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Great video of ideas for using Google Earth in the classroom

Well OK, I’m a little bit bias here as the video is of me! But if you’re interested in the use of Google Earth hopefully this mininote from Teachmeet North East London will get you inspired to get you using the fabulous tool more with your students.

The video (blip.tv) will also give you an insight into the sort of input that you get a Teachmeet and other similar events.

Thanks to Leon Cych of Learn4Life and Futurelab for supporting the production of the Teachmeet Talk videos.

Any feedback is very welcome.

Highlights from Teachmeet NE London 2009 (4 of 5) – 2Simple

This is the forth in the series of five posts on my experience from Teachmeet North East London last week.

I’ve written before about 2Simple DIY – this is basically games design software for younger children. Max Wainwright  from 2Simple showed us some of the great content that has been created by Porchester Primary School. Its impressive stuff and its great to see what the young people are capable of imagining and then producing. I really liked Indiana Jones Game that one of the children had made, where you had to explore the inside of a pyramid! And also the Shark Attack game where you were the dolphin.

One of the really nice things about 2DIY is that you can export all the games as an embeddable flash format. This can add real audience to the pupils work – which as we all know is incredibly powerful. You can view / download the children’s games over on the Porchester web site.

Max finished up his presentation by showing us some new software that they have been working on at 2Simple – It included augmented reality to help the children draw and understand 3D shapes. Although it’s only in its alpha stage – I already want a copy!

After all you all know how I love Augmented Reality!

Highlights from Teachmeet NE London 2009 (3 of 5) – BBC Learning Open Labs

This is the third in the series of five posts on my experience from Teachmeet North East London last week.

Not only did Leon Cych give me a lift back to my hotel after Teachmeet NE London 2009. But he also gave a cracking presentation on some of the projects he has been working on recently and an advanced look at a couple of websites.

The fist of these was BBC Learning Open Labs which are a portfolio of learning resources and online prototypes. The content is 'open source' which means that everything is free, available for anyone to use and can be modified for non-commercial use. BBC Open Lab is inviting input from teachers, learners, students, developers - anyone with an idea for a learning resource wanting to develop it into a prototype.

Leon showed us a great Mash up that shows a spinning 3D globe and coming out of it are ‘bars’ of information. The ‘bars’ are generated by RSS feeds from the BBC news website. This means that you can quickly look at the globe and see where most of the world news stories are currently coming from.  You can also click on a bar of information and get a summary of the news story.  A great idea, with lots of potential use in the classroom.

The second site that Leon told us about was ICT CPD for free (or www.ictcpd4free.co.uk).

The website is being developed through Naace, the professional association for those interested in advancing education through ICT. A complete set of fully evaluated CPD modules will be available from September 2009.

The modules that will be available include:

• ICT Assessment in Primary Schools
• ICT Assessment in Secondary Schools
• A focus on the ICT knowledge and skills that are required to teach numeracy and literacy within the QCA Primary Framework
• Embedding e-safety into ICT work in school
• Modelling Activities using ICT, Monitoring using ICT
• Using Web 2.0 Visual Learning Collaboration Tools in both the primary and secondary classroom
• ICT Courseware that supports Modern Foreign Languages in Primary Schools
• Ways of developing higher-order thinking skills utilising ICT mind mapping and concept mapping interfaces

I’m assuming that the modules will be available to non-NAACE members as well?

Highlights from Teachmeet NE London 2009 (2 of 5) – Tom ‘Teachers TV’ Barrett

This is the second in the series of five posts on my experience from Teachmeet North East London last week. Listening to Tom Barrett speak or reading his blog is always so refreshing - he can only be descried as a legend in the edublogosphere. He is a key part of my personal learning network and completely committed to his school and the children in his care. I have learnt a huge amount from over the past few years.

Tom used Prezi really well for his presentation and you can view his Prezi here. If you have not seen Prezi before its well worth a look. Tom’s presentation was called, ‘Mr Barrett there is glue on my laptop’. The title had real meaning as what time was trying to explain that technology should be embedded into regular classroom practice. Tom gave us a video tour of his room which he described as a ‘regular primary classroom’ the big difference being that ‘technology was always on tap’.

Next Tom showed us some of the work he had been doing with his classes. The first example was using Google Earth to help with story telling. It was based around James and the Giant Peach where the children had to use Google earth to plot their own escape story for the peach. They used Google earth to record their story and also used it as a canvas to write their story as well. Tom has a good write up of this over on his website.

Tom then started to talk about how he uses Delicious as a homepage for all the computers in his class. This is a really great idea. If you don’t already know delicious is a social networking site that allows you to save bookmarks to the Internet. It’s well worth checking out, you can find my delicious links here and I’ve also embedded a great little commoncraft video below to explain how delicious works in a lot better way than I ever could!

 I’ve used delicious with students before for Advanced Higher (A-level) work. But then I was really only encouraging the students to create their own delicious accounts, so they could save bookmarks and if I found a website that I thought would interest them, I could recommend a link to them.

Tom uses Delicious in a different way. Tom’s class’s delicious page is set up as the home page for his class computers. This means if his class are using the class laptops Tom can quickly direct the children towards a link (it’s tagged for maths, science, geography, literacy etc...)  This saves the children from entering complicated URLS and also keeps that more focused on where tom wants them to end up on the Internet. I thought this was a great idea with fantastic potential.

Highlights from Teachmeet NE London 2009 (1 of 5) – Drew Buddie (The Digital Maverick)

This is the first in a series of five posts reflecting on Teachmeet NEL.

It was great to meet Drew Buddie again at Teachmeet NEL 2009. He’s known as the Digital Maverick on Twitter and follows nearly 2500 people and in return over 2800 people follow him! Drew spoke about a number of things but kept coming back to the theme of his personal learning network and how they support him with his work. He also talked about some of the issues surrounding the use of social networking and web 2.0 tools in schools. For example according to the small print you are ment to be 13 or older before you use Voki.

Drew also shared with us a few tools that he likes to use in his classroom. In particular, he is a big Glogster Fan and showed us some excellent ‘glogs’ that his students had created. Glogster is website that also you to create engaging posters and artwork. Drew also told us about Glogetser for Education (I’d not heard of that before) - http://www.glogster.com/edu

Drew summed up his presentation by showing us the Indispensible Tools Wiki. This is a Wiki that he has created by crowd sourcing ideas on indispensible web 2.0 tools from other teachers. Its well worth a look and I’m sure that most people will find something in the list that you have either forgotten about or not heard of before.

Teachmeet NE London 2009 – Introduction

On Tuesday night I had the pleasure to attending the second NE London Teachmeet this year it was hosted by Dave Smith (Havering) and Anthony Evans (Redbridge) and was held at the Learning and Development Centre in the London borough of Havering. There were about  100 people in attendance all of whom had given up their time to attend what I described once as possible the best form of continuous professional development for teachers.

Unlike previous Teachmeets that I’ve attended (and I’ve been to a lot!) Teachmeet NE London introduced mini-notes for the first time. This meant that some people were picked by the conference organisers to give 15 minutes on input and they were guaranteed to speak. I was lucky enough to be given one of these mini note slots.

In the next series of five posts I’m going to write about all the little gems of information that I picked up from Teachmeet NE London 2009. I’ve already posted the on-line handout for my presentation Maps, Mashups and Milkfloats.

Teachmeet NorthEast London 2009 - Maps, Mashups and Milkfloats

I was down in London yesterday evening to attend the second North East London Teachmeet. I was allowed to do a mini-note (15 minutes) my topic was Maps, Mashups and Milkfloats.

I’ve shared many of these ideas before – but the presentation seemed to go down well yesterday evening. Below are any links that I referred to and some of the videos that I used to illustrate some of the ways you can use Google Earth. The presentation was really just a collection of practical ideas.

Idea 1 - Use the Google Maps mash-up Smoke Signal Generator (http://www.mapmsg.com/send/smokesignal) as a different way to set learning objectives, homework tasks or to re-cap a lesson.

You can use the mash-up in exactly the same way as you normally use Google Maps to find places by typing in the location. You can zoom in and zoom out in exactly the same way and switch between map, hybrid and satellite view. The mash-up however allows you to generate smoke signals from any location within Google Maps. The screencast below shows the demo that I used at tonight.

Idea 2 - Use geo-greetings to explore the world

You can use geo-greatings in lots of different ways but as well as being a fun way to send messages to the class. You can also do toher activities like, get children to spell out their names and then work out which country their buildings are in (good for teaching atlas skills), they can also measure the distances between their buildings, reserch the buildings, try and find other letter shaped building.... the list goes on!

Idea 3 - Turn on the Grid Lines and spin the globe

This is a very simple, yet powerful and magical idea. I believe that children find maps, globes and places fascinating. A great lesson starter is just to have Google Earth Spinning as your class comes into the room (they will instantly start to comment and try to work out where places are). You can also very easily turn on the Grid Latitude and Longitude lines to allow you to quickly add an extra dimension to this starter activity. Here’s the screencast showing you how to do this:

Idea 4 - Teaching about place and location

At the front of your classroom have a bucket of European or world city names (would also work with countries, mountain ranges, rivers etc…). You can get lists from websites like www.citymayors.com.

Students pick a city name from ‘the hat’ and type the location into Google Earth – class watch as they fly from their school to the city location. Once in the city Student gets one or two minutes to explore in front of the rest of the class. As long as you have websites like Panoramio enabled within Google Earth there will be no shortage of things to look at and you will quickly get a real feel for what an area is like. I think it is very important to always flay to your location from your school, this adds to the experience of distance, place and space. Here’s a quick screencast showing what I mean:

 

Idea 5 – Teaching Distance

The Google Earth Ruler is really simple to use and allows you to quickly change between units (cm, m. km, ft. yards etc…) There is a  lot of scope here about to talk about measurement and also ratios if you start to swap the units around. You can also use the ruler to perform interesting tasks. For example you can calculate how far the ingredient of a pizza have travelled before it gets to the UK. Here is the screencast showing you how the ruler works:

Idea 6 – Sea Level Rise Mash Up

http://flood.firetree.net/ is a favourite Google Maps Mashup of mine. It allows you to change the sea level height to see areas of land that would be flooded due to sea level change. Its simple but really effective, interestingly it wouldn’t take much for the Glasgow Science Centre to be underwater.

Idea 7 – Look at what other people have already created

At http://www.gearthhacks.com you can download klm files (Google Earth Files) about Current Events, Previous Events, Sightseeing, Sports, Historical Places, Transport, Natural Formations and a whole heap of other stuff. The Current event files are excellent. The screencast below shows how quickly it is to download a Google Earth file on recent Greece Fires.

Idea 8 – Flickr and Twitter Vision

Flickr vision is a another great lesson starter activity or way to promote class discussion. The site basically shows the geographical location of real time photos being up-loaded to Flickr. It gives a real feel for what’s going on in the world and sense of place. It can also be used to promote interesting discussions. For example, you have to wait a long to see a photograph being up-loaded from Africa, Antarctica or South America? You can see an example below:

You can even use Flickr Vision in 3D:

Twitter vision gives another interesting perspective. It basically shows text messages of people thoughts from around the world.

Idea 9 – Turn Layers On and Off

Sometimes things get really crowded and sometimes you want more detail. You can turn layers on and off using the layers tabs. Fly to New York to see the 3D Buildings in action. If you are struggling with Bandwidth Issues at school you can save on bandwidth by turning the layers off.

 

A great layer below is World Oil Consumption

Idea 10 - Explore the Historic Imagery layer

This short video was the one I showed last night. It looks at the construction of the Birdsnest Stadium in China from 2002 to 2008. Its very impressive stuff!

Idea 11 –Google Earth in the web browser

This video shows Google Earth working inside the web browser. As this becomes more developed it will be great news for schools, as you won’t have to get Google Earth Downloaded onto you school / home computer.

Idea 12 - Monster Milk Truck

 

Monster Milk Truck allows you to drive a virtual milk cart around the globe to explore things. The video shows me driving around and then teleporting to Edinburgh – can you work out which famous building I deliver the milk to?

Idea 13- First Person Camera

In a lot of ways this is similar to Monster Milk Truck. The First Person Camera API allows you to wander around the world (Google Earth) on foot.

When you get into some of the cities with 3D buildings, it kind of reminds me of some of the early versions of Doom. Which is interesting as one of the ideas that I have been talking about recently is could Google Earth become in itself a rich gaming environment?

Idea 14 - Driving Simulator

 

The plug in driving simulator is fantastic particularly for some of the big US Cities that have 3D Buildings in them.

Basically, you type in where you want to start and where you want to go to. Google Map directions appear on the left hand side of the screen and calculates your route. A Google Map shows your intended route on the right hand side of the screen and in the middle Google Earth fly’s you though what your route will look like in 3D.

Idea 15 - Create Powerful Google Earth Posters

Full write up on this activity here.

Idea 16 - Have a look at these other great resources

 

Try and follow these websites for some up-to-date Google Earth information and ideas on how it can be used in Teaching and Learning.

• Google Lat Long Blog
• Google Earth Users Guide Project
• Juicy Geography Google Earth Guide
• Google Earth Blog
• Ogle Earth Blog
• Google Earth Developers Blog