Expedition Websites (Content pt 1)

Content is king. Without good content, all the other effort you put into your website will be a waste of time and you will lose visitors. There are two types of content: static and dynamic. Static content describes the content that you usually type once and doesn’t change, such as information about your project and team. Dynamic content describes the updates that you send during the expedition, often in the form of a blog. A common technical distinction is that static content is contained within pages and dynamic content is contained within (blog posts). (more…)

Expedition Websites (Basics)

There is an unspoken rule that every expedition must have a website, in some ways akin to the current phenomenon that nothing actually happens unless it is posted on Facebook. However, underlying this accepted norm is something that reaches into what 21st Century exploration is all about.

If exploration is the process of discovering new knowledge about our planet and its people, should we not be in the process of training local researchers to do the job for us, gradually relegating these overseas to nostalgia. What gives the current model legitimacy?

I would argue that it is the transformative power of the journey that results in so many of those involved in exploration and expeditions becoming passionate advocates and activists for environments and issues the world over, that is crucial. Expeditions return to the UK wild-eyed and passionate, capable of exciting, inspiring and sharing their experiences and discoveries. (more…)

GIS session at the RGS

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40+ ideas on using Google Earth and Maps in the classroom

These are some teaching ideas to accompany the Digital Explorer presentations at the Playful Learning Zone at BETT this year. Come and see us to find out more.

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
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BETT Google Earth and Google Maps presentation

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.

Satellite phones, arrests and biofuel

I saw this story develop this morning via twitter. Andy Pag is 13,500km into the inspiring Biotruck Expedition attempting to travel around the world emitting less than 2 tonnes of CO2, and discovering how other people are cutting their footprint. I enjoy seeing his updates on twitter, then this morning his arrest in the Indian city of Ajmer unravelled live on the internet.

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Digital Explorer work enhances geographical understanding for 80%

A recent report on the impact of Digital Explorer’s two year programme to improve the use of technology in the geography classroom has resulted in 80% of teachers involved noting an improvement in pupil engagement and understanding.

This is fantastic news and shows the positive impact that technology can have. A full copy of the report can be downloaded.

Google Earth Expedition Gallery #4 – Marrakech Land Use

This fourth entry in Digital Explorer’s Google Earth gallery is where it all started with a study of urban land use in Marrakech with pupils from Eastbury Comprehensive in 2006 on the Toubkal ’06 expedition.

	The use of Google Earth and remote blogging received an Innovative Geography Teaching Grant from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
	This work is also held up as a national case study by BECTA’s Next Generation Learning project.

Download the Google Earth tour – Marrakech Land Use

You will need Google Earth to view the tour. If you don’t have Google Earth, you can download it for free:

Contact Digital Explorer, if you would like to make a Google Earth tour for your expedition or fieldwork.

Social networking – contacts or content?

The rise and rise of Twitter (a micro-blogging tool) has brought into sharp focus a division or shift in the social networking or web 2.0 landscape.

If web 2.0 can be categorised as online conversation, whether that be through the written word, images, video or a mix of the three, do we join these conversations based on who they’re with or what they’re about?

Contacts or content?

The difference is most notable when comparing a service such as Facebook and something like Twitter. Facebook replicates real world friendship and contact groups, whether professional or personal. Although some people gather ‘friends’ as those they’re life depended on it, the convention seems to be that I need to know you before I allow you to be my ‘friend’.

Conversely with Twitter, the friendship aspect is taken away. I can become a ‘follower’ of someone’s Twitter feed (the list of short comments or ‘tweets’ that are made and posted online). Becoming a follower of their feed does not make me their friend. It means that what they are saying is interesting and I would like to know what they have to say. It may be that I know this person in the real world and know that they are interesting, but there is much more opportunity to take the ‘contact’ aspect out of Twitter and keep your relations based on your interest in the conversation.

Reaching a wider audience – the cost of quality

Innovation in technology and design means money and time. Nothing that Digital Explorer does is radically new nor are the methods we use different from what thousands of others are doing. So what’s the difference?

Quality.

I have watched YouTube videos that pupils have made. It’s always quite exciting to see which teachers have been secretly filmed. If you’re a teacher and never searched YouTube for your school, it can be quite revealing. The quality of these videos is pretty poor, and not just the content. Sound quality, framing, narrative, soundtrack, etc. are all out of the window. However, for a small group of people they are interesting and amusing. Quality in web video production gives you access to a greater audience.

There are blogs that I read that are easy to navigate, well laid out and full of interesting content. On some blogs, the design really adds to the content, giving a sense of place, ideas and inspiration. Others are truly shocking, full of garish fonts and mis-sized photographs, with dull headlines and lack of decent opening paragraphs. Again, unless you have a very particular interest in the person/people writing the blog or the content, you will not browse, but move on.

When Digital Explorer started, the inspirations were the model of the broadcast news journalist reporting from across the world, and the rigour of the professional expedition. Digital Explorer remains adamant that no compromise should be made in terms of quality, but that costs money.

A curriculum for the digital global citizen would include…

• the skills to shoot, edit and upload a quality digital video (nothing more complicated than an establishing shot, a few interviews with proper framing and decent sound quality, and maybe an appropriate cut-away or three)
• the skills to create or identify an engaging, appropriate and accessible online platform (blog, ning, social networking group or page, etc.) and the ability to write engaging content with a mix of digital media to back it up (photos, video and maps)
• an appreciation and knowledge of digital mapping technologies and how they can help to inform and contextualise issues online
• the ability to apply these skills to learning in Citizenship, English, Geography and Science taught curricula, so that any digital content has proper rigour in terms of research methods and young people understand how to create change

This curricula involves money and time. Who will build this capacity outside of the current taught curriculum? Where will the money for additional hardware come from? Who will link these new skills to local, national and global issues?

In the future, Digital Explorer wants to grow its current programmes to become a techno-eco-scout movement for the 21st Century.

Give young people the skills they need to become leaders.

We are failing them if we don’t.