Tag: Google Earth

Make a Coordinates Activity in Google Earth

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I have been really excited to see the interest in my idea for Maths Maps. On Sunday afternoon I had the idea to overlay a simple coordinates grid on the satellite imagery in Google Maps or Google Earth, so children could answer position and direction based questions.

As in so many other cases those who follow me on Twitter helped me out when I was looking for an image to use for the grid. Admittedly I need to brush up on my image creation/editing skills but I was so grateful to get so many people offering help and ideas. Matt Lovegrove a Year 2 teacher in Berkshire, kindly made me some 10×10 grids which were perfect.

After much exploring I discovered that adding an overlay onto Google Maps is not so easy as it is in Google Earth. Here is a how to create your own Google Earth coordinates overlay (and in fact any image overlay!)

Firstly use Google Earth to find a place that is relatively interesting (there is quite a lot of choice you’ll agree!), you will be asking things like, ” What is the position of…?” etc so there needs to be enough in view. You might like to look around the Shapes in Paris Maths Map as it would fit well with this topic, or perhaps the location of your school might be a good starting point. Then follow these screenshots.

You can see an example of the linked coordinates task in the Shapes in Paris map, the placemark is titled “12 Coordinates Questions”.

I also created an example using the school’s location as a starting point in our lesson today. I was able to ask them about the coordinates of our school and even our classroom. I picked up on buildings and shops in the locality and kicked off the lesson using this resource. We zoomed in from space by the way (always exciting) and I told them I had spent all weekend painting the lines and had cleared out the local hardware store of red paint.

Some of the children worked independently today on the Google Earth task and they were really engaged and enjoying the task, we recorded in our maths books, as this was simple and best for us. I hope you are able to follow the idea through for your own group of students and using the screenshots create your own Google Earth coordinates activity.

LearningTech Newsletter Issue#2

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It was great to get your reactions about the first of my LearningTech newsletters aimed at colleagues at my school. The feedback from staff was equally positive and so here is the second of the newsletters.

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In this issue I have included some reminders about the joy that is Google Earth, we have an account about the use of the Nintendo DS in Year 4 from Helen Barrett (yes, my wife!) as well as the usual Tom’s Tech Tip and some web highlights.

LearningTech Newsletter Issue#2

Download a PDF copy

As always I am happy to hear your suggestions and reactions to the newsletters and trust you find something useful for you or your staff in this issue.

(Special thanks to Toby Holman who sent over some of his school newsletters that he has been producing over the last few months, it was great to see how other people are producing them.)

100 Interesting Ways

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In November 2007 I began the first of a series of Google presentations gathering together some ideas about the uses of different tools for the classroom. I thought that the easy manner of sharing Google Docs was ideal to collate thoughts, tips and suggestions from teachers and educators all over the world.

I began with interesting ways to use the interactive whiteboard and the family has since grown to include, tips for Google Earth, Google Docs and the most recent Pocket Video Cameras. It has been great to watch them evolve as people get in touch and I add them to the document and they make their own edits.

Here is the family photo 🙂

My intention from the beginning was that there should be many authors of the presentations and that teachers and school staff could happily take the resource and share it with their colleagues. As it is in a simple presentation format it seems to have been successful in doing that.

In total we have collated 100 101 suggestions, tips and ideas for the classroom! (I can’t type quick enough and people keep adding more ideas!) It is fantastic to be part of that collaborative effort to share what we do.

The most recent on pocket video cameras seems to have really hit a rich vein of classroom ideas – so far 29 ideas have been shared by people all over the world and I only started it 3 days ago. I haven’t had chance to add an idea myself yet! Perhaps this wealth of ideas illustrates the power and potential of video in the classroom – which isn’t particularly new but pocket video cameras give us, and the children we work with, much easier access.

Who knows what the next 100 ideas will be about but I hope that you can be part of it – please take some time to take a look through some of them above, let me know if you have used the presentations with your staff. If you want to add an idea to any of the above presentations just let me know your email address and I will add you as an editor.

My Maths Lesson Today – Using SMART Notebook and Google Earth for 3D Shape

Google Earth, Maths, My class, SMARTboardsPublished onUpdated on10 Comments on My Maths Lesson Today – Using SMART Notebook and Google Earth for 3D Shape

Our class had a very enjoyable numeracy lesson today in which they were further exploring nets of 3D shapes and developing their ability to visualise them. We used SMART Notebook on the class laptops to help record our work as well as Google Earth for our shape of the week.

This week we have been exploring nets of 3D shapes and for the lesson’s “Shape of the Week” starter I had Google Earth running with the Pyramids (Egypt) placemarked – we zoomed, from right out in space, into the location of these great monuments. (I still love the awe and wonder of that, so do the kids!) It was a good link with our Ancient Egyptian history topic. I had switched on the 3D Buildings layer and I panned and moved about the modelled pyramids. We then spent some time talking about the properties of square based pyramids, their nets and the pyramid family in general. I scribed their ideas straight onto Google Earth using the SMARTBoard pens and annotated the pyramids. I good start to the session.

For the main part of the lesson and the independent task I wanted the children to visualise the top and the bottom of a net. Which face in a cube net does not move and which would become the top of the cube? So we combined the practical use of Clixi with a SMART Notebook that allowed the children to easily recreate and record the nets.

I shared a notebook file on the network, which the children accessed and opened on their own laptop. The children were working in pairs on their numeracy tables. They made the possible nets with the Clixi and then generating the same net in the notebook from some infinite cloned shapes I had setup. I then wanted them to colour the top RED and the bottom GREEN to show they understood how the net behaved when folded. The technology was not complex but it allowed them to quickly recreate the nets and show what was needed – less time was spent recording due to the technology. Which meant that more time was spent visualising how the net worked, exploring the Clixi nets they had made and discussing the possibilities in their pairs.

I was really pleased with the progress made throughout the lesson as the children discussed and explored the nets of cubes, cuboids and pentagonal prisms. I was equally impressed, however not surprised, in the successful way the blended learning resources worked – how they complimented each other and how the no frills technology began to become invisible amidst the learning going on.

Using Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter in this Afternoon's Science Lesson

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In my science lesson this afternoon we used Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter to help us get a better understanding about how day length varies across the UK, and an insight into the differences around the world.

As part of our introduction to the concept of day length I used Google Earth and the sun/shadow layer to illustrate the movement of the Earth’s shadow. We played the animation for the day and talked about what we could see in the way it moved.

What did Google Earth do to enhance the lesson?

  • This tool allows you to control the Earth’s shadow – that is a powerful simulation in the context of this lesson.
  • The timeline at the top of the screen shows accurate timing of where the sunrise/sunset is during a given 24 hours.
  • You can play through 24 hours of sunlight and darkness in a matter of seconds.
  • It offers children a global perspective on day and night – and yet in the same moment you could be focused in on your school and explore it on a more local level.
  • If I was to continue this unit further I would consider a more prolonged and individual use of Google Earth and simple data sets of sunrise/set times. This would provide the children the link between the times and a visual representation of the Earth’s shadow.

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In pairs the children worked in Google Docs on a set of sunrise and sunset times for UK cities. They used a simple formula to help them calculate the differences and so work out the day length in hours and minutes. They then looked at ordering the cities according to day length.

What did Google Docs do to enhance the lesson?

  • The children were able to share document ownership of the day length calculations.
  • Docs remembers to save the progress regularly – data loss is very rare.
  • Children’s completed spreadsheets were “handed in” to me to review by sharing with me as a contact. The docs will then appear in my own list and I will get an email message too.
  • I was able to model on a shared copy of the document displayed on everyone’s laptop screen. The changes that were made were updated in real time on their copy. When they went to make their own copy the modelled examples were part of their own.

As a longer extension to this task I asked on my Twitter network to provide some real locations for my children to research and find sunrise and sunset information for. 

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I have used Twitter in a similar way in the past and once again I was thrilled to get so many responses that challenged my class. The locations were from right around the globe – India to Australia, from Thailand to Scotland. As an extension my class chose one or more of these locations as they appeared in my replies window on TweetDeck, and found out the day length.

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What did Twitter do to enhance the lesson?

  • Real data, from real people in real locations. I would just explain a little about the person Tweeting if I knew them. Real connections.
  • Purposeful challenges from real people.
  • It may only be a short 140 characters from those who contributed but it provided a hugely engaging task that made us think beyond our shores.
  • I cannot think of any other tool that would allow me to connect to so many teachers so easily.
  • The contributions were from so many different parts of the world that it provided us with day lengths that we could compare and contrast with our own. 
  • The teachers that connected with us naturally asked other questions and challenges that allowed us to explore other things. 
  • It provided the whole class an opportunity to think, if only for a few minutes, as global citizens.

It was an great hour or so and I believe the tools we chose to use to support our learning were the correct ones. I was of course pleased to see the children engaging with Google Docs so effortlessly, it is just part of what we do now.

Curiously Google have altered the process of creating a copy of a document, removing the “Copy Collaborators” step. This caused us no end of headaches when sharing a doc with many students, as they in turn copied the document and also the 60 collaborators. You can imagine the burgeoning number of copies! I hope our efforts to share what we did contributed in a small way to that development. 

Every teacher should use Twitter, not only as a networking tool to help them learn – but in regards to connecting to the wider world to support learning. It is easy, it is fast and in my opinion peerless. Thankyou to all of you who contributed to the lesson with your messages – I hope that this post provides a context for your contribution.