Google Earth Tour Builder Review

Previously I couldn't get GETB working*, I've worked out a work around* so now I have so a fuller review for you:

The tool is at https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/

Firstly, a little shout for joy is in order:  YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!  It looks good.

Some History:  A week before I saw it I was trying to get a funding bid accepted to build pretty much what this is, and I've been banging on about the need for it for years.  Other's have had a go at this (see previous post) but nothing has come close to filling the need IMHO so well done whoever 'withgoogle.com' is.

Educational Uses:  I get students to produce Google Earth tours on two courses, I think as an assignment it really works, I've showcased an example of a student's work previously and I think its such a neat teaching tool that I gathered some thoughts from colleagues on the idea (under 'Space stories') at a conference this summer.

What GETB does:  Previously you could record a Google Earth tour in Google Earth but if you wanted to edit it, you had to get into the KML code.  Also, fiddling around with lots of elements in the places column was tedious and you ran out of space quickly.  With this tool you can define a series of locations and then upload images, compose text or link to videos related to each location.  You do it 'in the cloud' as your tour is saved in a location related to your Google account so to edit, you must be online but you have the advantage that you can access your tours from any online machine.

Once you've created a tour, you can edit the sequence of location by simple drag and drop.  The interface is very clean (inheriting look and style from Google's standard interface design) and its very intuitive.

Nice Touches:  

• Rocket path: When flying from low location to a distant far location the path loops high following the rocket path rather than staying close to the ground surface (crow path).  More detail under best practice 13 here.  Nice to think someone reads this blog :)  
• Hidden Titles:  I also liked the way the control column hides the location's title unless rolled over with the mouse.  
• Streetview:  drop a location in streetview and the tour will use streetview when played.  
• Slide Metaphor:  Google Earth tours in Google Earth play via a VCR controller.  GETB uses a slide metaphor which is easier to understand and navigate when playing a tour IMHO.  It also makes editing easier.
• Import KML:  This feature allows more advanced features to be associated with a location (e.g. polygon annotation) but the complexity that goes with this is hidden from most users.  One of the problems with the earlier attempt at a tour editor Google Earth Studio was that the complexity was visible to all and was overwhelming for users who just wanted to do something simple.

Missing Features:

• Audio: With so much going on visually in a tour, its best to deliver the narration via audio, which you can do with Google Earth tours.  More details.  I'd suggest this is an important feature to add.
• Overlays:  A powerful feature of tours is to be able to incorporate ground overlays in the main screen.  At the moment you can add polygons and lines by importing KML but it won't import KMZ's which would allow overlay imports.  E.g. a screenshot of OpenStreetMap which would be far less visually complex as a base map than the standard satellite view of Google Earth.
• Tutorials and support?  It's nice and straightforward but help files would really open up its use to a wider audience and GETB is definitely suitable for non-techies.  

Overall, brilliant.  I will be using with my students ASAP

*doesn't work: chrome in Lion.  On Snow leopard with chrome it works

Google Earth Tour Builder: Quick thoughts

I get students to build Google Earth tours for classes (see spatial stories in this post), my site Google Earth for Teachers describes how to create them using Google Earth.  However, the editing tools are basic to say the least.  People have built tools for making tours before (Snoovel, Google Earth Studio) but they've both sunk without trace.  So I was excited to find out someone else has had a go:  Google Earth Tour Builder.

I had a go at creating a tour.  It seems to be following the design of a 'stepper' as in, more like a PowerPoint presentation with slides and clicks to move on than a Movie clip so the flow through the tour is structured like ArcGIS explorer (not sure if that still exists either...).  However, beyond that, I can't really explore it.  My problems:

- No help files, screencasts, tutorials to tell me how to work it

- When I create a new place I'm told to 'drop a draggable placemark to specify a location' but I can't find anything to drag. (on OS, tried in FF and Chrome).

If I can get it to work I'll review it further.

'Back to School: Google Earth for Teachers

screen shot of new content in GEFT

Back in May I released an 'open course' devoted to helping Geography school teachers use Google Earth as a GIS in their teaching: Google Earth for Teachers (GEFT).  The 'core' content was 6 up to date videos.  Following feedback from teachers using it over the summer I've made some changes:

• It now has its own domain 'GEforTeachers.com' (update 5th Nov 2013: which redirects you to a Moodle site)
• You no longer have to register to access, just choose 'guest' middle of the way down on the left at the entry page.
• I've added an 'Advanced' section with tools and tutorials for those who are beyond introductory level.

I'd love to hear what you think of it!

Great Student Work

One of my enjoyable tasks over the summer is running the Geography sessions for 'Access to Southampton' which is a widening participation program aimed at bringing in students to Southampton University whatever their educational or social background.  We do some teaching with 6th formers and then offer them a better A level offer to come to Southampton if they successfully complete an assignment.

Students had about an hour face to face teaching on how to use Google Earth and were asked to use some online materials I prepared to produce a "space story" an activity I've discussed before ("space stories" section here) .  The example below is from Shaheer and is a tour around Mt St Helens Volcano discussing the 1980 eruption.  Given Shaheer's age and the amount of teaching time given, I thought this was a fantastic piece of work.

Well done Shaheer!

It should be said that there was some other great work done by the other students but they didn't record their work on YouTube (they didn't have to).

Geomorphology via Google Earth

Screen shot of a glacier from the file that shows dramatic changes over the seasons

I've just read a terrific paper by Holly Dolliver on using Google Earth to teach geomorphology (abstract, most of the body).  She mainly uses the historical imagery feature of GE to show the change in landscape with time and the elevation profile tool to show the topography.  She spent a lot of time searching out some great examples to illustrate her paper but didn't provide a KML file of the places so I've captured most of her examples in this file.

HowTo Notes:
The placemarks in 'Show Elevation Profile' folder need you to right click the placemark in the places column then select 'show elevation profile' to turn it on.

The other placemarks are related to time.  Follow these steps:
1] turn on historical imagery on the top bar in Google Earth by clicking the clock with arrow icon.
2] double click the yellow pins to be flown to the place in space and 'flown back in time

With Katama Bay, this illustrates long shore drift and I've left you to play with the historical imagery time slider ([1] above) as you wish.

X-Keyscore Map: 10 Redesign Ideas

In terms of map design, the X-Keyscore map makes school boy errors from start to finish so, inspired by Victoria Nece's redesign of the PRISM PowerPoint, I thought I'd have a go at 10 design improvements that I hope my students (Geography at Southampton University) would suggest.   I've also been meaning to give Google Maps Engine Lite (GMEL) a spin with a view to using it in teaching so I'm killing two birds with one stone:  having fun giving the spooks a cartography lesson while also testing the capabilities of GMEL.

Screenshot of part of my revamp of the X-Keyscore map.

I used GMEL, Full size, zoomable version here

Need to Digitize   I only had the map to work from so I digitized the points as well as I could.  No way of knowing if I got them all in the right places...


X-Keyscore Problems and Solutions

1] Base map too saturated: Having a saturated base map (rich colors with multiple shades showing) is bad design, it interferes with seeing the data plotted on top.  See point 2 for solution.

2] Base map showing too much data: Also, no need to show vegetation type and hydrographic depths, it doesn't add anything and just clutters up the map.  Using GMEL I chose a more muted base map, e.g. it doesn't have hydrographic data anymore.  I'd have liked to have just had one color for the land too but this isn't possible.  In fact, my perfect base map for this task would have just three gray tones:  one for sea, one for land and one for borders.

3] Icons too large:  Having the icons large causes overcrowding, icons merge into one another and its difficult to differentiate them (more detail).  The simple solution is to make them smaller.  Using GMEL you can't control icon size which is annoying so they stayed about the same 'default' size.

4] No border to icons:  Linked to the overcrowding, if you add a border the icons 'pop out' from the background more and also its possible to have a go at differentiating them when they crowd together.  In GMEL its easy to customize icons and they come with a black border as standard.

5] Red/Green color blindness:  1 in 20 men cannot easily differentiate red from green so its best not to have red symbols on a green background.  I've used purple to get around this.  Changing color in GMEL for icons is easy.

6] Red Dot Fever:  Intense red stands out well but is overkill on a simple map like this.  Also your map looks like it has measles.  You can have paler dots that still stand out and this reduces visual complexity.  With only one data type this isn't crucial but when you start adding more layers (such as the countries in point 10), visual complexity becomes an issue and its good design to keep things as unsaturated as possible.

Another example of red dot fever also produced in 2008

7] What's with the dots by Antarctica?  Have they ringed the continent with floating stations to keep those penguins in check?  I assume its stations they didn't want to mark on the map in which case, they should have been pushed to a column off the map marked 'Stations with no Location', this would be less confusing for the users as there would be no way that they could think the markers had a location at all.

8] Title too big:  It takes up too much space and is too visually busy, although you could argue that's an issue with the PowerPoint, not the map.  In GMEL I can't control the title design.

9] Extra Information:  I think the total number of stations and the total number of countries covered is a key part of this map and it hasn't been mentioned.  I added it onto the map in GMEL by creating another layer, marking two points in the Pacific and letting labels be visible.

10] Mapping which countries are covered:  relevant to the above, I think adding the countries covered would add weight to the argument that the coverage is very wide.  I wanted to be able to map countries using a drop down list, i.e. map Ecuador from a drop down list using GMEL but there doesn't seem to be an option to do that so I hand digitized the countries covered in South America as an example.

More on GMEL:  I think this task has been a bit unfair on GMEL as it's not really there to produce static maps, its really about creating zoomable dynamic maps.  In addition, its best selling point (IMHO) hasn't been used:  The ability to easily edit the data producing a map as a table e.g. add columns as necessary, and to apply palettes of colors depending on the values in the table.  This is a very powerful tool for data exploration.

Overall, GMEL is very straightforward to use and I think it has potential as a teaching tool.  However, some features I'd like to see:
- Symbols' size editable
- Political map option for base map (see above)
- A way of easily importing in countries, states of the US, counties in UK etc so data can be added to them or they can be customised as needs be.
- Ability to add labels.

If you want to have a play with GMEL there's a tutorial here.

Google Maps Engine Lite as a tool for Education

Where I've been:  I'm now a proud Dad so I've been busy of late.  A friend asked if I'd produced a map of where my son was born, sort of Angela Jolie tattoo style.  The answer is no, to quote Steven, 'not all data should be mapped' :)

Simple Mapping (applying palettes to points):  One of the things I learnt at the recent Cloud Mapping event I helped run was that Google have been working on tools to make creating simple maps from spreadsheets.  As an example of web based, simple GIS I run a practical for undergrad students which uses Google fusion tables to apply palette files to data.  I'm planning to rewrite it to use the more elegant Google Maps Engine Lite (GMEL).  You can get an idea what GMEL is about from this video:



It is from Google's recent MOOC Mapping with Google, (course materials are still available).  I think a number of people used the MOOC just to learn about this tool.

GMEL is definitely a tool worth a look for teaching simple map making and simple GIS.  I'll post more thoughts here when I've had a proper go with it.