Monthly Archive for November, 2008

BBC Class Clips

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 30, 2008
in Teaching resources and video
. Closed

The BBC class clips site has received a major design upgrade, in line with the new corporate web identity. As one of the teacher consultants, I’m really pleased to see the outcome of this project. It’s a fantastic classroom resource.

BBC Class Clips

BBC Class Clips

The site offers a large number of free short video clips sourced from BBC Education programmes. It covers every National Curriculum subject, and the clips are searchable through keywords or topics. Each video comes with some suggestions for classroom use. Although the clips are not downloadable, they are provided in a number of different formats including high and low band width options. New material will be added periodically.


River Exe flood prevention scheme – a Google Earth Tour

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 23, 2008
in Google Earth, Photographs and Teaching resources
. 1 Comment

I was walking around Exeter Quay this weekend, musing on the fact that I hadn’t been down there for many years (in protest against the unforgivable closing of Exeter Maritime Museum) This was, by some way, the best museum in the world, mainly because to a 12 year old boy, a Chinese Junk and reed boats were pretty much the most interesting things I’d ever seen. Anyway I spotted this heron…

Heron at River Exe weir

Heron at River Exe weir

I was sadly without my telephoto lens – it being a sort of ultra-light mission, so I resolved to creep around to the other side of the river bank to get a better photo. Unfortunately a variety of steel enclosures prevented access to the other bank. Normally that would have been no problem – but a fisherman was watching me. At this point I realized that I was surrounded by a huge flood prevention scheme that I knew nothing at all about. I took a few photos and uploaded them to my school Flickr account for the benefit of my students. I also turned them into a downloadable Google Earth tour of the Exe flood prevention scheme

Google Earth tour

Google Earth tour

Hopefully this might make a nice case study for some people. Don’t forget to go to Tools / Options / Touring in Google Earth and turn on Show balloon when tour is paused. Also, slow down the tour and fly to speeds for best effect.

Virtual Marching, Kung Fu Panda and other news

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 21, 2008
in Asides, Google Earth, ICT, INSET and mobile
. Closed

Some brief updates and news…

Action Aid contacted me with news about an interesting free online resource called 20 Years of Chembakolli. More details below:

ActionAid has worked very closely with the tribal people of south India for many years, initially supporting them to fight for rights to their ancestral land, and in subsequent years in producing a range of Key Stage 2 resources for UK primary schools. The QCA even built up a scheme of work around ‘A village in India’ making explicit reference to our resources.

March

Join the March

We’ve launched a free online march to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the land rights marches that helped the Adivasis secure the rights to their land. The march allows teachers and pupils to join the march themselves and send a message of support to the Adivasis. It also allows them to explore the landscapes of Gudalur and, closer to the actual anniversary, the village of Chembakolli. They can click on buildings, objects and people to see photographs and learn more about life in south India.

Thanks to Adam Brewer who has contributed a really fun “Kung Fu” activity to Juicy Geography that is guaranteed to enliven the teaching of plate tectonics!

The Vendee Globe race is proving very popular among my Year 7, who won’t settle down until they’ve plotted their chosen skipper on their tracking maps. The Vendee Globe site hosts daily videos and podcasts and the key page for checking the current position of the boats is here. (Relating to a recent post)

Great news for 360 cities.net – their panoramic content now appears as a layer in Google Earth. Usually I rely on Google Earth blog for this kind of update, but I noticed it yesterday while running a Google Earth training course. I’m convinced it wasn’t there in the morning, but appeared just after I’d demonstrated the site to the participants. (related post)

Some iPhone news. The 2.2 update has arived. Lots of grumbling from some blogs that the update doesn’t feature cut and paste, Flash, voice guidance, toast making or world peace, however it does bring Street View to the platform. I’m finding my phone incredibly useful in the classroom, really just for the simple things – music, the decibel meter and the brilliantly simple stop watch for games such as Just a Minute. I use Maps, Evernote, Remember the Milk, Fizz Weather every day, and I still don’t care that the camera is useless and there’s no video. For the benefit of anyone accessing Digital Geography with an iPhone, I’ve installed the wpTouch plugin which renders the site super-efficiently like this:

Finally – it’s been two weeks since the very last malicious script was discovered and removed from my web server and no subsequent hacks – yay!

Follow the Vendee Globe

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 17, 2008
in Teaching resources
. 1 Comment

Thanks to Lorraine Leo for passing on information about Sites Alive where Skipper Rich Wilson shares his voyage of the Vendee Globe with students. The Vendée Globe is a round-the-world single-handed yacht race, sailed non-stop and without assistance. Somewhat fortuitously, I was teaching latitude and longitude with Year 7 today and thinking back to 2005 when we followed Ellen Macarthur’s world-beating circumnavigation from start to finish. She’s not taking part in the Vendee Globe, so we’re all behind Rich Wilson, not least because Sites Alive offers a really good teachers guide along with photos, videos and lots of other resources. Following an ocean race is a great way to teach latitude and longitude, as well as a host of related environmental and geographical issues.

More patriotic UK teachers might choose to pledge allegiance to Dee Caffari who can be followed here

Dee Caffari's boat "Aviva"

Dee Caffari

Maybe we should have a pupil vote in case we get sued by parents? Or maybe I’ll get half the class to follow Rich and the others Dee!

Simple audio annotations in Google Earth

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 13, 2008
in 3D visualization, Google Earth, Google Earth lessons, Neogeography and Teaching resources
. 4 Comments

While exploring the amazing new Ancient Rome layer in Google Earth I thought it would be useful for kids to be able to add “audio-bites” by way of annotation. The recordings might, for example, take the form of imaginary discussions taking place in Rome.

After a little research, I discovered Vocaroo.com This great little site lets you record a snippet of audio and upload it to the web. The recording can be played through an embeddable Flash Player. What’s really cool is that I found the HTML code for the player can be pasted into a Google Earth placemark. There’s no need to register to use Vocaroo; the whole process couldn’t be easier or more classroom friendly.

Tragedy!

Tragedy!

Here’s the Google Earth placemark we recorded earlier:
 Tragedy in the gardens of Lucullus

Obviously the technique has endless potential for further development. Maps that speak are an excellent example of neo-geography!

an apology…

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 13, 2008
in Asides
. Closed

I’m sorry that files can’t be downloaded from Digital Geography at the moment. This is because I have had to take extra security measures in light of continuing problems with hacking. For a while the root folder of my web space was generously hosting an unauthorized online pharmacy, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but I didn’t get any discounts…

Juicy Geography’s Google Earth blog has been temporarily deleted, since it seemed to be the source of the problems.

If anyone needs a copy of a file, please get in touch using the contact form. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Update
Hopefully .doc and .kmz files can now be downloaded

Parallels 4 brings Live Maps 3D to the Mac

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on November 12, 2008
in 3D visualization and ICT
. 4 Comments

Finally I can see the 3D version of Microsoft Live Search Maps on my Mac. The newly-released Parallels v4 supports the 3D plug in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It’s been a long time since I last used Live Maps so it was quite exciting to see the progress that’s been made. 3D buildings in Manhattan for example are stunningly rendered.

I definitely recommend the upgrade to Parallels 4 which seems to offer a great many improvements over the previous version. Parallels has always been an essential application for me since I rely on Memory Map and to my knowledge, there is no Mac equivalent for route planning with digital OS maps.