Tag Archive for 'ICT'

Classtools.net

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on September 16, 2006
in ICT and Teaching resources
. 0 Comments

No interactive whiteboard should be without classtools.net. Created by historian and all round ICT genius, Russel Tarr, this new site offers a variety of learning tools to help students analyse sort and process information visually.
Amongst the interactive diagrams on offer are Post-It notes, Venn diagrams, Diamond 9s, Fishbone and Hamburger essay planners and a great Light’s Out feature.

lights out
“Lights Out” (click to enlarge)
Once a diagram has been created, the template can be saved and shared as a text file or even as a web page (fishbone demo)
This a terrific resource and bound to become very popular. Congratulations Russel!

Live Local updates

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on September 12, 2006
in ICT, Photographs and Teaching resources
. 0 Comments

This is quite exciting news! Live Local now features drawing tools so that you can now draw over maps and photos. A quick demo here - I’ve guessed the extent of a local flood risk area.

live local drawingclick to enlarge

There’s more about this latest feature at the Virtual Earth blog.
Thanks to Google Earth blog!

Blogs for students by teachers

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on September 9, 2006
in Asides and ICT
. 2 Comments

More geography teachers are using blogs to communicate with students. Examples of the best ones include Kenny O’Donnell’s Odblog, while Val Vannet prepared her students for their Iceland trip with her stunning HSD Iceland Fieldtrip. Val has also started publishing Higher Geog Blog for her 6th form students.
Try it out for yourself - Blogger is possibly the most popular free blogging service, while WordPress.com offers a few more features.

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.

Juicy Geography mobile

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on April 23, 2006
in GPS, Google Earth, ICT and Photographs
. 0 Comments

I have added the first of my Yellow Arrows to two locations in North Devon that are important to me. The others will be used in a Geography/Art collaboration
project.

This is the very first arrow:

shop

 There are lots of surf shops in North Devon, the arrow is placed on the window of the only shop manufacturing surfboards locally. If you’re in Braunton, text the code on the arrow to the SMS number provided, for a personal message!

This arrow has been placed somewhere on a beach. I’m not saying which beach, or where the arrow is located, but it’s not hard to find!

beachyellow
There’s a message for weekend / London surfers to be discovered.

Tomorrow I will be moblogging directly from a GCSE fieldtrip on Exmoor, (providing there’s an Orange signal!) I will also be testing some handheld GPS units and Phone2GEarth as well. The idea is to use the the phone to locate and photograph the fieldwork sites. The phone images will be geotagged in the evening.

The moblog link is here

The handheld GPS units will be used in conjunction with a traditional gun clinometer to measure the gradient of the river bed and the valley sides. The results will be available on this site in .gpx format so that they can be viewed in GPS Visualizer. It will be interesting to evaluate the accuracy of the traditional method compared to the modern.

Experiments in moblogging

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on April 12, 2006
in ICT and Photographs
. 0 Comments

I’m having a break from this blog for a few days while I investigate the potential of moblogging for geography fieldwork.

moblog
I have set up a sandbox moblog here, and I’m using a Blogger site to post about my progress. When you think about it, the ability to travel somewhere, take a picture and write a few words, then in seconds, publish on the internet is pretty amazing. Well it is to me anyway!

EarthPlot software

Published
by
Noel Jenkins
on April 4, 2006
in GPS, Google Earth and ICT
. 1 Comment

I’ve just noticed that Earth Plot have released Earth Paint. I’ve had a quick go and I’m very impressed at the ease with which you can draw freehand shapes and polygons onto Google Earth. Third party applications such as Earth Paint and GPS Visualizer seem to have made Google Earth Plus somewhat redundant.