teachers is that the site has a free movie capture program for Google Earth under development, MovieBuilder 4GE. I know that it doesn’t currently work for GE 4, because I’ve just had a go at testing it. It might be OK for V3 though. Please let me know if you get it working. When this application is finally sorted out, it could be an indispensible teaching tool. There’s also a sample of code to allow you to run Google Earth directly from inside Internet Explorer 6 via a plug-in. I’ll be testing this shortly (maybe!)
Rowenna Davis of Hands Up for Peace and Messengers fame has left university and is travelling with Jon Mollinari through the States and into South America. The two are completing a personal project to record how attitudes to US state policies change as they travel south. Rowenna’s eye for a human interest story and Jon’s capacity for mischief should ensure that their From North to South blog is interesting reading for the next few months!
Lots of people have registered on this blog, however it’s really not necessary since it doesn’t entitle you to any more features or articles. What you see is basically what you get, (although the archives are now quite extensive.)
I am really happy to add registered users as guest authors, especially since it occurs to me that many of you are from Higher Education. Simply contact me if you have an idea for an article, and I’ll change your permissions to allow access to the posting and editing features.
The Where 2.0 conference is providing a platform for a large number of significant announcements from geo-software developers. The release of the Google Earth 4 beta is particularly interesting with its radically altered navigation interface, as the screenshot below shows. There is far more space on the screen than before, and on a high resolution monitor, the effects are quite stunning. The other obvious changes affect the Layers and My Places panels which have been redesigned to improve usability.
click to enlarge
So, should you upgrade? The new version is definitely buggy. Many people, including myself, have noticed a dramatic slow-down in performance. I also found that multiple overlays don’t display properly, flashing on and off intermittently. I see that the recommended specifications for version 4 are far more demanding than previous versions, and my own PC is stretched. Deleting cache files and twiddling around in the Options has not resulted in any improvements, so I’ll shortly be uninstalling and returning to the old version. Coinciding with the release of Google Earth 4 is a massive upgrade to the imagery database. Google claim that 20% of the world’s dwellings are now visible in high resolution, although I can confirm my house is not amongst them!
According to Google Earth blog, the new version of Picasa allows you to geotag photos using Google Earth. I can’t comment, since I don’t have the required GMail account to sign up for the service.
Finally, and in my opinion, probably the most exciting news, is that KML files are now directly viewable in Google Maps. This is fantastic news for all those teachers who have been unable, for whatever reason, to use Google Earth in their classrooms. (Flash Earth is the obvious solution) but now, the thousands of KML files available through the Google Community can be utilized without the need for Google Earth. Have a look at this yourself. Load up Google Maps and select a KML file. An example could be my Nile Tour. Right click on this link to save the location of the Nile Tour kml file, and paste it into Google Maps search box to see the results, which should be similar to the image below!
click to enlarge
The Royal Geographical Society with IBG, British Antarctic Survey and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Polar Regions Unit have launched their new website Discovering Antarctica.
source
This is an outstanding teaching resource, featuring a great variety of superb multimedia resources, images and factsheets, interwoven into really enjoyable learning activities. I like the way in which the materials have been presented to reflect the current pedagogy stemming from initiatives such as the Key Stage Three strategy.
The Discovering Antarctica site caters for both KS3 and KS4 students, and the activities may be extended by following the carefully selected links. There are plenty of downloadable teaching materials, together with extensive teachers notes. If Antarctica is not part of your current scheme of work, it will be shortly!
Well done RGS, Simon Scoones, the project development team and the large number of contributors who have produced this resource!
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
Recent Comments