The video of Digital Explorer’s ‘Virtual Fieldwork Using Google Earth’ course is now on YouTube. Thank you to everyone who made the recent teacher training UK Roadshow possible: Kate Hammond and Ed Parsons at Google, Shane Winser and Lucy Bruzzone at the Royal Geographical Society, Will Evans at Just So Films and Marjan Shirzad here at Digital Explorer.
Archive for April, 2008
Just received a very nice note from the Geographical Association. I ran two sessions at their conference at the end of March and managed to pack in 55 geography teachers. We managed to make good progress especially given I had condensed the normal 6-7 hour course into 2 hours.
Anyway, they had some very nice things to say…
Excellent and inspiring new ideas
I have never realised the full potential of Google Earth as I have never had the time to sit and mess around with the computer for long enough. An excellent session with an excellent handbook to take back to school.
Great way to develop fieldwork in a very pupil friendly way. Have already used it in my teaching as a way of promoting appreciation of fieldwork.
Can be put in to use immediately - hopefully with out too much cash outlay!
Excellent tutor - good practical ways to use Google earth.
Well delivered, fast pace, interesting and appropriate skills being implanted
Thank you to Lucy at the GA for organising ever thing and if you would like to find out more about what happened at this year’s conference see the Geographical Association website.
Earthwatch are offering the chance for science and geography educators to get out into the field and work alongside scientists to create educational resources.
From the Earthwatch website…
This year we are pleased to be able to offer 24 fully-funded educator places on a variety of different Earthwatch projects. Working alongside leading scientists for a period of between one to two weeks, small groups of five to eight educators will take part in hands-on scientific research on facilitated projects which include Dolphins of Greece and Whales and Dolphins of the Hebrides.
See their educators section for more information. The closing date is 4 May.
I was lucky enough to be invited to a Health Education Event in Salfit, West Bank yesterday. It made me think about the Digital Explorer model and how the expeditions so far have been short-lived in terms of actual time in the field, although the digital legacy lives on.
Would it be better to have long-term field-based projects say in the Middle East or Brazil that would continue to create digital media material after the team had left. This would also mean getting involved in capacity building and provision of hardware to projects around the world.
Rather than a single set of ripples from an event, a shift in the model would allow for an ongoing conversation between young people in the UK and young people around the world on important issues.
Any thoughts gratefully received…
ps thank you to Dalal of Merlin for hosting me yesterday and reinvigorating my desire to spend more time in the field
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