VGI in Education Talk

I've done a talk discussing a project using VGI in teaching a first level Earth Science course:

I got students to use Google Earth but I explain how you could use Google My Maps as well. The feedback from the course was excellent so I thought it worth discussing how to set one up yourself.

Streetview now Captured by Tours

I was away when GEarth v6 was released but I was excited to see the pegman make it into GEarth bringing the smooth usability of streetview in GMaps into GEarth.

Others have documented the feature well but no one in the blogosphere appears to have noticed (and isn't mentioned in the above clip) that you can now record streetview in tours too: tour of the walk from Waterloo Station to the London Eye. All you do is;

1. record a tour in the normal way,
2. drag and drop the pegman (orange man icon on the main screen controls) half way through to enter streetview
3. navigate around in streetview
4. click 'Exit Street View' button top left of your screen to exit street view
5. stop the tour.

to quote a famous meerkat: 'simples'

This has a ton of applications:

• What better way to direct your friends to the pub?
• Real estate (relators in US speak) adverts showing the town amenities close to their property
• Teaching human geography

Well done Google, a smart feature all round.

Techy KML Details: GEarth 6 has spawned a new gx KML element: "gx:ViewerOptions", this element inserted into a FlyTo parent with"gx:option name="streetview"" tells GEarth to changes from normal to Streeview in the middle of a tour. ViewerOptions also allows historical imagery and sunlight conditions to be captured as well.