Geoblogging – advice wanted!!

Just putting the finishing touches to a guide for travellers and those going on expeditions and overseas projects on using blogs and other digital media tools to bring their journeys to new audiences online.

Decided to base it around the Blogger platform, this being the simplest, although would love to spend some time including more information on WordPress (think this will be in a few months’ time).

Just wondering if there are any bits of advice out there, that you wished you’d had before making your first blog or any things that you would really like to know how to do.

Full acknowledgement for any great tips.

Thank you and happy travels.

Social Publishing

Just come across issuu and thought I would give it a go. Here’s one of the Digital Explorer manuals hosted on their site.

Get your own – Open publication

Google Earth Plus to go!

Google has recently announced that Google Earth Plus is to be discontinued. Google Earth Plus (which cost $20 per year) had the added functionality of being able to import directly from GPS units as well as spreadsheet data.

Google has recognised that the GPS functionality is the feature of Google Earth Plus that most users want and will be incorporating this into the free version of Google Earth.

For other features, users will need to purchase a Google Earth Pro license ($400 per year). Educational users of Google Earth should see the previous post about the Pro grants scheme for schools. If you work for a non-profit, you should contact the Google Earth Outreach team.

For more information about the change, see the Google Earth site.

GE Graph in schools – tech notes

For those of you wishing to use the free and excellent GE Graph program in schools, there are a couple of technical notes to point out. These have been kindly provided by John Watson the IT technician from Wildern School who helped with the two Southampton Google Earth courses.

These may mean nothing to you, but pass on this information to the people responsible for installing GE Graph on the school network and it should help with most glitches.

The .ocx file needed registering. Oddly enough installing the suggested app was enough.. we didn’t even have to run it.

GE graph needs read/write access to the Drive it is installed on. For networked machines this may be a problem as most administrators restrict access to the local drives. Allowing read/write on the GE graph folder was enough for it to run unaffected on our network.

Test from Nokia

Another test this time using my mobile.

New remote posting via email test

I am just testing a new plugin that should make it easy to post via email. All very exciting and should open up a whole new realm of remote blogging.

Audio post by Digital Explorer

An audio message has been left by Digital Explorer! Listen here:

Street View comes to Google Maps

View Larger Map

Street View – a series of street level images stitched together – is now available in Google Maps as well as Google Earth. Have a play around in New York using the example above.

As a couple of people have commented, Street View has been in Google Maps for some time. The only new thing is the interface. Oops! What it does highlight is that it’s easy to miss something like this if the interface isn’t obvious.

Thank you to those who have commented.

If you go to Google Maps, you can activate Street View by dragging the little orange man onto American cities where Street View images have been taken.

NEW Geo-blogging for gappers

Digital Explorer has developed a new course specifically designed for Gap year students on overseas projects and expeditions.

The course focuses on the use of free services such as blogger, youtube (or schooltube and teachertube), flickr and google maps, but takes these further and looks at how these can be used more effectively for creating a professional record of a gap expedition or project that can then be used for a variety of purposes, as well as looking at the use of technology in remote locations.

The course is ideal if you are looking to:

• Create a multimedia record of your Gap Year
• Involve family, friends and sponsors in your project or expedition
• Have an online project or expedition CV for future funders
• Use your Gap Year as an educational opportunity and share it with pupils and teachers at your former school

The course runs for a half-day on Wednesday 28 January 2009 and costs £55 (incl VAT) and can be booked with the Royal Geographical Society.

ICT in Geography

ICT in secondary schools: a short guide for teachers, edited by David Mitchell and produced by the GA with the support of the RGS-IBG and Becta, outlines some of the most important ICT available for teaching and learning geography, both in and outside the classroom. Drawing on the work of geography teachers and what they find really works, each short chapter takes a separate area of technology and explains, in simple terms, its meaning, why it is helpful for teaching and learning geography, and practical steps to get started.

Digital Explorer’s work is highlighted in the section on Virtual Fieldwork, written by Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop.