Rich Allaway has created another mini-site, this time comparing the flooding events at Boscastle and Lynmouth. Targetted at KS3 and also AS level, the resource makes great use of technologies such as Live Local, Google Earth and a new Site Pal character, “Walter Falls”
Rich has included a long and varied collection of resources, as well as pupil and teacher notes. Excellent effort!
Following a post on my Google Earth blog, I reflected that it would be fun to give students named geographical features and get them to find a representative image which they process using the method described by the Artwork Earth post by S. Fjalar
I put togther a quick example gallery, using the first four terms that came to mind:
I made the above images very quickly using the first four words that sprang to mind. The exercise I envisage is more explicitly geographical than the Artwork Earth images. Elusive images (such as the barchan dune) could be given to students with better spatial understanding, therefore differentiating the exercise. The results could make a really good display, or used as a visual glossary of key terms.
I’ve been experimenting with mapping data inside Google Earth. The latest version of the excellent GE Graph includes the ability to add data to polygons. Here is an example:
The method is detailed in a post at my Google Earth blog.
With peer assessment a currently popular trend, I decided to add a twist and get members of the public to vote and comment on some Year 8 work.
It occurred to me that a basic web poll and blog comments would serve to give students useful feedback on their work. The assignment was based around my Google Earth San Francisco lesson. I’ve mentioned before that the ease with which Google Earth placemarks can be created and shared, makes them ideal for assessing spatially located geographical work.
Go here to my new Google Earth blog to find the poll and the students work. Download the work as a Google Earth file, together with the teaching materials, and vote for your favourite. Leaving a comment would provide the students with additional feedback. We would be particularly keen to hear from any residents of San Francisco!
The students and I would be very grateful for all feedback.
I’ve revised the Google Earth page at Juicy Geography with a fresh new look, revisions to the content, and a blog front end. This should make it easier to maintain the page, which had become to long and unwieldy.
Two exciting new overlays to report.
Firstly, Maplecroft Maps have sent an email to their users announcing that a selection of their excellent maps are available for Google Earth. Great news as the screenshot of the world AIDS data shows:
World AIDS data
Meanwhile Frank Taylor and Barry Hunter offer a network link to display the shiny Blue Marble imagery from NASA that dramatically improves the initial look of Google Earth. Added is a link to the near real-time global cloud data. This layer uses the new alttiude feature of Google Earth 4, so you can zoom in past the clouds on your way to the surface. Truly a great network link. Frank hopes that the Google team will implement an official version soon. It makes me slightly worried for the vast number of schools who are constrained by hardware to the older version of Google Earth. Hopefully Google won’t withdraw version 3 any time soon. Head immediately to Google Earth Blog for the network link!
Blue Marble and Global Clouds
I’m upgrading the resource page for my Google Earth lesson “Visualizing a Safer City”
Thanks to Andrew Field whose recommendation of Wink, an excellent free screen capture program, helped me prepare a Flash-based tutorial to the project files that the lesson requires.
Hopefully, more teachers will have a go at this activity, which has been thoroughly tried and tested. “Visualizing a Safer City” offers students the opportunity to understand the principles behind GIS. The visual nature of the activity appeals to all types of learners and the students will appreciate that city planners in San Francisco will be doing an identical task using similar data sets. The task demonstrates the extraordinary potential of applications such as Google Earth to achieve real and meaningful outcomes without the “tech subverting the teach†(to hack a phrase from Ewan Mackintosh thanks to Ollie Bray!)
Get the tutorials, project files, a video and a pdf guide to the resources in one folder.
I have made a short video to introduce the lesson as well as a PDF guide to the teaching resources. These are available free of charge, together with all the other resources on CD ROM or via email. Contact me if you would like them. (A small donation or a free trial of eMusic via this link or just a couple of your own resources would be nice in return)
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