ICT » DigGeog » Page 2

Rich Chart Live in Google Earth

Google Earth, ICT, Neogeography 1 Response »

Dec 222008

Until recently the simplest option for getting charts into Google Earth was Frank Macree’s Google Chart builder,Â but it no longer works (except in the Mac version of Google Earth) due to a Flash security update? The alternatives have been Â 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 asÂ 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 Â Rich Chart Live is embeddable – as seen in this rather silly example:

Â The embed code works in Google Earth placemarks:
Rich Chart Live inside Google Earth

Â Download Google Earth file

23/12/08

I’ve updated two key articles that refer to charts in Google Earth to reflect the discovery of Rich Chart Live:

10 ways to Google-up your GCSE project

A Neo-Geography curriculum for KS3

Virtual Marching, Kung Fu Panda and other news

Asides, Google Earth, ICT, INSET, mobile Comments Off

Nov 212008

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 â€˜A village in Indiaâ€™ making explicit reference to our resources.

Join the March

Weâ€™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!

Woices from the Echosphere

GPS, ICT, mobile, Neogeography, Participatory geographies, Student work, Teaching resources Comments Off

Nov 022008

there are notes in boxes that are empty
every room has an accessible history
every place has emotional attachments you can open and save
you can search for sadness in new york

The predictions of the HeadMap Manifesto (recently made available for downloading again) are becoming reality with the onset of location-aware mobile phones. I was recently directed to Woices.com by Mapperz and was really impressed by the concept of geolocated voices (the echosphere).

Here’s a Woice from my daughter. We’re going to complete a few more from this location. It’s a poem she wrote as an eight year-old visiting Race Track Playa. She left a copy in a kettle at TeaKettle junction!

ï»¿
More from Woices…

An echo is an audio record that is attached to a physical real-world location or object. Echoes are words, left by one person at some precise place, that can be listened to by anyone, as if their author was still there. Echoes can speak about any topic and respond to any user’s purpose. They can speak about local history, art, curiosities, personal memories, and so on. Just something you think its worth to leave that may make the world a more interesting place.
What is the echosphere?

The echosphere is the new virtual space spanned by all echoes left by people. Surrounding earth (and you), the echosphere contains all echoes and can be accessed through your computer or mobile phone.

The site implies that there will be an iPhone client on it’s way. There is a special mobile phone optimized page to access echoes quickly via an ecode. The ecode could be printed off and left at a real location for others to listen to – similar in concept to Yellow Arrow

UK teachers as usual, are very quick off the mark to spot the potential. ï»¿Tom Barrett has written an inspiring post on how he intends to make Woices part of his digital storytelling project at his primary school. Tricia has created an example of a walk along the Thames. I’m going to use Woices next time I do a local enquiry.

I’ll update the post when we’ve completed our Death Valley walk.

iCharts

ICT, Teaching resources Comments Off

Oct 292008

From one of my favourite blogs, information aesthetics comes news of iCharts

The site, described as a kind of “You Tube for interactive charts” encourages the sharing and embedding of charts, together with user comments. The embed versions are too wide to fit onto this page but here’s a couple of screen shots: