For now, here are some ideas that were jogged by looking at how ipads might be used to inform a walking tour of a coastal area.

The image below is of a map overlay created in Google Earth, showing the flood cells and sub-cells delineated by the council. Image overlays are fairly easy to create.

The Google Earth file was then saved and uploaded online. Pasting the url of the online file into the search box of Google Maps, allows you to see it as above. Note that you can use Google Maps in Earth mode so that 3D buildings show up and you can tilt the map.

We also created some polygons in Google Earth, again an easy thing to do. The different polygons were given colours and made opaque so that you could see the layers and the underlying imagery. You can see the key to the left below as well.

The ordnance datum in Google Earth and the altitude of the different layers is not quite nuanced enough to show localised flooding predictions on a 25, 50, 100 year timeline and looking to finesse these techniques before sharing more fully, but hope you get the idea.

A copy of the presentation from the GIS session at the Royal Geographical Society on 25 January 2010.

Have a look at the Digital Explorer manuals and the School Grounds Projects materials and get in touch if you need any more information.

First things first, if you don’t have Google Earth, download it for your own computer and then be sure to pester the IT office to download it for your school. See the Digital Explorer research if you need to make a case to senior management. To use Google Maps fully you will need to have a Google account, sign up if you haven’t already.

Virtual Atlas

Here are some basic ideas about how to use Google Earth and Google Maps as a virtual atlas projected on a screen or interactive whiteboard. Some of these ideas could be used by pupils on individual computers.

Art: search for locations of galleries, artists, locations of landscapes or use geographic features to inspire Land Art projects
Citizenship: show where events are taking place
Design And Technology: identify different types of shelter in different environments
English: search for locations of books, authors and locations or use locations to inspire creative writing and poetry (e.g. Romantic poets)
Geography: search for locations, physical and urban features and go on virtual field trips
History: search for locations of events and go on virtual field trips
Maths: use for real world distance/speed/time puzzles or use for fractions – e.g. find a car park and give the fraction of number of places filled
Modern Foreign Languages: search for locations to contextualise language learning or ask pupils to give directions in target language
Primary: a range of interesting ideas from Tom Barrett
RE: search for locations e.g. Bodh Gaya, Medina, Bethlehem
Science: look at power generation – wind farms, oil rigs, coal mines (open cast best)

Geographical Encyclopaedia
There is a vast amount of additional information available to users of Google Earth and Google Maps above and beyond basic map data and satellite imagery. In Google Earth, much of this information is stored in layers which are accessible to anyone opening the application. You can also search for kml or kmz files (these are the file types that Google Earth uses) and download information from the internet. When using Google My Maps, users also have access to a large directory of content that they can open.

Art pen tours of art or architecture – e.g. Art Nouveau
Citizenship: use prepared lessons on Google UK Schools site or look at layers such as Fair Trade and the Crisis in Darfur (under the Global Awareness section)
Design And Technology: open tours relevant to technology – e.g. Green buildings
English: open tours of well known novels from Google Lit Trips
Geography: open tours from a range of sites such as Antarctica or see lessons from Google UK Schools
History: see prepared lessons
Maths: looking at the volume of solids – e.g. pyramids
Primary: have a look at some of the teaching ideas on the Google UK schools Site

Digital Mapmaking
Once you are confident with using Google Earth and Google Maps in the classroom, you can start creating your own content and working with your pupils so that they can create their own work as well. Download the Digital Explorer basic manual on using Google Earth to help you create your own content. There is also an advanced manual for additional techniques. Information on Google Maps can be found in the school grounds projects manual.

Art: add more advanced content to placemarks such as paintings, interviews with artists, etc.
Citizenship: Crime local area study, adding data, information and video interviews to a map with potential to collaborate with other schools in the area
Design And Technology: Create a tour showing how shelter and environment are related or plan urban development using 3D polygons as buildings
English: create a tour of a Shakespeare play with images and voiceover or find locations to make a film of a book
Geography: import GPS data and then add photographs and video from a fieldtrip
History: create a narrated tour of an historical event
Modern Foreign Languages: create tours of tourist spots in target language country with images or narrate a tour in the target language
RE: narrate the life of a religious figure with placemarks for main points
Science: plot species distribution in the school grounds using My Maps and share and collaborate with other schools to cover a larger area

Problem solving
When you are confident creating your own content, you can start to transfer these to more project based and enquiry style learning. Google Earth and Google Maps can provide a much greater level of engagement as well as activate a host of different learning styles and thinking skills.

Noel Jenkins has produced some excellent examples on his Juicy Geography site.

But you can come up with your own ideas without doing too much preparation, once your class have the skills needed. For example, if you are teaching a class about calculating distance, speed and time and you wanted to assess how well they were doing, consider setting them a challenge using Google Maps. How long would it take to complete the Three Peaks Challenge? Pupils would have to research the locations, plan a route, and work out whether the time estimates in Google Maps were accurate (pretty sure you could drive faster in some places). This task could involve teamwork, synthesis, judgements, comparisons, research and a host of other skills and above all it might just be more fun. And how do you calculate how much time it takes to walk up Ben Nevis?

Out and about
This is where Google Earth and Google Maps really come alive for learning. Pupils have moved from being passive consumers looking at maps and content on screens to being active creators of content. In this final step, teachers and pupils use Google Earth and Google Maps as tools for sharing pupil voice and generating discussion and change on important issues.

Have a look at this video to see how Google Earth, Google Maps and other tools were used at one school and then download the manual (PDF, 2.6MB), the Teaching Materials (ZIP, 21MB) and have a look at an example blog and see an example Google Earth file.

Here’s a copy of the presentation to accompany the talks at the Playful Learning Zone at this year’s BETT show.

This year, we talked about how to progress with using Google Earth and Google Maps in the classroom all the way from using them as virtual atlases to using them as a base for local area projects and recording school trips and projects.

For a range of teaching ideas across the curriculum see the post 40+ ideas on using Google Earth and Maps in the classroom.

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.

One of the barriers to the full-scale use of Google Earth has been the need to download the software separately from your internet or web browser (software such as Internet Explorer or Firefox). This means that users will go to a website to view information, and then be redirected to download data in a separate application, with the associated 15-30 second wait for Google Earth to load.

Some of this has changed through the use of Google Maps and the ability to create bespoke maps and embed them in a web page using the ‘My Maps’ service. However, this takes away from the awesome 3D experience of Google Earth.

The most recent innovation has been the Google Earth browser plug-in, allowing for the full 3D world to be displayed within a web page. There is as yet no data as to how many downloads of the plug-in there have been. Educators and expeditions, as well as international NGOs must be hoping that the plug-in download may become as ubiquitous as browser plug-ins such as Flash and Java.

I am in two minds as to whether I think that the Google Earth plug-in should be an included download with other Google products. It is a really powerful tool, and yet I am reticent about software providers bundling products together. The other problem at the moment is that the plug-in is only available on PC. Mac users will have to wait, alongside anyone using Google’s new Chrome internet browser (oops!).

Let’s say by some time in 2009, the Google Earth plug-in will be installed on enough computers globally that we can start to make it a primary, rather than secondary mode of online communication. Where does that take us?

First, have a quick think about how much of the web content that you consume or produce is geographically located. Then, ponder how much better we can communicate what is happening in the world if instead of using the blank slate of a web page, we can start to use an interactive 3D globe as a starting point.

By using a 3D environment, web designers are not limited to placing the media we are all used to (video, photographs, text and graphics) but 3D models (using SketchUp) and 3D graphs come into play.

This development marks a exciting departure for expeditions (really take the online audience with you), education (the ability to use this new 3D world for anything from a decision-making and scenario-planning environment to locating news stories and lessons about our world), news (watch and read where it happened) and NGOs and development organisations (real-time media and statistics to encourage public involvement in development and disaster relief).

So what does geo-web 2.0 look like? We are already there in some ways. Google ‘My Maps’ allows users to create and share maps in the same way that Flickr allows users to share photos or YouTube enables video sharing. Maps have entered the media sharing/hosting aspect of web 2.0. Some blogs use geo-blogging plug-ins to show the location of a particular post on a 2D map.

The social networking side is lacking and it is in the sphere of MySpace, Facebook and friends that the real innovation and societal worth could be realised. It is accepted that we must act locally and yet think globally. The geo-web can become a tool that allows us to understand the world better and provide a platform for informed debate and action.

We can start to tell stories geographically, place media that ehance our understanding of the world and now place all these in a 3D global environment, and maybe in the not too distant future we will be able to add comments and interact more fully.

Take for instance the decision by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, to plant 10,000 new trees in London. Wouldn’t it be great if Londoners had some say in the matter. Here’s my image of a beech tree planted on Columbia Road. Should other people have the same ability to choose the type of tree they would like and where it should go. Maybe my neighbours think it will block too much light and would prefer a shorter tree such as a rowan or willow. Can their voice be heard too? Or could I get a community group together and buy a tree online which the council would then plant?

The geo-web fully realised means a citizenship-based world, with communities making decisions about their lives and their environments using participatory technology. These stories can then be shared globally to create a web of information and positive action.

We have the technology, do we have the will?

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.

Above is an example from Digital Explorer’s test blogger site, showing a map of the Atlas Mountains with placemarks added, highlighting Jbel Toubkal and other places.

Sadly, neither of the two free blog services have the perfect solution. If you try to use wordpress.com, WordPress cleans the javascript, meaning you can’t see the map. If you use blogger, you lose all the flexibility of pages vs posts. A wordpress blog could have it’s homepage set simply to a map page.

It would radically simplify web communications for expeditions and fieldwork.

When a decent solution does appear, I will let you all know.

For now:

1. if you use blogger – you’re fine, but bug the blogger support people to have posts and pages like wordpress.com
2. if you use wordpress.com – you’re up the creek until the powers that be make changes – lobby them!!
3. if you host your wordpress blog yourself, there are some plug-ins that will help out – the best one is at the Remote Sensing Tools blog and does not require any messing around with APIs and the like

Good luck, and let me know if there are any neater solutions out there.

It is now possible for anyone to create their own Google Map, using ‘My Maps’ and link to this from their own website. Have a play around and see what you come up with. There is an amazing amount of content which you can add to your own map. When you have clicked on the ‘My Maps’ tab, just click ‘Add content’.

The other exciting feature of Google Maps versus Google Earth, is that Maps now supports a html editor, meaning that you can embed video, extremely easily.