I’ve written about the book called the Google Story before – it’s an enjoyable read if you want to find out about the background of the huge search multinational.
This is slightly different and is a short video showing the 11 year development of the company compressed into just over 2 minutes.
It’s creative and well put together and might be a useful resource for computing teachers who have to teach about search?
The Google Story from Nick Scott Studio on Vimeo.
Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people
who spend most of their time on the web. According to Google built around the core aims of
speed, simplicity and security.
Here is a nice little introductory video here:
If you want something more robust, this demo video gives you more of a feel
for the Google Chrome OS user experience:
Google chrome OS is obviously meant to target the net-book market - my big question is will it work if you are not connected to the web? Will it use Google gears?
What is Google Wave? – this You Tube video tells it all!
First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. Bloggers are asked to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue. By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the Web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.
More information about Blog Action Day in this YouTube Video below:
Google has produced a great set of on-line resources in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. This includes a series of YouTube videos and Google earth files.
Have look at this youtube video below to find out more:
This is Google maps mash up for sea level change is also a good old favorite of mine! 2. ZeroFootprint - Kids calculator
A great carbon footprint calculator aimed at children - thanks to Mr Evans for showing me this on his excellent blog.
The climate mystery from Microsoft and the Discovery Channel is a great resource and set of mini games. But I can’t quite believe how few schools are using it in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
More information here (you tube video):
Also see my previous blog post for links to resources.
4. LogiCity
LogiCity is a game produced by Logicom and The National Energy Foundation. The game set
in a 3D virtual city where players are set the task of reducing the
carbon footprint of an average resident. As players work their way
through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change,
and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing
to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate
Change.
It places students in
a virtual environment and lets them experiment and experience the
potential effect that individual actions can have on the planet before
it's too late. Users can travel to the future to see the direct results
of their actions in real time by quickly fast forwarding to the year
2066.
Thanks to the serious games blog for the heads up and original post on this.
There are some great resources on the LTS Climate Change website that are specifically aimed at Scottish Schools.
Finally, don't forget my melting men idea and what is your favorite resource to teach about climate change in schools?
I have to admit to being a bit of a Google fan I use gmail, google docs and google reader extensively. I love Google Earth and Google tends to be my search engine of choice.
However, I have been impressed with Bing (the Microsoft Search engine) and was interested to read that they are planning to add a feature that will quickly allow you to share your search results with others via Twitter, facebook or email. I have no idea why they haven’t included MSN or Windows Live status up-date in the list. The new feature is called ‘Bing and ping’.A got a lot from the presentation but I found the following points particularly interesting:
As part of their roll out strategy to make more use of Google Apps for collaboration all of the newly qualified teachers in East Lothian were shown and had an opportunity to use Google Apps as part of their ICT induction last Thursday.
For further ideas and example of how students like to use Google Doc and Google Apps in the classroom have a read of this nice little article over on the Google Student Blog.
I would be interested to hear from any other education authorities in the UK making good use of Google Apps for education at school level?
‘It's said that about 80% of the world's data has a
geographical element’.
Nearly a year ago I went down to Google for the day and was shown the World Oil consumption as a layer in Google Earth. I was instantly struck the power of Google Earths ability to show spatial data. You can download the KLM file for free here.
I’ve used the animation lots of time in the
classroom with children and also with staff. When you see this type of data
visually you can’t help but be shocked at the amount of oil we consume globally
and also the un-proportional spread of consumption across the earth. I demoed
the layer as part of my Maps,
Milkfloats and Mashups presentation earlier this year in
I’ve often wondered if it would be possible to display other data by country in a similar way. Then this morning I came across the KLM Factbook (kmlfactbook.org). I think this website has been around for a while now and I’m not really sure how I missed it the first time around. I think it’s fantastic and has the potential to be a real game changer in the way we look at and compare country data within our classes.
It works by taking the country data from the CIA World Factbook (a very popular resource with teachers) and then you can overlay the data on top of Google Earth or export the data as a .Klm file (Google Earth File).
It’s fantastically simple to use, very captivating but some of the statistics are quite scary. Here’s a quick worked example to show the power of the data.
First of all, pick your data set. In this example we are looking at the population of each country (the data was last up-dated in 2008) so its fairly up-to-date.
You can now choose to view the data as a table:
Or as a 2D Map:
You can click on the countries to find out more about each individual place and zoom in and out just like any other interactive Google Map.
You can also view the data in the browser in Google Earth (requires the API plug in):
Finally you can download the file as .KLM File and get all the functionality of the data in Google Earth:
More information at www.kmlfactbook.org
Mountains
Mounts lists all of the mountains of the world and to can find them by
country name. You can also search for the name of your favorite peak.
Once you are selected the mountain that you want to study you get some basic information about the mountain (would be nice if this linked to Wikipedia as well?) and three Google Map’s of the location of the Mountain at different scales.
The first location map is an interactive
Google Map and it allows you to switch between Map and Satellite View. The example
is the satellite image of the Matterhorn (a classic pyramidal peak in the Alps).
However, if you have the Google Maps Google Earth API installed on your computer (free download) you can also switch between the satellite view and the 3D Google Earth view. This gives you all of the Google Earth interactivity in your web browser.
Great stuff!
In case you haven’t noticed it’s not been a
great summer in the UK weather wise!
In fact if you look at the graph below from the BBC you can see that there has been a lot more rain than sun.
However one thing that might cheer you up during these ‘dreek’ 'dreich' times is this new Google Map Weather Mash Up from the UK Met Office. You can find the interactive map here.
The interactive map has all the zoom tools and geographical features of Google Maps combined with the ability to overlay layers of GIS data about the current and predicted weather (for up to 24 hours). The layers include cloud cover, temperature, pressure, wind and weather warnings. You can also adjust the opaqueness of the individual layers so that you can still see the landscape.
I think this will be a great resource for teaching weather in schools and Scottish educators teaching standard grade will find it particularly useful.
DREICH – ‘means bad weather. The kind of
weather which makes you miserable: dull, grey and wet. If it rains hard and
water runs down your neck it's dreich’.
A few months ago Google started an official
Twitter Channel on. It now has a massive 1,220,706 subscribers. As well as the
official account Google also has a number of other Twitter channels that you
can subscribe to.
The full list is here, but here are a few of the ones that I find particularly useful:
General
Geo-related
Developer & technical
Culture, People
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