Digital Geography

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. 

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!