Not the most interesting geographical concept to teach at GCSE, so I made a nice little Google Earth file to demonstrate the idea to my students.
First I created a placemark for my house, then I added polygons to represent the area that I visit in order to use various services.
Polygons (click image for large version)
Then I used the KML circle generator to create circles based on the maximum distance I am prepared to travel to use a particular service. I centred the circle on the service, and used the Ruler tool to estimate the distance in meters to my house.
The circle colour and width was edited in the Properties dialogue to make them stand out better - the default is a thin red circle.
Circles
During the lesson I started with all the information turned off (apart from my house placemark). I turned on the polygons one by one and facilitated a discussion about convenience / comparison goods, range and threshold population. I then added the circles to demonstrate the concept of sphere of influence.
my life in spheres
The lesson seemed to go very well. Here are the resources I used (neither of which would be relevant to any other school - but feel free to adapt etc)
Here’s my entry for the One World Film competition organized by the ring leader of the particpatory geography movement in UK secondary schools Dan Raven-Ellison. Not a great production by any means, but I loved the concept of 60 second films to explain a point, and would really like to to get more of my students making short films for their own (and the wider community’s) benefit. Although I made the film several months ago, I can finally show it in a lesson since Year 11 are about to embark on a coasts topic.
Some Year 10 students showed some short films they’d made about Dubai today. I was really pleased to see how far their editing skills have progressed since Year 9. I noticed that some of the students had discovered BBC Motion Gallery independently, though no-one had actually done any original filming. How I would love a few Flip DV cameras for my classroom!
David Rayner has recently explained on the SLN site that the BBC News School Report represents a great opportunity for KS3 Geography students to develop their investigative and reporting skills. What better motivation to get students into short film making?
“Can we do neo-geography this lesson?” asked a student today. Well no because it was supposed to be History. Nevertheless I’ve decided that I’d like my Year 7 students to be able to create an original map by the end of the term using Google Earth/Maps. The kind of map I envisage could include for example:
Hazards on way to school
Land-use in a rural area
Micro-climate study
Affective mapping of local area
Geo-located poems photos or artwork
Geo-located story
Guide for local visitors
A parkour / BMX / skate map
A “know-where” hang out map
A best dog walking route
Thinking about the skill progression required to elevate younger students into fully qualified neo-geographers would go something like this: (some of the steps require just a few minutes to consolidate, others would need a lesson or two)
Find a place / use postcode look-up / search box
Create a placemark / select appropriate icon
Measure distance using ruler - e.g from home to school
Create a path e.g from home to school
Collaborate with others e.g. save placemarks / paths to a shared folder / collaboration tool in My Maps
Organise the Places folder
Use layers to add information to the map e.g roads / Wikipedia / Panoramio / 3d buildings / real-time data e.g weather / earthquakes
Be able to turn terrain on and off and adjust exaggeration
Take a photo with a phone / digital camera and upload to Flickr (issues in some schools - need for parent’s permission?)
Add photos to a place mark (from Flickr etc) using img tag (from Flickr) <img src=” replace this text with the link to the photo “> and use You Tube embed code to add video
Create multimedia tours / be able to adjust tour settings
Add polygons to represent land use / data etc. Be able to adjust colour and opacity
Complete a decision-making exercise using multiple data sources e.g my San Francisco lesson
Understand relative advantages / disadvantages of different mapping systems
Create a Google account (with parent’s permission) and be familiar with My Maps
Create an original map as a final assignment. More able students could create Sketch Up models / use GE Graph / create overlays to demonstrate advanced neo-geography skills.
The core geographical concepts are based on location, scale and place. Students should be able to collect field data and create a map for a real audience. The learning sequence offers the opportunity for some highly personalised, participatory geography. The best outcomes would see students sharing their work on a blog or some other public community. Any thoughts?
and you if don’t get a chance to catch up with Mapping News, the article can be downloaded directly from here. One error - I am not an Education Consultant, as the article claims!
I can’t actually afford an iPhone however if / when I eventually acquire one, the first application I’ll install is Johan Nordberg’sSeismometer.
Seismometer records vibrations using iPhone’s built in accelerometer to “measure movements in two axes, calculate the resulting energy and draw the results on a rolling logarithmic scale.” There are many favourable reviews on the iTunes store and at 59p it’s somewhat cheaper than the classroom alternative.
In fact Seismometer would be perfect to use with my Shaker Maker - do it yourself earthquake table.
Other iPhone Apps that I’d like to try out include:
Earthscape:
Earthscape is a virtual globe, though resolution outside the US is fairly poor. It’s currently available as a free download. (iTunes link)
GPS Kit
GPS kit looks like an indispensible application to make the best use of the phones GPS. (iTunes link) It costs a few pounds though. I guess I just want to be able to replicate as many features of my Garmin Etrex as possible.
Aside from the three geography-related applications, I suppose I’d get some kind of Twitter client since my current phone is rubbish for that kind of thing. I also love the idea of the free WordPress application to be able to add and edit posts on my blogs rather more spontaneously than at present.
I’m exploring some ideas for a Neo-geography element to the geographical curriculum and created a new category for blog posts on the topic as I share my experiences from the classroom over the forthcoming months.
Neogeography at school
This week I deliberately used the term Neo-geography with my Year 7 class (11 years old). Over the course of two lessons we compared the merits of Google Earth/Maps and traditional Ordnance Survey paper maps.
Ed Parsons has commented on a recent BBC story highlighting the fears of the British Cartographic Society over “damage to future generations of map readers because this skill is not being taught in schools and people are simply handling geographical data” (err pardon - National Curriculum anyone?) Ed’s point that “one could argue for the need of a “new” cartography which adopts rather than ignores the capabilities of screen based maps to portray information dynamically” is a theme that is reinforced by the inspiring Richard Treves who I recently met at the Geo Education Summit at Google (and who drew my attention to Ed’s post)
Rising to the BCS’s bait, the students had little difficulty in identifying the merits of the two different approaches to mapping, indeed they showed rather more consideration of the issue than the Ordnance Survey reporting of the debate. With no prompting at all, the students identified the principal advantages of Google Earth/Maps as:
1) Finding places quickly
2) Zooming in and out!
3) Display of geotagged photos (with GMaps Street View being a particular delight!) and 3D buildings
4) Display of real time information such as the weather
5) Free to use (though requiring a computer and the internet)
The Ordnance Survey map on the other hand offered the merits of reliability, light weight, plenty of detail, a key and cheaper running costs. The students were perfectly able to identify the user groups for the two different approaches to mapping. Ironically the Ordnance Survey advert featuring the mountain biker unintentionally reinforces the advantages of a Google Map - at least in one respect!
The students were delighted to learn that they were present on possibly the first outing of the neo-geography word in a school classroom, and had little difficulty in appreciating the need for a term that describes the extraordinary potential of tools such as Google Earth to find out about, map and describe their world. The resolution of my school in Google Earth is sufficiently good that I can sit a student under a skylight in my room and locate them with a placemark accurate to centimeters. They gasped when they measured the distance from school to home - in centimetres, and enthusiastically collaborated on a map of their routes to school:
Routes to school
I’m not entirely sure that this activity was “damaging the future map readers”. Indeed they are really looking forward to recieving their Free Maps for School, thanks to the generosity of the OS. It would be great if we could have a copy of the local area as a KML overlay as well. In the meantime this site will have to do.
Multi-talented Head of Geography and software developer Rick Cope is producing a series of free digital teaching resources on behalf of GeoPacks. The first one, on coasts is available now. Visit GeoPacks, register your details, click the free resources tab and download away. There will be a new resource available every month. It’s a fairly safe bet that these will be very popular!
The original sphere-of-influence Google Earth file
And here’s a worksheet I made for the lesson. (This is a Foundation sheet - more able students were given an edited version.)
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