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.

New School Environment Project video

It was very exciting to run a pilot School Grounds Project at Eastbury Comprehensive School. We used many of the same techniques that we have employed on overseas expeditions – digital media, blogging, geo-tools (Google Earth and Google Maps) – to investigate the School Grounds and then take action to make a difference to the school environment.

This pilot wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Google UK and especially Kate Hammond and Liz Ericson. Also many thanks go to the pupils and staff at Eastbury Comprehensive School, who were amazing, enthusiastic and talented. Special thanks to Tracy Knight and Ruth Owen for their help and support.

This amazing film was made by the wonderful Jonny Madderson of Just So Films. Thank you for all your hard work.

Continuing thanks to Mark Thackara at Olympus for the great pupil-proof TOUGH digital cameras, that we used for photography and video during the pilot.

As always thank you to Marjan who makes sure that everything just happens, somehow, though still not quite sure how.

[de]‘s Google Earth training video on YouTube

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.

Google Earth at the Geographical Association Conference

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.

Virtual Expeditions at Wilderness Expertise

Have a look at Digital Explorer’s work for Wilderness Expertise, a youth expedition company, designing a series of Virtual Expeditions with Google Earth.

It’s great to see the Digital Explorer methodology slowly branching out into the mainstream.

Google Earth goes to Wales

The first in a series of 10 UK workshops supported by Google took place on Monday 12 November in Swansea. Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop was joined by 12 educators from South Wales to learn how to create virtual fieldwork using Google Earth.

It was great to be on the road and bringing this kind of training to educators who cannot get up to the courses in London. Duncan Hawley (Geography PGCE tutor at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education) was our host for the day, and made the excellent point of developing a deeper pedagogy for the work. Based on his feedback, we will look to develop a deeper range of links and resources on Digital Explorer’s Google Earth pages and host an online forum where educators from all over the UK will be able to discuss how they are applying the methodology in their classrooms and in the field.

For details on future roadshow courses visit the Royal Geographical Society website.

The courses are supported by Google and run in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Digital Explorer has received generous sponsorship from Garmin and Olympus in providing equipment.

Free Google Earth courses

Digital Explorer will be running ten free Google Earth courses for key influencers of geography teaching in LEA maintained schools. The courses will be taking place from October 2007 to March 2008. The courses are kindly sponsored by Google.

Click here for more information and booking

Adding field data to Google Earth

I am very excited, having found a great little programme developed by R. Sgrillo of the Cocoa Research Center in Ilheus, Bahia, Brasil.

We are currently developing a course that will demonstrate how to use this and other tools to build Google Earth into a useful platform for communicating field data.

The GE-Graph tool is fantastic and can be downloaded from: www.sgrillo.net/googleearth/.

Below is an example of the images you can create:

New Google Earth Course dates

Two new dates have been confirmed for the Google Earth Courses at the Royal Geographical Society: Monday 14 May and Monday 2 July.

To book a place contact Lucy Bruzzone at the Royal Geographical Society.
This practical workshop will show teachers and expedition organizations how to create virtual fieldwork using Google Earth as a template. It will involve hands-on experience with digital cameras and GPS units creating mini-fieldwork projects in Hyde Park. Participants will then be shown how this data can be transformed into a virtual journey using Google Earth.

Cost: £111.63 (£95 + VAT) includes course notes, lunch and refreshments. School Members, Fellows and Ordinary Members of the RGS-IBG are entitled to a 10% discount.

More information…