From the ‘ICT in my Classroom’ blog (Web Link).

Another example of early school use of technology to enhance their learning. In this examples it’s science – specifically looking at how day length varies across the UK and the differences around the world.

Google Earth was used to illustrate the movement of the Earth’s shadow.

Google Docs added a collaborative element in which the students worked in pairs on the same document. Google Docs saves changes instantly and can be shared. In this case it was shared with the rest of the class through the tutor’s laptop being linked to the SMARTBoard and each students laptop.

Twitter, and this is very interesting, was to get real data from real people. Without going into detail Twitter is a microblogging tool through which people send small updates (called tweets). Tom asked his network of peers to send in their locations for the class to work out the day length for and allow contrasts with their onw. And this was the highlight of the session – real data, from real people in real locations, “Purposeful challenges from real people. It provided the whole class an opportunity to think, if only for a few minutes, as global citizens.”

Tom states “it was an great hour or so and I believe the tools we chose to use to support our learning were the correct ones. I was of course pleased to see the children engaging with Google Docs so effortlessly, it is just part of what we do now.”, (and remember these are primary school aged kids).

Can anyone think as to how these technologies might be used within the HE environment?

Well this is an absolute belter. I would suggest playing the video straight away and then reading the text.

A group of researchers and digital artists at the University of Southern California (USC) has been researching into improving the way photos can be placed in Google Earth (a 3-D world map that allow you to virtually “fly” over the surface of the earth and view satellite and aerial imagery). The Viewfinder project (Web Link) is an alternative to Photosynth (here), which was developed in2006 by Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington. Photosynth automates the proper placement of two-dimensional digital photographs in a three-dimensional virtual space, in other words it can take an array of photos taken at a variety of angles and locations, say of the Notre Dame Cathedral, a reconstruct a 3D model of the object in the picture (it’s hard to put into words so here’s a clip on YouTube).

Anyway Viewfinder takes the concept further in that it allows you to manually “pose” photos in Google Earth — to place them in the proper location and at the original angle at which they were taken. The result is that the photos that appear to be perfectly aligned to the underlying 3-D world.

What’s interesting (and the video below shows this) is that you can use old photos as well thus you can see what a particular point on earth looked like at a particular time.

As a former geology student I can see how this would have helped me during the various mapping projects I took part in. This facility would enable me to keep a 3D visualisation of the area to which I could easily return to and find new interpretations. Possible it could even form the end point of my project in which I ‘walk’ the tutor through the area detailing my various observations, judgements etc. Not only that but my peers could add more photos as well. It would then stand as a resource for future students to add their interpretations.

Enough talk. To be honest text cant do it justice:

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.

There’s a great deal of activity involving these technologies. Essentially users are able to map their own data on to the system and then make it available to other users in the form of a file. The users download the file and simply other lay the information on to the map. Schools have been using this for projects such as mapping volcanic and geological activity, battlefields and sites of historical interest, famous journeys etc.

Here’s an example below, (via the Google Earth Community ) which looks at the legendary journey of Odysseus. There have been many attempts to identify geographic places mentioned in the Odyssey and the example below focus’s on the traditional orthodox theory with 13 annotated placemarks are numbered in the order of the journey.

View in Google Maps

View in Google Earth (you need to install Google Earth).

Google Map example

Google Earth example

Not sure how the buildings were designed but I suspect through using Sketchup. This effectively allows you to create models and insert them on to Google Earth.

Staying with virtual earths here’s an interesting TED talk by Stephen Lawler on the beta Virtual Earth. It streams a vast amount of rich data provided by the web community.

As an aside it’s worth noting as to how the speaker is able to pack so much information into the presentation in such a short space of time.

In the words of Stephen the key issue here is how the user is able to use their brain, to navigate and explore, discover information as opposed to being constrained through traditional browsing via search engines, remembering urls and favorites. This could be the future look of the internet.

As a final point of interest you may not need a vast array of photos or data to create 3D navigable web objects. Photowoosh allows you to create a 3D model from a single photograph, similar to a pop up book page. Imagine the kinds of virtual projects as student can produce using this kind of software all from one image.

As Mark Oehlert here “part of me feels like I’m watching the pulse of the Web…”.

Basically what we have here is an animated mashup of Google earth and blogging technology (Twittervision) and Flickr photos (Flickrvision).

Twittervision shows real-time geographic visualization of blog entries on a social network. The map constantly moves to the location of the most recent blog entry. You can create a Twitter account and restrict updates from selected individuals (good for corporations on a world wide basis). Flickrvision (seen below) is essentially a tweak on Twittervision in which it uses geolocated Flickr photos and again the map moves directly to the location of the most recent photo.

And uses? You really could waste a lot of time simply watching it. I cant help wondering however as to how this would look on a more local level. Hertfordshire? Hatfield? UH students? From a sociological point of view it would be really interesting to see what students exchange using this medium.

As Mark Oehlert here “part of me feels like I’m watching the pulse of the Web…”.

Basically what we have here is an animated mashup of Google earth and blogging technology (Twittervision) and Flickr photos (Flickrvision).

Twittervision shows real-time geographic visualization of blog entries on a social network. The map constantly moves to the location of the most recent blog entry. You can create a Twitter account and restrict updates from selected individuals (good for corporations on a world wide basis). Flickrvision (seen below) is essentially a tweak on Twittervision in which it uses geolocated Flickr photos and again the map moves directly to the location of the most recent photo.

And uses? You really could waste a lot of time simply watching it. I cant help wondering however as to how this would look on a more local level. Hertfordshire? Hatfield? UH students? From a sociological point of view it would be really interesting to see what students exchange using this medium.

Another great guide from Educause. This considers as to how you can use Google Earth in an educational context.

“He has a complete set of Lewis and Clark’s maps, in JPEG format. He carefully overlays their maps onto the images in Google Earth, adding placemarks for important milestones. Once he has the journey superimposed on the satellite images, Alexander creates a screencast* of himself navigating across the country toward the coast, following the route that the explorers took. ”

* movie of user activity on their computer screen.

Google Earth link

Full guide