University, YouTube, Google Earth and the wider community
Well I did it. I finally managed to embed a YouTube video within Google Earth for all to see. Google Earth is virtual globe , which sits on your desktop, and is created from superimposed images obtained from satellite imagery and aerial photography, (for more info click here and download it from here - its free and easy to install). All areas of the earth are covered with some in surprising detail (most major cities and towns for instance).
However, aside from the detailed satellite images, one of the great things about Google Earth is that anyone can add content in terms of photos, textual information, web links etc. and associate that content with specific areas of interest. Essentially you can create your own ‘layer’ of content which is then superimposed on the satellite imagery. This layer can be private to yourself (and others who have access to the account, say for instance your students) or you can make the layer available everyone. The latter is quite common as you can find a great many subject themed layers out there to view. So this is already being used by schools for history projects which I have talked about in an earlier blog (here).
Anyway because Google owns YouTube (www.youtube.com) they’ve been looking at getting the 2 products to ‘speak’ to each other. In other words getting the videos already loaded on YouTube to display within Google Earth at particular points.
Well they’ve now sorted it out. YouTube allows you to geotag a video when you upload it. Basically you enter the longitude and latitude of where the video was created. This is not as onerous as it sounds because Google includes another product, Google Maps, to help you pin point the exact coordinates by clicking your mouse on a map.
At the same time Google Earth periodically updates itself to include new aerial imagery and other data, now including geotagged YouTube content.
Last year I uploaded to YouTube a short video made by School of Education staff on their experience in using blogs to create learning communities. I used Google Maps to add longitude and latitude coordinates which placed the video exactly at the De Havilland campus. Google Earth has since updated itself and lo and behold the YouTube video can be a seen as a clickable icon at De Havilland.
This means that anyone who uses Google Earth to check out the University of Hertfordshire will see any YouTube videos associated with it. I can see this happening more and more in the future since Google Earth is able to provide the reader with a spatial sense of a particular area – so it’s a great tool for checking out an area with regards to living, working there etc.
So let’s have brief tour of the UH in Google Earth:
So here’s the College Lane campus. Note the detail. You can clearly see the Learning Resources Centre towards the right. See the camera icons? This is one of the great things about the new internet – anyone can add anything. Google Earth lets you attach the photos (or any image) to specific points. In this case someone has been kind enough to upload a photo taken at the front of the LRC.
Pretty good photo eh?
There is a downside. Google Earth only periodically updates the satellite imagery so as you can see the De Havilland Campus has not been build yet! But this has not stopped people from adding photos of the campus as it is now and of course there’s my YouTube video.
Clicking on the YouTube icon open ups the YouTube for you to play.
Incidentally there is another YouTube video associated with eh College Lane site (made by one of the student candidates for a recent election).
So we have a very powerful integration of technologies, Google Earth and YouTube, using content created by a wide community of people (wide because they only have a very loose connection with each other – in this case the university and Hatfield). It’ll be worth watching over time to see how the area develops.
And there are obvious positive implications for educational uses. For example geotagging video and images such that they are associated with specific points on the map as an aid to field trips / school visits. You could add all kinds of historical notes, photos, links and tag them to specific areas of interest, mapping out routes etc. However the real gain is that students will be able to use these tools to develop their own projects and share them with the outside world.
Any comments and ideas and suggestions for use would be welcome.
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