If you are looking to develop more multimedia and online learning in your classroom, but are afraid of the child protection implications amongst other things have a look at these sites for some guidance. It’s an emerging area, so keep in touch with the policies, guidance and procedures that you develop.
The automatic veto and shunning of new technologies just creates more distance between the classroom and everyday experience. Careful work is needed to create the balance between innovation and child protection.
It should have been a great day for educators and expeditions. Google Maps announces that a new function, meaning you can embed a Google Map in your very own website and add points, including video and images.
Above is an example from Digital Explorer’s test blogger site, showing a map of the Atlas Mountains with placemarks added, highlighting Jbel Toubkal and other places.
Sadly, neither of the two free blog services have the perfect solution. If you try to use wordpress.com, Wordpress cleans the javascript, meaning you can’t see the map. If you use blogger, you lose all the flexibility of pages vs posts. A wordpress blog could have it’s homepage set simply to a map page.
It would radically simplify web communications for expeditions and fieldwork.
When a decent solution does appear, I will let you all know.
For now:
- if you use blogger - you’re fine, but bug the blogger support people to have posts and pages like wordpress.com
- if you use wordpress.com - you’re up the creek until the powers that be make changes - lobby them!!
- if you host your wordpress blog yourself, there are some plug-ins that will help out - the best one is at the Remote Sensing Tools blog and does not require any messing around with APIs and the like
Good luck, and let me know if there are any neater solutions out there.
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