Has everybody seen "google earth" in action? Absolutely stunning. You have to install an application to use it and it seems quite processor-heavy, but it is well worth a look.
We just had a two week science/technology camp for our science lead teachers. Google Earth was one of the tools we explored. It is awesome! I can't wait to use it with my students!
Speaking of planets, a new planet has been discovered and announced today!
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-126
Jutti
Groovy, thanks! I used this to find out what that thing is in top of my roof that's been sitting there for a few weeks. 
Seriously, this is an excellent application. It's especially great for those of us who want to tour the planet but who don't want to fly, or who can't afford to fly, or both.
I was actually going to post something about this but you beat me to it. I'm usually skeptical about Google apps, as I have the feeling they are trying to be the next Microsoft monopoly and most of their apps tend to be half-baked and not very impressive when they release them. But Google Earth has got to be one of the most amazing computer applications I have ever seen in my life. It's the reason I haven't popped in to Moodle.org the last two days, I've just been playing with it most of the time.
This is an incredibly useful tool for educational purposes. It's revolutionary really. A few weeks ago an Egyptologist posted a book review of a paper atlas of ancient Egypt that he said would be the one book he would want to have on a desert island and at the time I thought it was a pretty good choice but now the book pales in comparison.
I've already decided I am going to run an online course on the geography of Egypt and use this heavily. I've already gotten an entirely new perspective on Egypt using this thing. Not only can you explore the earth on your own, but you can also create placemark files that you can then serve over the web that when people click on them it will take them to a particular view within Google Earth. For example, I can take people on a tour down the Nile, simply by arranging a sequence of files that make stops along the way. It seems to me equally possible that you could have students create their own tours. This seems like it has endless possibilities for teaching so many subjects.
I know it doesn't work on Macs and I'm sure it really needs a broadband connection, but with 1.5-3MB SBC Yahoo dsl and about a 1.3 Ghz processor and 500 MB of RAM on the computer I have been using I find the speed to be quite acceptable.
There are forums here for discussing its educational uses. Not many people have posted in the education forums yet but it will be interesting to see the ideas that do get thrown out.
This is an incredibly useful tool for educational purposes. It's revolutionary really. A few weeks ago an Egyptologist posted a book review of a paper atlas of ancient Egypt that he said would be the one book he would want to have on a desert island and at the time I thought it was a pretty good choice but now the book pales in comparison.
I've already decided I am going to run an online course on the geography of Egypt and use this heavily. I've already gotten an entirely new perspective on Egypt using this thing. Not only can you explore the earth on your own, but you can also create placemark files that you can then serve over the web that when people click on them it will take them to a particular view within Google Earth. For example, I can take people on a tour down the Nile, simply by arranging a sequence of files that make stops along the way. It seems to me equally possible that you could have students create their own tours. This seems like it has endless possibilities for teaching so many subjects.
I know it doesn't work on Macs and I'm sure it really needs a broadband connection, but with 1.5-3MB SBC Yahoo dsl and about a 1.3 Ghz processor and 500 MB of RAM on the computer I have been using I find the speed to be quite acceptable.
There are forums here for discussing its educational uses. Not many people have posted in the education forums yet but it will be interesting to see the ideas that do get thrown out.
It is superb isn't it.
I'm surprised you are not a fan of google. Their picasa app is also very good.
http://picasa.google.com/index.html
Again, only appears to be a windows version
I'm surprised you are not a fan of google. Their picasa app is also very good.
http://picasa.google.com/index.html
Again, only appears to be a windows version
I've been playing around with the maps.google.co.uk
for a few days now, and writing one or two little things using their
API. I'm astonished at how detailed the satelite imagery is (except
over bits of DC, interestingly).
The API's really quite accessibile and has the advantage of running through the browser without needing a download. Still early days yet for me, but I can see lots of potential for geographers' moodles.
How about someone writing a nice module to integrate this into Moodle?
The API's really quite accessibile and has the advantage of running through the browser without needing a download. Still early days yet for me, but I can see lots of potential for geographers' moodles.
How about someone writing a nice module to integrate this into Moodle?
How does the API manage to run through the browser without needing a download? I think this aspect of the technology will prove quite revolutionary.
It's really just provides a customisable front end to maps.google.com - do have a look through the documentation. It doesn't have the 3D bangs and whistles of Google Earth (yet...).
There's a nice example of what you can do here.
The only example of my own handywork (much more basic) that I've let go public is here.
There's a nice example of what you can do here.
The only example of my own handywork (much more basic) that I've let go public is here.
Has anyone used the maps.google.com API from inside a moodle course?
Cheers
Linds
Cheers
Linds
Only to put Moodle participants on world map
It get's a list of users and works out the Lon and Lat.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=8188&parent=144674
It get's a list of users and works out the Lon and Lat.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=8188&parent=144674
This has come out recently http://www.batchgeocode.com/ .
In reply to N Hansen
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For what I experimented in past days, the cache system works pretty
fine for have smooth animations on a dialup connection: you visit
locations beforehand and then re-visit in public (I did this two days
ago for a small thing I had to present).
The cache system retains data over different seessions but - unluckily - at times makes the application to unexpectedly close: on next launch of GE, the programme will suggest you cancel all the cache (I experienced on 2 different computers that if you don't do it often the programme will shut down again on the first "fly to" entry you will try).
An empirical suggestion to prevent a second shutdown of the application and having not to delete the cache: before to do any "fly to" move around on the globe (including zooming) for a few secs... For me it worked.
If you liked GE you migth be interested in comparing the Microsoft Thing the comparison it's quite inspiring... have a look to the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, (CA, USA, the road is called "infinite loop"), or to ground zero, (wall street in NYC, USA)...
The cache system retains data over different seessions but - unluckily - at times makes the application to unexpectedly close: on next launch of GE, the programme will suggest you cancel all the cache (I experienced on 2 different computers that if you don't do it often the programme will shut down again on the first "fly to" entry you will try).
An empirical suggestion to prevent a second shutdown of the application and having not to delete the cache: before to do any "fly to" move around on the globe (including zooming) for a few secs... For me it worked.
If you liked GE you migth be interested in comparing the Microsoft Thing the comparison it's quite inspiring... have a look to the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, (CA, USA, the road is called "infinite loop"), or to ground zero, (wall street in NYC, USA)...
N,
Google Earth is now available for macs, it was released recently. I'd add a link but I'm using a strange browser and linux machine today and I daren't risk losing this screen.
Rich
Google Earth is now available for macs, it was released recently. I'd add a link but I'm using a strange browser and linux machine today and I daren't risk losing this screen.
Rich
Google Earth is great though I haven't had much of a play with it yet. Tried google moon yet? Equally good.
NASA World Wind is along the same theme; it's open source too. Rather a large download but well worth it. The data is from Landsat surveys and the USGS data, so the definition is understandably higher in the US.
What I really like is the overlays you can put on it, and watch global events (bush fires, floods, etc) spread as they occurred in real time. My favourite is the aurora borealis overlay. Purely stunning.
</2d>
NASA World Wind is along the same theme; it's open source too. Rather a large download but well worth it. The data is from Landsat surveys and the USGS data, so the definition is understandably higher in the US.
What I really like is the overlays you can put on it, and watch global events (bush fires, floods, etc) spread as they occurred in real time. My favourite is the aurora borealis overlay. Purely stunning.
</2d>
Awesome. Thanks for posting
Hi
I have tried to summarise , what google has added new features , you can have a look over here -: reasons to Google
Thanks
I have tried to summarise , what google has added new features , you can have a look over here -: reasons to Google
Thanks
Just thought I would bump this up because this is also a great tool but isn't getting half the publicity it deserves.
I just downloaded World Wind today and tried it. Had some problems with installation but eventually got it working. It's good. Doesn't have the visual controls like Google Earth and I had to poke around a while to find a list of keyboard commands but it actually has higher resolution data for certain non-US areas that doesn't exist in Google Earth. I also like being able to be able to switch between different views-e.g. you can compare 1990 and 2000 views. But the best thing about it is that World Wind's imagery comes from the US government, hence it is in the public domain, unlike Google Earth's. Which means you can extract the imagery, either via screenshots, or by using screen capture software like Wink to create video flyovers of terrain. I'm definitely going to use this to create teaching graphics.
I just downloaded World Wind today and tried it. Had some problems with installation but eventually got it working. It's good. Doesn't have the visual controls like Google Earth and I had to poke around a while to find a list of keyboard commands but it actually has higher resolution data for certain non-US areas that doesn't exist in Google Earth. I also like being able to be able to switch between different views-e.g. you can compare 1990 and 2000 views. But the best thing about it is that World Wind's imagery comes from the US government, hence it is in the public domain, unlike Google Earth's. Which means you can extract the imagery, either via screenshots, or by using screen capture software like Wink to create video flyovers of terrain. I'm definitely going to use this to create teaching graphics.
A timely thread for me.
Since November I've been putting together a moodle course with video demos of how to build a map with Google Earth. Its pretty close to market, the idea is to just release it as a public vodcast and see what kind of specialist user turns up on the moodle course, hopefully off the back of it we can launch some pay for courses in geographic information systems (GIS).
I talked to my boss last week and he's also open to the idea of us targeting UK geography teachers as a user group as that has obvious outreach potential for us as a UK Uni - we have a data set for a river restoration scheme in the New Forest that I have some funding to produce in Google Earth, if any UK Geog teacher would be interested in this sort of thing do drop me a line, I'd like to know what you could use.
IMHO Google Earth is web mapping finally coming of age. For the first time powerful visualisations can be produced by those with low technical ability rather than GIS 'priests' with a lot of technical knowledge and access to expensive software. I also think the way we use the web will move towards this sort of spatial organisation and google seem to be the front runners in using it at the moment.
Rich
Since November I've been putting together a moodle course with video demos of how to build a map with Google Earth. Its pretty close to market, the idea is to just release it as a public vodcast and see what kind of specialist user turns up on the moodle course, hopefully off the back of it we can launch some pay for courses in geographic information systems (GIS).
I talked to my boss last week and he's also open to the idea of us targeting UK geography teachers as a user group as that has obvious outreach potential for us as a UK Uni - we have a data set for a river restoration scheme in the New Forest that I have some funding to produce in Google Earth, if any UK Geog teacher would be interested in this sort of thing do drop me a line, I'd like to know what you could use.
IMHO Google Earth is web mapping finally coming of age. For the first time powerful visualisations can be produced by those with low technical ability rather than GIS 'priests' with a lot of technical knowledge and access to expensive software. I also think the way we use the web will move towards this sort of spatial organisation and google seem to be the front runners in using it at the moment.
Rich
People might also be interested in this Google Map Hacks blog