Google Research Update & Elevation Profiler

See Labels > Google Research Project in the right column to see earlier posts about this project.

Work on our Google Project is going well:

- On the content front, after feedback from team members and talk aloud 'hallway' testing, the final version of the Google Earth tours needed for the tests have been produced.  

- On the testing software front Paolo has got the system working where we record both eye-tracking of subjects using our tours and events in the Google Earth API (e.g. tracking camera movements by the subject).  We are exploring the idea of combining the results from both but at the moment we cannot combine them directly for analysis.  

Google Earth tour Sound: We have identified that there is incompatibility between playing sound on Macs and PCs from tours.   When he has some time, Paolo has promised to write up a HowTo post here on a work around.

Elevation Profile in Google Earth:  As part of the work I've been thinking about how to use cross sections or elevation profiles to visualize topography.  I thought I'd write up some features of the elevation profiler I've explored that are quick and easy to use for showing elevation.   

Problem:  I want to show the user the topography of a river valley.  In areas of dramatic topography such as the Grand Canyon you can just tilt the Google Earth camera and the user gets the idea of what the valley is like.  However, in our study area the valley landscape I want to show is much more subtle, the slopes need to be exaggerated to show up.  Also, when you are considering topography across a large distance (say the elevation of the Amazon) topography will naturally be subtle compared to the long length of the feature.

Solution:  Use an elevation profile feature of lines to exaggerate the topography.

HowTo:  

1] Find the area you want to draw a cross section across.  Use the path tool (its a button on the top line of Google Earth with a line with blobs icon) draw a simple line across part of the feature, you should use a click ONLY at the start and the end. 

2] Once you have named and saved your line, find it in the places column to the left.  Right click it and select 'Show elevation profile'.  An elevation cross section will appear at the bottom of the screen.  You can click within the profile and a red arrow will appear on screen to show the elevation at any point on your line.

3] move the mouse within the elevation and a vertical line and red arrow show the height at any point.  

4] A nice trick is to draw a deliberately short line section and lengthen it.  To do this, right click the line in places column > properties.  Now find the end of the line you marked (a blue or red square) and click and drag it.  As the line lengthens the profile dynamically grows.  This allows for all kinds of teaching questions, e.g. in my case I could start with the line going down just one slope and ask students to predict the rest of the profile on paper.  You then complete the profile dragging the line out and the true cross section is revealed and have a competition on who drew the best profile.

Teaching Point:  Its important to remind the students that what they're looking at is an exaggerated section otherwise they may get the idea that the topography is as dramatic as it looks.  I would do this by tilting down to view the line in Google Earth and asking the students why the topography doesn't look the same as the profile.  You could also ask them to calculate what the exaggeration is by reading off values from the vertical and horizontal axes.

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.