I thought Daniel Raven-Ellison’s Urban Earth project  was the most single most inspiring new geographical resource for teachers this year. In homage, I decided to (re)present my neighbourhood:
Rural Earth from Noel Jenkins on Vimeo.
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Happy Christmas to all Digital Geography / Juicy Geography  readers, and thanks to all who have commented and shared ideas.Â
Noel
Update: 6/1/09
Unfortunately this is now a legacy post since the BBC has removed the embed option from the Class Clips player. I thought it was too good to be true!
Thought it would be fun to see if the new BBC iPlayer for Class Clips embeds nicely into a Google Earth placemark. And it does. Here’s a BBC video…
And here it is in Google Earth..
BBC video in Google Earth
Download the placemark: source-of-river-severn
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.
Don’t miss an essential resource for teaching settlement. Dan Raven-Ellison’s latest project, Urban Earth, is a simple, yet inspired concept: to walk across major cities, stopping every 8 steps to take a photograph.
Urban Earth
The outcome of an Urban Earth walk is a mesmerizing time-lapse film composed of thousands of still images. There’s no soundtrack to divert attention from the journey.
The archive of Urban Earth adventures is bound to grow over time as others take up the initiative. At the moment the project comprises films from London, Mexico City and Mumbai.
Urban Earth films can be viewed and downloaded in very high quality from the blip.tv page.
Completely irrelevant to just about any aspect of Digital Geography, beyond the fact that the movie was made in less than 5 minutes using iMovie. SleeveFace is the result of a recent school photography club activity.
sleeve face from Noel Jenkins on Vimeo.
The BBC class clips site has received a major design upgrade, in line with the new corporate web identity. As one of the teacher consultants, I’m really pleased to see the outcome of this project. It’s a fantastic classroom resource.
BBC Class Clips
The site offers a large number of free short video clips sourced from BBC Education programmes. It covers every National Curriculum subject, and the clips are searchable through keywords or topics. Each video comes with some suggestions for classroom use. Although the clips are not downloadable, they are provided in a number of different formats including high and low band width options. New material will be added periodically.
Every so often, a perfect day’s surfing reminds me of my overwhelming good fortune to have moved back home to the South West. While many of those I shared waves with today are driving in an exhausted state back up the M5, I’m eating cakes at home.
Local creative-type Richard Gregory is waiting with a supporting film crew, and cast of local surfers, for the ideal weather window in which to complete his One Day film project and capture the essence of North Devon in a 24 hour period of film-making and photography. There’s a teaser below, and lots more information about Richard’s many (unfinished) projects at his Wave Dreamer site.
Richard’s surf films are completely removed from the generic offerings of the industry – the surfing is infused by the sense of place. It would be even better if he ever finished one;) He describes my world in intricate detail. I can’t wait for One Day to be finished – today would have been a good day for the filming.
One Day involves 24 hours of filming. The Geographical Association’s My World in 60 Seconds project is challenging students to make a film that’s just a minute long. I hope to inspire some of my students to have a go. It’s not a competiton, but the best films will be shown on giant screens in city centres around the country.
My World in 60 seconds
Finally, some other recent news from North Devon – maybe the hardest traditional rock climb in the world. If you ever get the chance – go and have a look at Dyer’s Lookout and contemplate James Pearson’s achievement!
Pretty gloomy weather today, and Year 8 need to know about depressions tomorrow. Obviously my first thought is to go with Tony Cassidy’s Postman Pat lesson – a slice of Radical Geography genius. And so I shall, however fortunately, the UK is in the grip of a series of low pressure systems and the Weather Layer in Google Earth is brilliant for illustrating the relationship between air masses and the weather.
I could start with an animation of the clouds over the past 24 hours…
Google Earth cloud animation from Noel Jenkins on Vimeo.
The animation requires a download of this network link
Turning on the Weather panel from the Layers Panel in Google Earth provides really helpful information.
Weather Layer
Starting with the Conditions and Forecasts, the weather is cool over N. France, warm and rainy over the S. of the UK and cold and partly sunny over the North. Excellent!
Weather reports
Activating the clouds layer reveals the reason – a perfect example depression is responsible. More good news!
The cloud layer
Finally, the rainfall radar indicates where the rain is falling. Conveniently within the warm sector of the depression. Absolutely textbook – yay!
Rain radar
I’m archiving the passage of this depression to provide material for a PowerPoint in case the weather isn’t being so cooperative next time I do the lesson.
Right, over to Postman Pat!
