DigGeog » Google Earth

Earth Art by Year 7

Noel Jenkins — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:11:05 +0000

Here’s some examples of Earth Art by Year 7 as part of their work on landscapes (inspired by you know who)
It would be greatly appreciated if readers could add a one word comment to indicate their favourite picture.

Searthing: serious Earth Art

Noel Jenkins — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:16:00 +0000

I can’t remember the original source of the Earth Art idea, and I suspect several people would claim the honour (though NASA is in pole position) but Searthing offers some pretty spectacular examples and the chance to contribute to the site.

A few years ago I was enthusiastic about getting learners to find interesting angles in Google Earth, adding a suitable caption using Big Huge Labs’ Motivator tool. Who can forget the classic “Cabbage of Jub”?

Posterous vs Virtual Cities

Noel Jenkins — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:14:16 +0000

This is a presentation I gave at the Somerset Geographers conference. I’m exploring how to incorporate social networking into my GCSE teaching, while encouraging the learners to make the best use of online resources.

Posterous versus virtual cities

View more presentations from juicygeography

Accompanying this presentation was a video by Oasis:

and a Google Earth file incorporating Gavin’s unofficial OS maps overlay (not to be used in Google Earth!)

Thanks to the students whose work is featured in this presentation.

AR Sights – new version

Noel Jenkins — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:07:17 +0000

I’ve been having another look at AR Sights – the augmented reality application that superimposes 3D models into a real-world view. It’s now available in a Mac version, and there is a greater choice ofÂ models. A web cam is required; this one looks good for other experiments such as time lapse as well. Once AR Sights is installed, simply browse the library of 3D buildings from a special Google Earth layer. It works very well.

Here’s the demo I made a little while ago.

The AR models include a number of religious buildings that make a great resource for RE lessons. In geography, students could design a suitable setting for a relocated iconic structure like the Petonas Towers.

Wellington Stories

Noel Jenkins — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:17:04 +0000

My Year 8 project Wellington Stories aims to create a series of geo-located, short stories, poems and videos; and is reaching maturity. The students have created a really interesting series of short pieces that explore their relationship with place. These have all been mapped and the real-world locations tagged with QR codes. The final stage of the project is to publish a photographic record of the QR codes, and to contact the local press with details of the project. Thanks to all those who’ve commented on the work so far.

For those who haven’t seen “Wellington Stories” yet – here’s a short sample:

GC’s poem: Upon Cloud 9
KC’s video poem: The Wellesley Cinema
JV’s story: My story of Woolworth’s
GA’s movie: Wellington Youth Centre
EB’s story and videos: Bike Jumping

Download all the stories as a Google Earth file

I’m a 360 Cities photographer!

Noel Jenkins — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:11:04 +0000

It’s been an ambition of mine to create my own immersive VR panoramas ever since I first came across the 360 Cities website. After saving up for a decent camera, lens and the requisite tripod technology, I’m finally up and running. I bulked at the cost of stitiching software though, and while I really liked PTgui and would love a copy of Autodesk Stitcher I can’t afford them. Fortunately, Hugin is free, Open Source and totally brilliant. I also use Cubic Converter to extract cube faces from the equirectangular images in order to clone out the tripod.

There’s so much to learn about this form of photography; it’s not quite as easy as I had imagined. Here’s one of the first images I’ve produced:

The Nave, Wells Cathedral in England

I’m planning to create a series of images specifically for classroom use. These will eventually be available on Juicy Geography. An example is this image of a brown-field site:

Morlands, Glastonbury in England

I notice that if you right click on the image you can choose different projections. This one works quite well as a “little planet”

Brownfield site, Glastonbury as a Little Planet

Please get in touch if you have suggestions for a panorama for the geography classroom. And if you do use one, why not help me to recoup the massive financial investment by donating to the site development ofÂ Juicy Geography?

Visualizing A Safer City 2009

Noel Jenkins — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:18:28 +0000

My Year 8 class have been working on the Google Earth hazard planning activity: San Francisco: visualizing a safer city. I’ve added some of my own feedback to their placemarks, as the activity isn’t quite finished yet.

Basically, the idea of the activity is to locate a safe site for a new hospital, leveraging the full potential of Google Earth Layers, Street View and some custom overlays of various types of data.

Download the student’s work as a Google Earth file here. Then add the necessary Google Earth overlays to check the validity of their claims!

There’s a poll to choose the best piece of work. Feel free to vote or leave a comment.

Note to class – the comments are moderated, and one of you isn’t allowed to win anyway

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.