Google Earth Tours Sound Work Around

In our Google Earth Tours (GET) project we've come across a problem with sound files playing in GETs:

• If you record the tour in sections and then try and marry them together using the KML, the sound in zipped in the KMZ fails to play
• We've had difficulty playing audio tours generally.

A work around Paolo has come up with today is that if you put the .aac file (or .mp3) on the web and reference it with a full URL in the KML file, it will work. It makes for some fiddling around but at least we're not stuck not being able to play tours.

Google Earth Tours Research Update

Along Muki Haklay and Paolo Battino of UCL I’ve been researching how we can integrate Google Earth tours and activities (Funded by Google Research).  We recently agreed that we would post about our progress as a group on this blog so here is an update about our first steps in developing the project (more detail of the project).

The basic idea is that a Google Earth tour (GET) has lots of uses in geography/earth science education but, as with TV and Youtube, it tends to be a passive 'sit back' medium.  In education, getting students to 'do' stuff is where most of the learning takes place so we've set out to investigate how best to introduce activities into GETs.

We've decided on a simple structure to test:

• Students watch an educational GET  (for example, we show them what a 'U' shaped glacial valley looks like)
• The GET is paused and they then practice what they have just learnt by then completing a task in Google Earth (for example, we get them to find an example in a certain area)

Having completed one GET and related activity they move onto the next GET in the sequence.  If you are interested, there is a deeper discussion of why we think this is a good structure.

Progress so Far:  We've made progress on a number of fronts since the start of the project:

• Tracking Users:  Paolo is in post at UCL and is busy working with the Google Earth API to get an interface where we can play GETs and then track users as they complete tasks.
• Literature Review:  Paolo is also getting together a literature review of virtual globes in teaching geographical concepts.
• Teaching Topic:  We agreed (in a group discussion involving other UCL staff) that an interesting  topic to look at is paleo lake landscape analysis (one I've previously used) because it involves the integration of landscape evidence across large and small scales and we felt that GETs are a good medium to teach across multiple scales (see best practice #1 here).

Problems:  There is currently a problem with Google Earth 6.2 when recording audio GETs using polygons and lines (bug report) which has been an issue but we've found the bug isn’t in Google Earth v5.1 so we're using that until it gets fixed.

Next Steps:  After producing draft GETs for the project and integrating them into Paolo’s GE API interface we will be running preliminary testing before starting testing proper on undergraduate students.

I'll post more about the project when we have some materials worth showing.

Teacher Training Events and Tours Problems [GE v6.1}

This blog has been very quiet as I've been concentrating on teaching this winter and spring.  I'm finding some more time though so keep watching.

Geo Teacher's Institutes:  I'll be involved in the London presentation of these face to face training days, not sure which of the 2 days yet.  For the moment, save the date.


Education on Air Conference:  I'm also presenting a session for this conference via Google+ hangouts on Google Earth Tours for education.  If you want to be part of the 8 invitees follow the link and impress me with a comment that makes me think you'll be useful/interesting in the session.  Don't worry though, if you can't be part of the session actively, you can watch as a webcast or catch up with the whole session on YouTube later.

Tours Problems, Google Earth v6.1 and v6.2:  I have a class of students producing tours for meand I'm building some tours myself.  I've noticed a number of problems recording tours in the new versions of GE namely:

• Layers not appearing within tours as they should
• Audio not syncing with elements turning on and off (bug tracker report)
• Audio not replaying (especially when recording on macs and moving to PCs or visa versa)

so if you're thinking of producing complex tours at the moment, be wary (I think you maybe OK with simple tours).  You may want to wait for Google to fix these issues.

Problems with 'Coding is the new Latin'

I train geography teachers how to use Google Earth software to enhance their teaching, give me 2 hours with anyone who can operate a browser and I can have them recording virtual flights zooming down from a space shuttle view of the earth to a street view outside Big Ben in all its glory.  Not only is this attention grabbing and fun, it gets over a central problem of Geography - understanding scale.  So I've been interested in a recent discussion about teaching ICT in UK schools.

The Problems: The government is consulting on a change to the ICT syllabus based on discussion that has been going on in the circles of digerati (e.g. John Naughton, Rory Cellan-Jones).  Some key points of this discussion:

• • ICT teaching in UK schools is boring and not creative 
• • It focuses on teaching kids to use Microsoft office programs in an unimaginative manner.
• • The number of students taking ICT in the UK is falling  
• • The UK games industry is successful in the UK but it is finding it difficult to get UK recruits with knowledge of programming and the STEM subjects (report).

The Solution: A particular solution to this problem is offered:  We need to encouraging coding in ICT teaching, it would deal with all the above problems because coding is creative, students will then be inspired to study computing at higher levels and the games industry will have the programmers it needs.

My problem with this is that it is the only solution being offered.  The government’s consultation document sensibly talks about 'digital literacy still being important' but careful reading of the blogs and listening to the sound bites reveals the emphasis is elsewhere:

'Children should be not just using Apps but making Apps'

Michael Gove At BETT this January.  

‘Coding is the new Latin, we need to give kids a proper understanding of computers if they’re to compete for all kinds of jobs’

Alex Hope, co-author of the Next Gen report

An Alternative:  What no one appears to be talking about are the advantages of getting school students to use software.  Just because Microsoft Word exercises aren't lighting up the creative juices in our schools doesn't mean that ALL teaching about how to use software is boring.  At the top of this post I discussed some of my work with Google Earth as an example but that isn't the only one.  

Photoshop Tennis: The most impressive TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) example in schools I ever heard about was 'Photoshop tennis', students were given an image in a forum, one by one they then customized it using Photoshop (it could have been any image processing software of course)  posting their new customized image to the forum so another student could build on it.  The humour and skill the students showed in this software based exercise was excellent.

The advantage of classroom activities using software creatively rather than programming activities is that in many cases, programming for a beginner is abstract and complex.  It’s difficult to get students to produce code that can do something useful within the tight schedule of a school lesson because of this.  That’s not to say it’s impossible but it is difficult.  In addition to the abstract complexity of coding, debugging is an enthusiasm killing activity for school children in my experience.  That isn't to say that programming doesn't have its advantages, using software you are necessarily limited and have to accept a certain loss of freedom.  Certainly for the cleverest school students, I can imagine that programming is an excellent way to give them worthwhile educational challenges.  

Discussion:   This hasn't been an argument against the use of programming in schools, I think that, used carefully, programming has a lot of value.  I’m also convinced that school students should understand what programming is and what it does.  My point is that there is no discussion amongst the digerati of how to best to use software in the school room, the discussion has become anchored around how much better programming activities will be than learning boring Microsoft spreadsheets.  

 John Naughton makes a good point, ICT has now become so common place that separating it out from other school subjects is as flawed as saying that ‘books’ should form a school topic.  I’ve heard many teachers say that they would love to use Google Earth in their Geography teaching but that they can’t access the school computer room because ICT teachers block book them out.  Creative use of software would be much easier if ICT links were made between computers and the other school subjects, my examples in this post emphasize the use of ICT in Geography and Art teaching. 

Trials and Evidence: There is a final, bigger point to be made.  You may have noticed I haven’t cited any empirical evidence for my argument that software can be used creatively in ICT teaching, I’ve just used ‘IMHO’.  I’m not the only one, in the blogs and reports I’ve read if empirical evidence* is mentioned at all, it’s given a low priority.  An example is the Next Gen report, although it says deep in the text that further study is necessary, none of its 19 recommendations mention the need to test teaching techniques in schools 

What we really need to do is to come up with a number of ways of to teach ICT in schools and then test the ideas rigorously in classroom trials.  If we fail to do this we run the risk of swapping one deeply flawed curriculum for something that is no better.   

*and I’m specifically talking about evidence about what works for ICT teaching rather than testing how to teach coding or how video games can be used to promote STEM teaching.

Map Tales vs Google Earth Tours

Over at my other blog there's a post comparing Google Earth Tours with a web service offering similar functionality.

Misleading BBC Landscape Animation

This is a lovely science story:  A massive range of mountains completely covered by the Antarctic ice sheet has been mapped in 3D detail.  The story is nicely explained in an animation similar to a Google Earth Tour.

Unfortunately it contains a visualization howler:  The vertical exaggeration is about x200 and although this is marked on the above diagram, it isn't emphasized (the 4000m scale bar is off in a corner).  When you play the animation, it gets worse, you aren't told about the exaggeration at all.  The outcome is that untrained viewers of this visualisation will think that under the ice the topography is much steeper than the Himalayas whereas I estimate the steepest slope they have visualized is no more than 1:500.

Flood London's Bankers!

I was recently asked to produce something to showcase new big screened computers in a new media room at Southampton University.  VIPs watching including our Vice-Chancellor.  I revisited an earlier idea where I flooded London, I rewrote the code using an animated update to produce a tour which will raise the water from 20 to 200m in 3 seconds.

Open this

Flood London.kmz

and turn off all layers in the layers panel except 3D buildings which should be on.

1] Double click 'Space to High' and you will be flown from space to a high view over london.
2] Double click 'Flood London' and sea level rises from 20m above current to 200m
3] Double click 'High to City' to be flown to the city of London.  You should see the skyscrapers of London's banking center already partly flooded.  Turn off the tour (black cross in tour control, bottom left of main screen) then
4] Double click 'Flood London' and the sea rises again.  Experiment with controlling the tour controller bottom right to see you can become a virtual Canute. 

It shows two nice teaching facilities:

• Animated update which will require you to get into KML if you want to do it for yourself in another location.  
• A set of tours:  By combining tours which fly the user around with one which controls the flood level we can build some interesting visualisations.