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 the 'education' Category
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
Honda seem to have cornered the market in my thoughts this week…
What if we invested in young people and gave them a truly global education?
On Tuesday, I was with a small group of Year 10 geography pupils sitting in our new multimedia room. We were clustered round a laptop waiting for a video call using skype. The call was coming in from Antarctica from Robert Swan, who is currently living at the 2041 E-Base relying solely on renewable energy for the first time in Antarctic history.
The call came through and there we were having a live video chat with Robert about the issue of climate change and what we can all do about it. Wow! Now that’s what I cal education for the 21st Century.
The use of skype from remote locations presents numerous possibilities for engaging young people in environmental and social issues. The software is free. The calls are over the internet, so you just pay for the use of the internet during that time (a bit more expensive somewhere like Antarctica where you are reliant on satellite networks such as BGAN).
If anyone could tell me how I could take part in a live conversation taking place using something like skype, and show it on a website simultaneously, I would be eternally grateful!
For two weeks, renowned polar explorer, Robert Swan will be relying solely on renewable energy as part of the E-Base Goes Live project. The team are now in place posting daily video and images. Next week they will be conducting a series of live video chats with pupils globally.
As part of the website designed and built by the Digital Explorer team, I have put up a project suitable for 11-18 year olds on the site.
Enjoy!
I have just spent a week working on the next Offscreen Expedition in Beirut and Saida in Lebanon. It’s been truly inspiring - such wonderful energy and passion. One of the things that I hate is having to chose. I interviewed twelve pupils for a place on the expedition to the UK in July this year and have to disappoint ten of them.
I have been thinking about how to provide a platform for some of the voices to be heard and want to provide the support and equipment for them to start making short films and reports about the issues that they face and their lives. Wonderful Irina Prentice has agreed to provide some filming and editing training and now all I need to do is to get a camcorder and MacBook out to Lebanon.
So here’s the deal… I’ve got £500 I can allocate to this, and I reckon that the total cost will be about £1200.
If you have a MacBook in good working order that you don’t need or a decent camcorder please get in touch. Likewise if you would like to fund this, I would be enormously grateful and you will be changing lives at a very grassroots level.
Thank you all!
Sometimes all the work that Digital Explorer seems slightly divorced from the real world. I had two amazing lessons today that reminded me of how much young people in this country deserve a great global education and to be supported.
The first instance was a class doing their Citizenship coursework promoting the work of UNICEF. Groups had gathered round tables talking about different ways that they could work together. We had one group talking about making T-shirts featuring their new cartoon creation ‘Bruce’ the penguin: a cute, cuddly, polar spokes-penguin for child rights everywhere. Another group were telling me how they were going to spend half-term making a flash animation. Wow!
The second moment brought tears to my eye with a class discussing careers and university. We made a circle of the chairs in the classroom - out with the formal rows - and had one chair in the middle. Pupils took it in turns to sit in the middle and talk about hopes, fears and everything else. Chosing options at this age and considering careers is pretty terrifying stuff and some complained of the pressure of results and testing.
Then one short speech really moved me. A pupil explained how her family never had enough money for her to go on school trips or for nice clothes. She wanted to know if she would be able to afford to go to university. She would be the first member of her family to do so. She wanted to make them proud and to succeed.
It really brought home to me three things:
- we need to provide a great and engaging global curriculum for our young people
- we need to provide more opportunities for young people who wouldn’t ordinarily have them
- these young people are amazing - don’t believe what you read in the papers!
An Ofsted report has just lambasted the state of geography teaching in the UK. The report based on inspections over the last three years found that geography was the worst-taught subject and that pupils saw it as boring. Now, most of us know that this isn’t true - geography teachers up and down the land continue to inspire and engage young people with the world around them.
But, here’s the bit I really agree with. Ofsted want more fieldwork (bye-bye cotton-wool culture), and more relevance (hello climate change and fair trade).
There is so much scope for making geographical learning exciting, engaging and inspiring.
Digital Explorer wants to bring the world to the classroom in as many ways as possible using the latest technology.
If you work for the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) then contact us, or please forward this on if you have contacts.
We have plans to change completely the way that young people interact with the world. Come on board.
I was asked this question by a teacher who had come on a Digital Explorer Google Earth course:
Sorry to trouble you with this simple question, but I had your details, having come to one of your Google Earth training days in the summer. Having used Google Earth more since then, it is clear that having an upgraded use via Google Earth Plus would be excellent, but I am not sure whether the average price ($20 pa) is per computer, or establishment. The school is obviously happy to pay out the odd tenner, but not much more!
Do you know, please?
I thought that my reply may be useful to other teachers looking at the same issue.
The license price is per logon account/computer, not per establishment. Google have not yet decided to develop an educational pricing scheme for Google Earth. In reality you can use the same logon for two computers. The one extra function that is useful with Google Earth Plus is the GPS data handling. I imagine that you would only be using GPS with KS4/KS5 and I am not sure how many units you have.
My advice would be:
- Ask your IT technicians to set up additional use accounts for pupils using GPS units - e.g. gps1 to gps6 or however many units you have
- Label the machines that you have in the nearest computer room to your KS4/5 geography teaching rooms with these user accounts
- Purchase half as many Google Earth Plus licenses as you have GPS units
- Upgrade Google Earth to Google Earth Plus on the GPS machines, using your new gps1, etc. login details (you can use the same Google Earth Plus account details for two machines)
This way you will have computing capacity to match your GPS units.
More information about how to upgrade to Google Earth Plus and its benefits
Do comment on this post, if you have any other queries or have another solution.
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