StreetView in a Pandemic

Thanks to Rob Morris for forwarding this article on the use of Google Street View to 'take us places' when we are unable to visit places at the current time, and international travel is looking unlikely for another summer. 

Google Street View may offer us a short-term escape as we perhaps explore (un)familiar places which are far away...

The New Yorker piece has some interesting ideas which would be relevant to the classroom. One person who is mentioned is Nick Nicholaou, a London-based developer, who built a site called MapCrunch ten years ago. 

I've used this for about that long in sessions with teachers and also in my teaching, and it allows for random street views, or views within a particular country or area chosen on the map. It also mentions games / challenges such as the MapCrunch Airport Game.

Historic Street View

Google is adding a historical imagery slider to Street View, so that you can see how the street has changed during the time that the imagery has been taken. This will vary in use depending on where you live, or which streets you look at, but might be interesting for charting retail change etc.

Google Earth new version

It's already been blogged about in loads of places, but there is a new version of Google Earth which adds Street View, imagery dating, day-night shadows etc...
Ollie Bray has produced a useful post summarising the key points, so I'll leave it to him to tell you. Click the link to discover the latest...