History Pin

 Google Maps, Participatory geographies, Photographs, Student work  Comments Off
Dec 162010
 

The concept of History Pin from We Are What We Do and Google is beautifully simple. Young people spend time talking with people of an older generation about their old photographs and associated memories. The photos and stories are uploaded to the History Pin website, where they can be viewed through Google Maps and Street View. A little piece of history is created.

Here’s a short video explaining more:

It took a little while, but we finally persuaded some wonderful older people to visit a small group of Year 8 & 9  in our Student Support Centre. Over the course of two sessions, the students found themselves asking dozens of questions; in fact the original purpose of discussing photographs was quite subverted by the quality of the dialogue itself. In the end we only got to add one photo to the History Pin data base, but we’ll certainly run future sessions and try and expand the project further. History Pin is my discovery of the year!

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 3:32 pm

Classroom weather forecasting

 Google Earth lessons, Google Maps, Teaching resources  3 Responses »
Sep 302010
 

Around this time of year I like to teach the essentials of weather forecasting to Year 8. I always cover the basics of the relationship between air pressure and weather; the objective being to arrive at a point where students can create their own forecasts using the BBC synoptic chart as their sole source of information. The pressure chart is available from the tab above the map, and the isobars can be animated through a four day prediction, allowing the students to make multiple forecasts.

Originally I used a web page from Juicy Geography as a weather studio background, but happily there are now better alternatives. The most recent one I’ve come across, via GMM, is a Google Earth based  interactive weather map background.

I’ve tried to work out who the developer is, so I can thank them, but I haven’t had any success yet. It appears to be a work in progress, and I can’t figure out how the option to add your own logo works.  Undoubtedly it’s a very useful classroom tool, especially in conjunction with a pocket video camera. Once the symbols have been added to the map, it will play through an animated tour of the UK, forcing students to make very concise reports in a limited amount of time.

The live weather layer in Google Earth, with the real time cloud and rainfall display, provides an additional source of data for making close-range forecasts of the next few hours. Here’s how to find it:

This year I’ll get students to complete two forecasts, both short and long range, and as usual, I’ll film them, ready to play back the recording on the day of their predictions. Students do find this an interesting and rewarding experience.

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 1:03 pm

Dimensions

 Google Maps, Teaching resources  Comments Off
Sep 232010
 

A new term, a new resolution to get back into sharing stuff, and a little time to explore some recent online resources. Let’s kick off with…

dimensions

BBC Dimensions is all about illustrating the scale of events, places and objects by creating overlays over interactive maps of the local neighbourhood. For example, the pressing question as to how much of the school grounds would be swallowed up by one sweep of a deep sea trawler’s net is answered thusly:

trawler

Other overlays juxtapose events such as the Gulf oil spill, the Bhopal chemical accident and the Chernobyl radiation leak in an immediate and compelling way. RE teachers can demonstrate the distance covered by pupils if they walked the route of Hajj Pilgrimage in the local area, while lessons on WW2 might be enhanced with an illustration of the blast radius of a German SC500 bomb landing on the classroom. History, Science RE and Geography curricular links will be obvious.

I worry that being a prototype, this fantastic visualisation tool will be quietly sidelined next time there’s a round of budget cuts, so if you find it useful, it might be worth leaving feedback for the developers.

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 2:52 pm

Wellington Stories

 Google Earth, Google Maps, Neogeography, Participatory geographies, Public geographies, Student work  Comments Off
Jul 042009
 

Fox's Factory Wellington (26)

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

google link Download all the stories as a Google Earth file

Related posts here and here.

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 3:17 pm

Exploring personal geographies with QR codes: part 2

 Google Maps, mobile, Neogeography, Participatory geographies, Public geographies, Student work  Comments Off
May 162009
 

The personal geographies project outlined in part 1 of this post has now been published.

Setting up the website:
While the students have been busy creating their stories, I’ve been experimenting with the best way of publishing their work, given the constraints of a filtered network and the e-safety imperative. Originally the plan was to publish the stories on Posterous as this site isn’t filtered (yet) and it offers the advantage of overwhelming simplicity. However it didn’t seem to work well in school (an IE6 issue?) and it doesn’t support the embedding of Google Maps. I was also attracted towards Google Sites because many of the students have Google accounts, and it would have been easy for them to contribute and edit their work and manage photos and video from within the Google network. I wanted members of the public to be able to comment on the students work, but niether Posterous nor Google Sites feature comment moderation, so I looked elsewhere for a solution. I’ve settled on a WordPress.com blog – with just one post on the home page and the rest of the content published as pages. It’s not ideal – for example there’s no point in subscribing to the RSS feed, but it’s easy to manage comments and embedded content, and hopefully I’ll be able to give some of the students authoring rights. The project site is located at Wellington Stories.

The stories:
The students are busy creating their stories and many have opted to use photos and video. In order to sustain momentum, I got them to produce a short placeholder story for their individual page. Each story gets it’s own page on the blog, a unique QR code, and a placemark on a Google My Map.



View Wellington Stories in a larger map

I was delighted with the placeholder stories which are short, funny and completely immersed in local place. Try a sample – the poignant My Story of Woolworths, and a response to antisocial behaviour: A tree caught on fire are good introductions.

Next steps:
During the course of next week students will start tagging the physical locations of the stories with QR codes and we’ll start a photographic record of the project. We’ll also start uploading some of the more detailed multimedia work and the local paper will be contacted in order to encourage people to download a QR code reader.

Please visit Wellington Stories and drop the students a comment or two!

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 5:22 pm

A custom Google Map generator and other superlatives

 Google Maps, Teaching resources  5 Responses »
Jan 242009
 

By an extraordinary Twitter related twist of events, I have discovered an application that I’ve been hoping to see for a while. Here’s my Thursday 22nd Jan tweet:

Urgently looking for an Open Source interactive blank world map similar to http://is.gd/gOPs 

By the end of the day I’d been contacted by Mike from Aneki.com with news of exactly such an application (disappointingly not as a result of the tweet though!) and discovered a whole collection of really useful resources based around world rankings.

The custom map generator is utterly simple to use – select a country from a table, choose from 5 pre-set and customizable colours, and build your map. The result is easily saved.

ishot-31

Map generator

Here’s a map showing my limited direct experience of the world:

chart

Where I've been

This is a super-helpful application for geography teachers. I must confess to spending a little time with the Google Maps API trying to create something similar, and then giving up. I’d like the option to have the results pop-up in a larger window, complete with the usual Google Map tools and view options. Perhaps one day My Maps will allow countries to be highlighted using this method. 

I am delighted to report that the content on the rest of the site is equally useful to geography teachers needing a quick list of superlatives. Visit the lists page to jump right in. I picked up on the list of top 10 tsunami-prone countries as a resource for a GCSE class next week. Albania is in the top 10 – who’d have thought it?

Update: Valery 35 also reports on the map generator, and points out that there are customizable maps for Europe Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America as well.

 Posted by Noel Jenkins at 10:23 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: ,
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