I need to teach the Aral Sea to a GCSE class tomorrow. Aware of schemes to save part of the Aral, I used the Time Slider feature in Google Earth 5 to check the imagery for the area. Amazingly, the whole ecological catastrophe is covered by the imagery database. I made a brief video to illustrate:
Google Earth isn’t just an essential resource for teaching the Aral Sea issue, it’s a powerful political tool and students should be aware of this. Governments are becoming increasingly accountable in the face of unequivocal evidence from the Google database which has revealed slum clearance in Zimbabwe and genocide in Darfur. The Aral Sea crisis was kept secret for many years, and while Google Earth reveals the astonishing rate of evaporation, it is interesting to note that the current image (if it is indeed the most recent) does appear to show a slight reversal of fortunes.
Finally, could it be that Street View is coming to the UK in March? I’ve heard a rumour
It’s unlikely to have escaped anyone’s notice that Google Earth 5 has been released, bringing a number of interesting additions and tweaks. These are briefly introduced in the official video from Google:
So what’s in the new release for teachers?
Firstly, it seems that Google’s entire imagery archive is now available via the new History icon.
History icon
A nice way to try this feature is to find the Superdome in New Orleans, (placemark) and examine the hurricane damage and subsequent repairs.
Digital Urban blog was quick to identify the teaching potential here, for example students might find examples of set-aside land, or new developments in the urban rural fringe. Here’s a video example of the latter:
Interestingly, Google are not always displaying the most up to date data. In the video example, the site of News International’s new print works is seen pre and post construction. However at the time of writing, the default imagery for this location is the 2003 tile. (see placemark) Possibly Google regard the Sun as a potential terrorist target?
Google Ocean is best explored by expanding the new Layer:
The new Ocean Layer
There’s a huge variety of resources included in the Ocean Layer from BBC Blue Planet video clips, to marine expeditions and underwater features. Dive under the shimmering sea to immerse yourself in 3D topography of features like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, or follow sharks around – see Ollie Bray. Note that the ocean will prove impenetrable unless the terrain checkbox is ticked.
Tours have been made easier with a dedicated icon button:
New Tour feature
Clicking the icon activates a pair of controls:
Tour control buttons
The red button records pretty much everything that happens on the screen – including navigation, and the opening of placemark balloons. The microphone icon allows voice recording, extending the possibilities for classroom activities. Vocaroo remains a necessity for embedding audio within placemark balloons see previous post. I’ve found the microphone feature to be be buggy on the Mac version, requiring a restart for each new recording, but the Windows version is fine. It’s brilliant that tours can be saved as KML- no more need to fudge around with movie files – just click the disc icon on the controls.
It might prove that some of the most important developments for the classroom may well be found in the less well-documented features. The GPS functionality that was previously available in Google Earth Plus has been incorporated into GE5. Now you can import GPS fieldwork data direct from a handheld device and live tracking is possible.
Finally, the most significant advance could be a hidden feature that will be useful to content developers. Placemark balloons can now display a greater variety of html tags, including iframe content and CSS. It’s possible to insert a Google Docs presentation into a placemark for example.
Google Docs inside Google Earth
Valery 35 discovered that a Google Map is another example of embeddable content, as are BBC Class Clips videos, even without embed code, via a discrete method that I only reveal by special request!
There’s now so much more scope to create some really stunning new content. Exciting times (and a quick Mac update hopefully) lie ahead!
Here’s a sampler of some new ideas I’ve been developing as part of an online resource to support the new GCSE AQA syllabus A.
Students are presented with an actual brownfield site in Google Earth, together with an imaginary development plan, represented as extruded polygons. They can demolish the buildings and create their own versions, or just edit the exemplar files.
Brownfield redevelopment - what would you do?
To demonstrate their understanding of the principles of sustainable urban redevelopment, students edit the KML with ideas on how the buildings can be used. More able students will refer specifically to the socio-economic geography and environment of Shoreditch to justify their ideas.
The actual resource contains a detailed KML file and lots of supporting files including images, panoramas and video, as well as an extended webquest style teaching activity. I hope to be able to publish a couple of exemplars here in due course.
The aim is to create an alternative to standard textbook-type questions, while promoting independent enquiry, creativity and spatial thinking.
In the meantime, Digital Geography is in a minor hiatus while I endeavour to meet the deadlines!
EveryTrail is one of my favourite iPhone Apps (related post) and the good news is that it now appears as an official layer in Google Earth (found in the Gallery layer) It’s a web-based application that lets you create and share journeys, along with associated stories and images.
EveryTrail round my block
I discovered a couple of my Trails in the layer that I created with my iPhone (download above example in Google Earth), though the pictures are (as expected) pretty dreadful.
It’s not necessary to use an iPhone – you can upload any .gpx file from a GPS device to create a trail. If you don’t have a GPS it’s no problem, simply mark a path on the map provided. You can import photos from a Flickr account, and if they’re geotagged, they’ll automatically show up in the right spot.
EveryTrail is a great option for fieldwork notes and images, and is quite simple enough for students to use independently. The ease with which trails can be created shared, displayed and seamlessly viewed with Google Earth make it a really great classroom application.
Until recently the simplest option for getting charts into Google Earth was Frank Macree’s Google Chart builder, but it no longer works (except in the Mac version of Google Earth) due to a Flash security update? The alternatives have been GE Graph – which is a little too complicated for younger students, but produces superb prism type geo-located graphs, and online spreadsheets that can publish charts such as Google Spreadsheets, however these require an account, and therefore can be impractical in the classroom.
The solution would seem to be Rich Chart Live – as mentioned by Simon Renshaw at the SLN forum and Doug Belshaw at elearnr. This web – based app is free to use and doesn’t even require registration. Just choose a chart style, paste some data from an Excel sheet into a Flash form and tweak some settings. The output from Rich Chart Live is embeddable – as seen in this rather silly example:
Brilliant – the classroom implications of this should be fairly clear! For those unsure of the procedure – just create a placemark and paste the embed code from the video into the description box.
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
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
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.
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