Folder Based Tours (workaround v7 record tours problem)

In v7 of Google Earth there currently is an issue with recording tours.  When opening balloons while recording a tour they subsequently fail to open or come up blank.  The steps below solved the problem for me:

Folder based tours HowTo:  

1] Create placemarks with appropriate views.  If you want a photo or text to show up, put it in the description box (note you can put videos in also but this technique won't get them to auto play on opening)

2] Create a folder

     right click temporary places folder > add > folder

drag all your placemarks into the folder and arrange in the order you want them to play.

3] Open
     PC:  File menu > Options (I think) > touring > When creating a tour from a folder (box) > select 'Show balloon when waiting at features' tick box.

      Mac:  Google Earth menu > Preferences > touring > When creating a tour from a folder (box) > select 'Show balloon when waiting at features' tick box.

4] While you have the dialog box open adjust 'Time between features', 'Wait at features' to figures that work for your tour.

5] Find the folder 'play tour' button.  Its a folder icon with a arrow in it far bottom right of the Places column.  Click it and your tour will play.

6] You can adjust the sequence of placemarks and the speed with which the tour flies at and how long it pauses for using steps [3] and [4].

Cloud Mapping Event: 3 Teaching Ideas

On 24th of May I was one of the organisers of a ‘Cloud Mapping’ event with Google and the HEA. Firstly, big thanks to Google for hosting the event, the venue and food were great (mmm, sushi lunch!). There was a good show of people and overall I think it went well with a lot of enthusiasm for a follow up meeting in a years time. I’ll report on the day as a whole when Helen Walkington (HEA) and I have had chance to discuss the official feedback. 

I presented 3 teaching ideas using Google Earth and I collected feedback via ‘post-it note’ voting so I thought in this post I’d outline the ideas below and collate the feedback.

Collating Spatial Data (AKA Crowd Sourced Maps) 

the grid around Mt St Helens 

 (more detail on the idea here): I reported on how I’d set up a grid in Google Earth around Mt St Helens, a volcano that erupted in 1980 and knocked down lots of trees in the vicinty. I gave students a grid square each to map and collated their edits. When I’d collated the results I presented the completed map back to students explaining what you could now see that wasn’t apparent earlier.

Delegate Votes: 23 (the winner!)
Delegate comments: I asked for ideas about how to reuse the technique, I also got back more general comments about the skills used. In terms of applications of the technique:

• Fieldwork Prep: 3 comments about how this would be great to use as preparation for a fieldwork trip 
• Temporal data: 2 comments that it could be used to map temporal data such as floods 
• Qualitative data: 2 comments that it could be used to map qualitative data (e.g. mapping rock outcrops in the desert visually followed by the official geological map) 

In terms of skills development some interesting comments:

• Mapping Criteria: Give students criteria on how to map and then review if they have achieved this as a group 
• Acquisition is the KEY skill of GIS. 

Explaining Scale via Powers of 10 Squares

The powers of 10 squares in action, 1km and 100m square lengths shown. 

(the tool in more detail) I outlined that understanding scale was a key skill of mapping and GEES (Geog, Earth and Env Sciences) teaching. I presented my recent joint development of powers of 10 squares as a technique for getting students to understand the size of the landscape they are viewing in Google Earth. I explained that I’d been looking at a study site for months and it wasn’t until I prepared the materials for my presentation that I realised how huge it was!

Delegate Votes: 8
Delegate Comments:

• Good for introductory teaching 
• Important for looking at landuse change 
• Liked the fact you could compare a landscape to a house size. 

Space Stories

A screen shot from one of my students presentations showing just how much we all use air travel

(how to record the video) I described an assessment I have just used with my undergraduate map design students where I got them to produce a 4 minute talk recorded as a video based in Google Earth. They produced materials in Google Earth and then videoed themselves giving the talk. After problems with them not really understanding what made a good map presentation last year I limited them to certain topics connected with climate change.

Delegate Votes: 17 
Delegate Comments: Again, these split into suggested applications and skills.  Applications:

• Landscape Change: 2 comments that it was good for showing landscapes over time i.e. archaeology, history, glacier retreat due to climate change 
• River Module: A delegate said s/he was going to introduce it in his/her river module 
• Weather Forecast: would be good to get students to give a weather forecast 

Skills:

• Not PowerPoint: 3 comments that it was good to get students to present using something else than powerpoint. 
• Before Fieldwork: It would be good as preparation prior to a field trip.

Create Video of Google Earth Tour

Update 19:20 BST:  I originally referred to a person here who didn't wish to be name checked so I've removed his name.

The way to do this is to use a screen recorder, I got my students to do this for an assignment recently so I thought I'd share the instructions they got on how to do this with screencast-o-matic (Jing is another free alternative but I haven't got it to work).

Tip:  Get on the machine with the best graphics card you have, effectively the computer needs to process output from Google Earth AND record the screen at the same time.

8] Note:  Screencast-o-matic works on Uni machines but may not work on other machines depending on browser and java plugins.  

Goto http://screencast-o-matic.com/ 

8.1] Click ‘Start Recording’ and a dotted box will appear.  For screen:

Click the size dropdown (blue arrows) > ‘small HD’.  

This is a good size for practising but you want to choose ‘Full HD’ for any true recordings as this is the largest resolution for YouTube. 

8.2] Drag the dotted box over your prezi presentation (don’t worry it isn’t big enough).  

Arrage the dotted box so its above the arrow controls in Prezi.  You don’t want to record you clicking the arrows in the presentation.

8.3]  Start the recording by clicking the red button.  Click through the prezi view points using the arrows.  

When you are finished click DONE.  Your recording should play on screen.  From here we could publish to YouTube but we shouldn’t do at the moment as we don’t have rights to the images or video we’ve used.  To find out how to find images and videos you can use see http://creativecommons.org/about and search via http://search.creativecommons.org/


UPDATE, 17.45 BST:  I'm reminded that you need to be careful to stay within Google's terms and conditions.  See http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html#maps-video

Google Earth for Teachers: Open Course

Tutorial 1 from the course as a taster

Last year we invited a group of geography school teachers into the school of Geography and the environment at Southampton and asked what we, as local university, could do to help them.  The most popular request was 'train us to teach GIS'.  So today I am pleased to announce the launch of

GEFT (Google Earth for Teachers)  

an open course designed to help teachers use Google Earth to teach GIS in schools.  You need to register to get in (links on the right hand side) and it's still in Beta (i.e. I'm going to continue improving it) so feedback would be very welcome.

What do you mean by an Open Course?

• There is no organised start date, you just access the materials as and when.  I may organise course presentations in the future.
• Its the online equivalent of a half INSET day I've been running for several years
• I'm not calling it a MOOC as it has nothing to do with the official FutureLearn MOOC program at Southampton University.

Been Here Before:  When Google Earth first appeared in 2005 I recognised that it had fantastic potential as a teaching tool.  I also thought that video was a powerful medium for teaching software and so in 2006 I launched Kokae which was an early kind of open course with short videos teaching how to use Google Earth to make maps.  

Turns out I was more or less right about Google Earth (it is the most common GIS in schools, but less commonly used in Universities) and really right about video as 2006 was also the year Khan Academy started.  However, unlike Khan academy Kokae didn't take off so I abandoned it for other experiments in open learning (videos in Google Earth, text based materials).  Now I'm back to a similar format to Kokae once more.

UPDATE:  edited 24/6/13 from original form to avoid confusion with the official FutureLearn MOOC program at Southampton University.

One on One Google Earth training offer for Teachers

Interested in learning how to use Google Earth and a Geography school teacher?  I'd like to test some materials I've produced so if you'd like some one on one tutoring and you:

• Are prepared to meet me in Finchley, London or Highfield campus, Southampton University, Southampton in the next 2 weeks
• Are not a whizz at GIS
• But are capable of doing basic computer tasks (look for things with Google maps, manage files on a hard drive)

I can offer the equivalent of 90 minutes training for free.  First come, first served, email me at rwt at soton dot ac dot uk.

Powers of 10 Centered on Your House

Screen shot showing blue squares generated by the new service around Shackleton's hut in Antarctica

The Powers of 10 film has inspired a recent post here (Understanding of Scale) and an old experiment but today I can reveal I've finally achieved an idea I had 2.5 years ago.  The squares from Powers of 10 film centered wherever you want:  

 Blue Squares Generator

Enter your Lat/Long or let it guess your location and it will generate a Google Earth file (KML) which produces the 1m, 10m, 100m...  ....100,00km blue squares from the film centered on your location.  

Warning:  we haven't got the tour working yet so you'll have to manually zoom out yourself.

It has been programmed by my friend Michael as an exercise in php and web programming.  He has done an excellent job working out the complexities of squares tangential to the earth's surface.  

What you can do with it:  Educationally I think this will be an interesting tool for a number of teaching situations:

• Understanding Scale:  As I discussed the other week the film is excellent at getting school students to think about scale.  If they can see their own neighborhood at the lower scales I imagine it will be even more effective.
• Curvature of the Earth:  The larger squares illustrate the curvature of the earth as you zoom out more.  This one takes some skill at navigating to use.
• What's in my Backyard?:  Often in teaching we need students to understand what is close to a location we are discussing.  Shackleton's Hut in Antarctica (Lat:-77.552923°, Long: 166.168368°) is an example, a small hut surrounded by nothing for miles and miles and miles (choose 3D buildings from the layers panel to show).  To illustrate the space and give a sense of scale, generate the squares and comment on the emptiness as you zoom in or out.  For extra cleverness, generate squares for the hut and a student's house and have them both open in the places column at the same time.  You can then compare and contrast what is in the vicinity of the hut and a student's house in an urban area.  I've made an example tour taking you around: 

 Shackleton's hut to Finchley Street tour

Download the file and double click the tour to play a flight between the hut and the street.  The idea is to pause the tour at various locations and explore the landscape at that scale before continuing.

HEA/Google 'Maps in the Cloud' event

I'm part of the team organizing this event:

NEW! 24 May 2013 - Maps in the Cloud workshop, Google offices, London.

£50 per delegate

A workshop on using free (or really cheap) software for mapping for those involved in GEES teaching. Come to this workshop to find out about the latest technology available to allow you to map using data from the cloud. Presentations will include the latest Google Earth Engine and Maps Engine software, Edina’s new app ‘Fieldtrip GB’, Google tools for Citizen Science, Google Earth’s Time animation, Scale and Tour features as well as the opportunity to become part of an ongoing community.

Bookings will open soon, please register your interest by emailing: Helen.walkington@heacademy.ac.uk

I'll be talking about Google Earth tours.