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:
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.
TechCrunch writes a great review of web video, noting that things have moved on since Google bought YouTube a year ago. Incredibly informative and a must for anyone looking to host video online.
One other thought…
Please, please, please don’t host your video only on YouTube or similar media-sharing sites. Only the most enlightened schools haven’t blocked these.
By all means use a service such as tubemogul to propagate your video on a number of sites. This will mean that young people can access your content on their own terms outside of school.
I am looking to develop a hosting service for teachers, schools and other developers of educational web video. If you don’t have the ability to host web video at the moment and want your films to be viewed in the classroom, Digital Explorer should be able to help sometime in 2008. Busy times ahead!
There are two things that I have noticed when using web video in the classroom. The first and most pertinent is pupils asking me to enlarge the player to full-screen. When using media players such as Windows Media Player or Real Player this is fairly simple. The complication comes with embedded flash video. In a Year 11 Citizenship class examining the issues of debt and aid, I used video from the Make Poverty History website. The problem was that the videos could not be enlarged. This left some of the less enthusiastic members of the class fairly disgruntled.
The solution:
The second issue is the 10-20 seconds gap between pressing play and the video starting. This is enough time for young minds to wander or assume that their teacher is a technological incompetent (I still hold that by some quirk, teachers’ ability to function a DVD/Video player has a strong inverse correlation with their length of time in the classroom). This is a mistake that we made (as with the one above) on the Offscreen Student Expedition, by having a black screen and a boring pre-loader (the small animation that shows as the video gets ready to play).
The solution:
I have been thinking about what makes excellent and engaging blogs from the field, both from my experience setting up the site for the Offscreen Student Expedition 2007, looking at other expedition blogs for the classroom such as Cape Farewell, and planning what changes to make for the next Offscreen Student Expedition in 2008, bringing 8 young people from the Arab world to the UK in July next year.
These are some inital ideas, please let me know what you think.
1. High quality digital journalism
Today’s web-users are more discerning and sophisticated than ever before, returning only to sites that both provide high quality information and can relate their stories with appropriate, timely and professionally produced digital video, images and writing.
2. Integration of online social networking tools
Web-based social networking tools, or Web 2.0, can be integrated to increase user interactivity and provide the necessary platforms to create and cultivate an engaged online community.
There are a host of free services out there and it would be a shame if you did not make use of the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Skype, SightSpeed, tubemogul, Brightcove, etc. (thank you to Rick for the last two)
3. Fit-for-purpose educational content
If you are developing content for the classroom, make sure that you are in touch with pupils and teachers. They are the ones who will be able to tell you if the content you are providing is relevant and if the look and feel of your site is engaging for a youth audience.
4. Cutting-edge expedition communications
Updating a website from the side of a mountain or the middle of a desert is theoretically pretty simple. The difficult part is making sure that there are as few problems as possible when you are in the middle of nowhere and making sure that you produce content on time. After a hard day’s expedition, do you really want to cut a short digital video and upload content ready for the morning assembly back in London? Planning how and when digital content is going to be created and updated is essential for a good blog.
5. User-based navigation
Navigation and user-interface need to take into account end users’ requirements and design needs, rather than just the organisation’s preferences alone.
6. Best practices in appropriate moderation processes
Original content submitted to websites or blogs by the spectrum of users must be moderated in a timely and responsible fashion. This ensures that users establish and retain trust in the organisation, and prevents inappropriate content from appearing on websites.
Olympus is supporting Digital Explorer’s Google Earth training by providing the latest model from the Olympus TOUGH range for the practical sessions of the course. The Olympus µ790 SW is the ideal camera for fieldwork and expedition use.
With 7.1 megapixels it produces high quality images that still look sharp, even when projected in the classroom. It is shockproof and waterproof, tough enough to put up with a life outdoors and most pupils. The camera also has internal focusing, meaning less chance of dust wrecking the lens action.
We are looking forward to using the camera in the field and in the classroom.
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.
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