Immersive panoramas in Google Earth

 Google Earth, Neogeography, Photographs, Teaching resources  Comments Off
Oct 212008
 

The newly revised 360 cities website offers an improved way to view places through immersive panoramic photography. Frank Taylor is one of several bloggers to have given the site a mention.

For Geography teachers the site must surely rate highly in a best of 2008 list. 360 panoramas are nothing new, but the concept of a floating sphere as demonstrated by Digital Urban a while ago has been elevated to a new dimension of user friendliness. The 360 cities site itself is, to be honest, rather confusing at first glance. Once a panorama has been located and opened for viewing, the familiar Google Earth icon appears on the left of the image.

I’ve been teaching about inner city regeneration recently, using my old stomping grounds of Brick Lane and Dockands as examples. Old Truman Brewery on 360 cities

Panorama on 360 cities site

Panorama on 360 cities site

Clicking the icon transports the viewer inside Google Earth and the results are spectacular.

Panoramic sphere

Panoramic sphere

Flying into the panorama

Flying into the panorama

Inside the panorama

Inside the panorama

Try the following Google Earth links to get the idea:

Brick Lane

Brick Lane Truman Factory

Canary Wharf

There are thousands of high quality images to discover at 360 cities. Finally, virtual field trips start to make sense! Once an image has been opened in Google Earth it can easily be saved in the My Places panel – I’m already building a library of VR scenes this way.

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 8:24 pm  Tagged with:

www.Revisited – revised

 Google Earth, ICT, INSET, Teaching resources  2 Responses »
Oct 182008
 

I’ve revised my mindmap of useful web-based teaching applications. The first version was fairly generic and designed for Newly Qualified Teachers; the new one has been revised in preparation for a forthcoming workshop, and updated specifically for geography teachers. There’s links for virtual reality panoramas (which I’ve been using a fair bit recently) and mentions of the new Google Earth API, Nings and the GPS Visualizer site.

Go to web version

Choose from several versions:

web version

Word document

Original Inspiration file (recommended if you have Inspiration 8)

www.Revisited is emphatically NOT a collection of best Geography links, and doesn’t include the many great teacher sites or resources. So please don’t be offended if your site isn’t mentioned! The intention is to highlight some of the best Web 2.0 teaching tools for Geographers. Feel free to make further suggestions. See also 50 ways to tell a story (Thanks Kenny)

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 9:03 am  Tagged with: , ,

One Day…

 video  1 Response »
Oct 122008
 

Every so often, a perfect day’s surfing reminds me of my overwhelming good fortune to have moved back home to the South West. While many of those I shared waves with today are driving in an exhausted state back up the M5, I’m eating cakes at home.

Local creative-type Richard Gregory is waiting with a supporting film crew, and cast of local surfers, for the ideal weather window in which to complete his One Day film project and capture the essence of North Devon in a 24 hour period of film-making and photography. There’s a teaser below, and lots more information about Richard’s many (unfinished) projects at his Wave Dreamer site.

Richard’s surf films are completely removed from the generic offerings of the industry – the surfing is infused by the sense of place. It would be even better if he ever finished one;) He describes my world in intricate detail. I can’t wait for One Day to be finished – today would have been a good day for the filming.

One Day involves 24 hours of filming. The Geographical Association’s My World in 60 Seconds project is challenging students to make a film that’s just a minute long. I hope to inspire some of my students to have a go. It’s not a competiton, but the best films will be shown on giant screens in city centres around the country.

My World in 60 seconds

My World in 60 seconds

Finally, some other recent news from North Devon – maybe the hardest traditional rock climb in the world. If you ever get the chance – go and have a look at Dyer’s Lookout and contemplate James Pearson’s achievement!

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 6:00 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Flickr fun

 GPS, Office applications, Photographs, Student work  1 Response »
Oct 112008
 

My Year 10 class took a well-deserved break today to have some fun with Flickr and the Big Huge Labs Motivator tool. The initial part of the lesson covered copyright issues and Creative Commons, then we got to work with the Motivator tool to create some posters on the theme of urban morphology. No particular reason – just some gratuitous creativity.

Here’s some examples:

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 10:48 am  Tagged with: , ,

Take A Walk With Me – Soar Valley Geographers

 Google Maps, Neogeography, Student work  Comments Off
Oct 062008
 

In case you didn’t spot Simon Renshaw’s comment on the neo-geography post, why not take a look at some of the Google Maps created by his Year 9 students. Soar Valley Geographers

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 9:36 pm  Tagged with: ,

Teaching about depressions with Google Earth

 Google Earth, Google Earth lessons, ICT, Teaching resources, video  3 Responses »
Oct 052008
 

Pretty gloomy weather today, and Year 8 need to know about depressions tomorrow. Obviously my first thought is to go with Tony Cassidy’s Postman Pat lesson – a slice of Radical Geography genius. And so I shall, however fortunately, the UK is in the grip of a series of low pressure systems and the Weather Layer in Google Earth is brilliant for illustrating the relationship between air masses and the weather.

I could start with an animation of the clouds over the past 24 hours…


Google Earth cloud animation from Noel Jenkins on Vimeo.

The animation requires a download of this network link

Turning on the Weather panel from the Layers Panel in Google Earth provides really helpful information.

Weather Layer

Weather Layer

Starting with the Conditions and Forecasts, the weather is cool over N. France, warm and rainy over the S. of the UK and cold and partly sunny over the North. Excellent!

Weather reports

Weather reports

Activating the clouds layer reveals the reason – a perfect example depression is responsible. More good news!

The cloud layer

The cloud layer

Finally, the rainfall radar indicates where the rain is falling. Conveniently within the warm sector of the depression. Absolutely textbook – yay!

Rain radar

Rain radar

I’m archiving the passage of this depression to provide material for a PowerPoint in case the weather isn’t being so cooperative next time I do the lesson.

Right, over to Postman Pat!

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 1:21 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Cooliris (formerly Piclens)

 3D visualization, Photographs, Teaching resources, video  1 Response »
Oct 042008
 

Classroom Flickr users might like to be reminded of the amazing Cooliris browser. The plugin (which works best in Firefox) adds a virtual 3D lightbox over your computer screen, over which images and video can be dragged and resized at will. It would be brilliant with an interactive whiteboard and is a really good way to find pictures, news stories and videos.

Imagine a lesson on waterfalls…

Launch Cooliris using the browser icon. Select ‘Flickr’ and type in ‘waterfall’…

Cooliris browsing Flickr for "waterfall"

Cooliris browsing Flickr for "waterfall"

Browse hundreds of photos (automatically selected by Flickr’s “relevance” algorithim – so they’ll be good ones!) Students choose the one they’d like to sketch.

Which turned out to be this one…

Selected image

Selected image

It’s difficult to do justice to the coolness of this application. Go to the Cooliris site and download it!

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 5:16 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,
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