Placespotting

Placespotting

Just had an e-mail from Martin Fussen to tell me about PLACESPOTTING: a site that allows you to create your own map based quizzes...

Go to the website and click CREATE.
Move and zoom the map until it shows an interesting place. Provide some hints for the person / friend who will try to solve the puzzle (a number of hints can be provided) and a message that they will see if the riddle is solved. After saving the quiz you can send it by mail to a friend or embed it in your homepage as a picture. The task is to find the place shown in your picture on a second google map.
The website has 6638 different quizzes stored. 108274 quizzes were solved and
927275 opened.

Looks worth checking out and creating a few quizzes.

Tour de France Street View

The route of the Tour de France 2008 can now be seen in STREET VIEW.
Go HERE for the images and maps.

Norfok Geography Conference

Did a session at the Norfolk Geography Conference yesterday, and presented an update of some ideas on using Google Earth from a session I ran 2 years ago...
Below is my presentation, minus the videos...

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Norfolk Geography Conference

Norfolk Geography Conference
Monday 30th June

Stonehenge! 'Tis a magic place
Where the moon doth rise with a dragon's face
Stonehenge! Where the virgins lie
And the prayers of devils fill the midnight sky






This is a trail for the Norfolk Conference, at the PDC in Norwich, which has a keynote session by Sarah Watts.

I am offering a 55 minute session (ish) - you know I always over-run....

I have decided to mention a few new ideas for using Google Earth and also showcase a lesson designed by Noel Jenkins from Digital Geography.

This will go through the process of curriculum development that I hope will inspire the folks who come to my session to see how they can take an idea for a lesson and "run with it" and use a few of the new website tools to make it a little more creative and engaging...

Will also mention the guide made available at Digital Explorer by Jamie Buchanan Dunlop.

Will also be mentioning my new favourite website: WORDLE.

Also coming up is the new THEMATIC MAPPER tool, which was also picked up by Mark Batchelor on SLN...

Here's one that was made earlier with the TOOL (or ENGINE)
It shows mobile phone subscriptions...



Also the GOOGLE CODE API, which I had a play with a while ago, and was mentioned by Tom Biebrach. Here's the details on that as an embedded video:

Google Earth Update at Norfolk Geography Conference

Will be delivering a session at this conference, which will be held at the Professional Development Centre, Woodside Road, Norwich on the 30th of June.
I will be demonstrating some of the newer features in updates like 4.3

The session will be an update of one that I ran back in 2006 for Norfolk colleagues, when I ran through some of the features.


Here is a video from the Google Earth website which explains some of the new features:



The session is called: "Google Earth: Paths, Polygons and Pedagogy". It will cover a number of areas:

1. Paths (and fly along) / Tours
2. Polygons (zoning of areas)
3. Adding images to placemarks
4. GE Graph (basic introduction)
5. How to use some of these features as a GIS type resource

Will post more resources and materials nearer the time. Have a number of other projects to work on before then...

DFID, DEFRA and Met Office explore Climate Change Impacts around the world...

Thanks to Ewan Laurie for this tipoff via SLN.

It's a set of resources for Google Earth produced by DFID: the Department for International Development.

A series of files explores climate change impacts around the world:

People in developing countries are already being hit hard by changes in the weather. Visit Climate Change In Our World to find out how, from Ghana to Guatemala, poor people are trying to cope with disasters such as drought, floods and melting glaciers.

You can also read our stories from around the world here:

- Nepal: Watching the glaciers melt – first hand

- Nepal: Surviving mud and landslides

- Bangladesh: River island living

- Bangladesh: Life, land and property devastated by Cyclone Sidr

- Mozambique: Droughts, floods and higher temperatures bring more disease to city life

- Ghana: Destroyed by floods and droughts

- Guatemala: Drought, mud slides and later harvests add to hardships in remote highlands

- India: Trapped by drought and debt

- Malawi: Flood-hit children start taking action

- Sudan: Conflict and climate change

Download a KML file, and you can explore the earth with an overlay of expected climate change.

Explore and learn about the impacts of climate change and find out how you can make a difference with Climate Change in our World. The Met Office Hadley Centre, British Antarctic Survey and UK Government have harnessed Google Earth technology to present you with an interactive animation showing how climate change and global temperature rises could affect our world over the next 100 years.

Once you have opened this KML, click on the icons to find out more about how people around the world are already being affected by changing weather patterns and see the predicted effects of climate change across the globe between now and 2100.

New Job and Digital Explorer course...

It's official, so I can tell everyone now...
This was me at the Advanced Google Earth day put on by Jamie Buchanan Dunlop at the RGS-IBG yesterday. Thanks to Yvonne, my partner for the day ...

Any idea what's going on here ? Answer to come shortly...

Here's another clue....

...and one inspired by me...

Just to embarrass Chris...oh, and David too...

Off to the RGS

Anyone else going to Jamie Buchanan Dunlop's session on Tuesday of next week ?

This course is designed for people who have already attended the introduction course or are regular advanced users of Google Earth. It will cover how to integrate field data into Google Earth, creating geo-referenced graphs as well as choropleth maps that can be used in the classroom.

The weather looks like being nice for it...
I'll report back after the event.

Up to 100 000 people killed ?

By Flickr user TZA (Creative Commons) - image credit Google and associated imaging partners

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...

Google Earth INSET Courses

The DIGITAL EXPLORER site has kindly made available a range of training materials, and also some example resources made by people who have attended their training courses.
Thanks to Jamie Buchanan Dunlop for this. I'm going to be attending one of these courses which has been organised for Chartered Geographers later in the year.

The HANDBOOK is excellent !
Many thanks.

100th Post

This has been a while coming...

The first item in this post is the completion by Mark Beaumont of his round the world cycle trip. It is not too late to support
The 195 day trip was followed by Scottish geographer Val Vannet, who posted a daily update of where Mark was that day, using Google Earth and a range of other resources to locate him, and check out the amazing geography of the place that he was travelling to...
Check out the ARTEMIS web site, and the GEOBLOGGING WITH MARK blog, which is being labelled up, so that you can use it to explore the world.
Why not MAKE A DONATION to Mark's charities if you haven't already.

Also check out some great resources at the THINKINGEOGRAPHY blog of Dr Andrew Lee, who currently teaches in China. This includes the recent addition of a superb new resource using Google Earth in an exciting and original way, which I have missed out on using this year as I have just finished my China unit, but would be good to have some additional materials for next year.
This is the LIFE TRIPS WITH GOOGLE EARTH section.

Here's the description from the website:

LifeTrips with GoogleEarth is a new website attached to a Wikispace which allows you to look at the lives of people in different cities. Using Google Earth it tracks the day paths of people who live throughout the world and helps people connect with people in their own city, or in a city across the world.

The site can be visited by anyone, though school students, in association with their teachers may contribute to the site by registering, and then publishing material to the wikispace.

This website provides an index for the Wikispace in which the site’s assets reside.

LifeTrips with GoogleEarth is an invitation to communicate.

Check out the movies on people who live in BANGKOK, and the instructions are also provided on the website. This is a super resource.

Also has a great blog, with posts such as THIS ONE.

One to check out...

FSC Fieldwork Sites

Noticed tonight that certain of the Field Studies Council Study Centres have a Google Earth file to show the fieldwork locations that they use.

Here is an image from the Slapton Ley centre...
I visited this in the 1980s as part of my degree, and have also visited 3 or 4 of the others over the years...