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!
Really proud of the team - John, Ciara and Marjan for making sure the IAE expedition blog for 2041 looks so amazing, has great functionality and went live so soon after the 2041 main site.
I just love this site, but then that’s me. It’s exciting to see how far Wordpress as a platform can be taken (this is the inner geek in me).
Not available yet in UK - will bring you news of any updates and sorry to get your hopes up
To receive a Google Earth Pro license for your school, please email the Google Earth Education Coordinator with the following information:
- the email address that you will use to logon (your existing one or a new one for this purpose)
- a description of your school and a link to the school website
- your name and contact details (address, phone, email, etc.)
- your intended use of Google Earth Pro (what year, subject, project, etc.)
Things are changing so fast with Google Earth, it is often hard to keep up with new features, content, layers and imagery. Google Earth publish a monthly newsletter, The Sightseer - sign up here.
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.
Great for all those heading south. Your progress can now be followed on Google Earth with newly updated satellite imagery. The imagery stops at about 82.5 degrees South as there is no satellite imagery available this close to the pole.
Find out more about the update at the Google LatLong blog.
There is a call for as much user generated content (images, video, etc.) as possible to be added to this newly enhanced area. So, get going and if you need any help then let us know.
If you are making Digital Video for the classroom, here are a few pointers to make life easier for teachers:
- 1-4 minutes is great for Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14)
- 5-20 minutes is great for Key Stages 4 and 5 (ages 14-19), where a more in depth exploration of a topic may be useful (although short clips are also still useful)
- attention in the classroom can be lost in the blink of an eye, so it’s great if video can be integrated into interactive whiteboard software - the most commonly used is the SMART Board software, Notebook
- Notebook currently only supports Flash Video (.flv and .swf) and so Digital Video should be downloadable in either of these two formats
If you are a teacher looking to integrate Digital Video into your SMART Board resources:
Good luck and have fun inspiring the next generation.
The Guardian wrote a great article about some of the ideas coming out of the recent Pop!Tech conference in Maine last month - mapping emotions and wonderfully beautiful and shocking digital images detail the effluent of rampant consumerism.
Chris Jordan’s images combine massive digital photographs (up to 26 x 43 feet) with statistics about the amount of waste produced in the United States. To be faced by an image of 170,000 life-size batteries would certainly bring the point home. Above is one of Chris’ images of Mobile Phones in Atlanta, visit his website to see more of his work.
I was very interested to read about Christian Nold’s work on mapping emotions using Google Earth and a devices to measure adrenaline levels. As Christian points out, with more and more of the world’s population living in cities, it is important to look at more imaginative ways that demonstrate how humans react to the urban environment.
To read the full text of the article, visit The Guardian.
As part of the preparations for the HSBC Offscreen Student Expedition 2008, Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop travelled to Lebanon to investigate how to galvanise a massive online audience for the expedition to the UK in July 2008.
The Offscreen Education Programme used the Digital Explorer model on the joint expedition in February 2007, giving it a design edge inconceivable a year ago.
The next collaboration sees 8 students and 4 teachers from Lebanon, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman come to the UK in July 2008. Whilst in Beirut Injaz Lebanon and the British Council organised a Youth focus group to look at technology and web trends amongst teenagers in Beirut and beyond (download the full report - pdf 44k).
There were a couple of interesting points. The first that Facebook has complete dominance as the social networking platform amongst young people. The second was that call rates on mobiles are prohibitively high and so there is a large text and bluetooth culture. Interestingly, the dominance of Facebook made RSS an anathema and Flickr obsolete. Some still used YouTube, but again the video functionality of Facebook was a big factor.
If you would like to discuss these matters, please join the Offscreen in Lebanon Facebook group.
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