Tag Archive for 'Google_Maps'

Diamond Trade Google Earth lesson updated

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on October 22, 2006
in Google Earth, Google Earth lessons, Google Maps, Photographs and Teaching resources
. 0 Comments

I’ve updated the Diamond Trade Google Earth resource file after the path to the images broke.

The accompanying learning materials can be found at Juicy Geography. This lesson was developed with the support of the photojounalist Kadir Van Lohuizen whose stunning collection of images entitled Diamond Matters is available from Amazon books.

It’s now possible to view the Diamond Trade file in Google Maps, very useful in the classroom if Google Earth isn’t available. (This trick works with many Google Earth files - just paste the path to the .kmz file into the Google Map address bar. Overlays aren’t supported yet.) Click the image below to go to the Diamond Trade Google Map:

diamond google map

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Earth Album

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on October 11, 2006
in Google Maps and Photographs
. 1 Comment

Earth Album is a gorgeous Flickr and Google Maps mashup. Very simple and produces many superb images.

Online spreadsheets and KML. The possibilities are endless!

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on August 23, 2006
in Google Earth, Google Maps, ICT, Office applications and Teaching resources
. 6 Comments

Thanks to Geography 2.0: Virtual Globes for news that excellent online spreadsheet EditGrid now has an official add-on that supports the creation of KML for spreadsheet data. This means that spreadsheet data can be displayed on a Google Map or Google Earth.

Online spreadsheets lend themselves to all sorts of collaborative projects, whether sharing weather data, fieldwork measurements or any other kind of spatially located information. EditGrid is very student-friendly and intuitive to work with, as the following demonstration shows.
I have created a open spreadsheet which is dynamically illustrated below (i.e it will update when the data set is edited.)

Online Spreadsheet by user/juicygeography.

Feel free to edit and contribute to the spreadsheet, click the “done” button and observe the changes in the map below. I would be interested in ideas for potential projects. Note that the spreadsheet requires longitude and latitude in decimal format. Here is an online converter. Many online maps, such as Multimap will output coordinates as decimal degrees to save the hassle.

The spreadsheet can also be seen in Google Earth.
google earth link Click here for the file.

Note that you’ll need to refresh the network link once loaded in Google Earth in order to see any changes to the spreadsheet. (Right-click on the folder and choose ‘refresh’)
I wonder how long it will be before Google Spreadsheets adds similar functionality? There are other free online spreadsheets, for example IRows which offers a chart function. EditGrid remains my favourite for several reasons. It’s very easy to use, there are several options for exporting the data and publishing to web pages. Judging by the EditGrid blog there’s lots more features to come soon, including charts (yay!) EditGrid is open source, free to use and a triumph for the developers.

Explore our Pla.net: a map interface for GeoRSS feeds

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on August 10, 2006
in Google Earth and Google Maps
. 0 Comments

During some rather aimless research on GeoRSS I came across a brilliant map based feed reader. Explore Our Pla.net is a tool for displaying geolocated RSS feeds, indeed it managed to locate the most recent articles on Digital Geography by having a stab at identifying the locations of the recent posts.

georss feed Digital Geography in Explore Our Pla.net

I was interested in the way that the Explore Our Pla.net worked, and the way in which some of my blog posts were being located in thought-proking places, for example the recent Atlas Gloves post was located in Morocco. It transpires that the Digital Geography RSS feed is being processed through Geonames. This service identifies place names in the posts and adds the relevant latitude and longitude, outputting the original RSS feed as GeoRSS.

podcastplanet Podcasts can be geotagged and displayed in the map window

On closer inspection I discovered that Explore Our Planet is a rather more ambitious project. Apart from a large collection of dedicated GeoRSS feeds, it links to a large number of very useful Web Mapping Services (WMS) layers which are displayed on a user-friendly geo-desktop. To fully apppreciate the potential of Explore Our Pla.net it’s necessary to register. You can then browse through the data layers and GeoRSS feeds as well as adding your own GeoLinks.

What’s in it for the classroom teacher?
With the geo-desktop projected onto a whiteboard, a teacher can identify geotagged audio/video podcasts and news feeds, switch between different map and satellite views including near real-time MODIS data from the Terra and Aqua satellites, plot weather, storms and earthquake data and map sounds from the freesound project. There are a number of other other valuable layers, for example daylight, population density and settlement night lights. Of course, much of this information is widely available, and in some respects other applications like the excellent Earth Browser are still to be preferred. Explore Our Pla.net is however web-based, and therefore available from any PC.

New Google Earth 4 Beta and other bits

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on July 9, 2006
in Google Earth, Google Maps and Teaching resources
. 2 Comments

I’ve tested the latest version of Google Earth 4 beta and am happy to report that it’s running very happily on my PC and the bugs that I’d experienced previously seem to have been sorted out. Thanks, as usual, to Google Earth blog.

Both history and geography teachers will like an excellent little overlay of Pompei AD79, from Google Earth hacks, especially now that the area is in high resolution. This comes from Ogle Earth - congratulations by the way on your first aniversary!

pompeiclick to enlarge


Finally, Quikmaps offers a way to add lines symbols and scribbles to a Google Map. I’m sure there are plenty of classroom uses, though at the moment my creativity seems to have deserted me! Definitely worth an investigation though. The site is extremely easy to navigate and the resulting maps are easily shared.

Panoramio and Tagzania

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on June 9, 2006
in Google Earth, Google Maps and Photographs
. 1 Comment

Google Earth blog has recently mentioned the upgraded Panoramio photo sharing website (see article). I’ve just had a go at playing with the new upload and mapping features, and I’m very impressed at the ease with which photos can be geotagged. Once in Panoramio, photos are available in Google Earth via the Panoramio network link.

Panoramioclick to enlarge

I recommend Panoramio as a very classroom friendly application. It’s currently the best way of getting fieldtrip and case study pictures into Google Earth.

Tagzania exploits the web 2.0 phenomenon of tagging via a superbly designed site, that lets you add tags and other resources to locations, via the Google Maps interface.

Teaching with GPS

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on April 30, 2006
in GPS and Google Maps
. 2 Comments

gps

I have written an article about teaching with GPS, which can be found at Juicy Geography. The page includes links to some Google Maps I prepared that show how GPS Visualizer can be used to plot fieldwork data.
GPS Visualizer seems to grow new features each week and is a brilliant application for displaying yourGPS data.. The other essential utility featured is Easy GPS. I hadn’t realized until recently that it now manages GPS tracks as well as routes and waypoints. Both these programs are free.