Category: Google Earth

Maths in Las Vegas

Google Earth, My classPublished on5 Comments on Maths in Las Vegas

I used Google Earth and a resource I had made about a year ago in my numeracy lesson today. It was just so much fun and the children were really responsive! Maths Vegas is basically a set of placemarks detailing some maths activities in and around the city. I remember that when I made it I sort of realised there was a great deal of maths available in real life it just needed unlocking. And the spyglass that is GE is a great way in.

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So we have been looking at the area of compound shapes and generally exploring 2D and 3D shapes again. So I zoomed into the city of Las Vegas with the 3D buildings layer switched on and looked closely at some of the buildings we could see. Identifying a cylinder and other cuboids. We then explored the area and perimeter of a car park that I had added. The children loved it and were really engaged with the work. One thing that was useful was the ability to use objects they know to help them estimate – so we estimated the breadth of the car park and looked at what units of measurement would be most appropriate and the size of one of the cars parked in the car park. This helped them realise the scale of their estimates.

The Maths in Las Vegas kml resource was posted last year on my part of the GE Forum

Article for Google

Google, Google Earth, Mapping, My classPublished onLeave a Comment on Article for Google

Esther from Google Maps has been in touch after reading my post about the local history work (see below). She has asked if I could write an article about how we use the mapping service in the classroom. It will coincide with some current work I am doing with my class about our local history. I am hoping to use Quikmaps (a mashup of Google Maps) to locate some old photographs on a current map. Should be fun.

This idea popped into my head in the middle of the night…

Google Earth, MappingPublished on1 Comment on This idea popped into my head in the middle of the night…

They seem to do that a lot. I can’t help but think over a few ideas as I drift off to sleep and I was mulling over the use of old and new photographs that we have been doing in our local history. I wanted to explore the use of GPS and geotagging to help us locate some of the old pictures. Well basically what I have come up with is a conceivable set of Geography/History/ICT based activities that would be great to do.

You would need.

  • GPS Receivers – hand held X 5 (one per group)
  • Network copy of Robogeo (geotagging software)
  • Digital cameras – X 5 (one per group)
  • Copies of old photos laminated to be taken out with you
  • Optional: portable mp3 recording equipment; iPod, iRiver

Prior to taking the children out you would need to locate whereabouts the old photographs have been taken and add these as placemarks into all 5 GPS devices – or you could just record the placemarks and ask the children to enter the lat and long as part of the task. (This task is assuming there has been some prior work using GPS devices within the school grounds for example)
So what would the task involve? I will break it into different steps. Essentially the main learning objective are

  • To understand and recognise the changes that have occured over time to different locations in your local area.
  • Use GPS and geotagging software to accurately locate the old photographs onto a modern day map.

The activities would be in this order:

  1. Locate each GPS placemark and match it to one of the old photographs the children have with them.
  2. At the exact location take an identical phtotgraph using the cameras – take time to frame the photograph exactly as the older one was taken.
  3. (After completing all of the photographs) Return to an ICT suite connect both GPS device and camera to computer and load Robogeo software. Match up each placemark (lat and long) from GPS to the photographs. [This can be done for the new set of photographs as well as the older set.]
  4. Export the finished work into many different formats: Google Earth, Google Maps, to flickr. Embed the map into a class wikispace.
  5. An added feature of RoboGEO is the ability to associate an audio file with the image. The audio files could be recorded using an iPod or other mp3 device and loaded onto the PC as well.

The activities might need a bit of support but they are certainly not out of reach for upper KS2 children.I am not sure how many primary schools own there own GPS devices though!

Google Earth use in classrooms

Google EarthPublished on1 Comment on Google Earth use in classrooms

This app won me over straight away. Over a year ago when I started to use GE I could see massive potential in just being able to see the world in an instant. So I set about making some resources and clearly the first things that came to mind are the geographical uses of the programme. I decided to start posting them on the GE Forum under UK Primary Curriculum and people started to look at it.
I produced some Google Earth resources for “Village life in India” which is a Geography QCA unit. Staff at my school used it with great success in Year 5 and it was a simple resource including locations of the school, county, country, continents and the village itself. I also added in an overlay of a more detailed map showing Chembakoli. Simple stuff but it had a great impact on the children and was a great teaching tool.

BBC DV Planet Earth snapshot

The resources I produced just stemmed from there really, my only problem… not enough time to produce and develop the ideas I had. But someone was looking – there have been over 12,000 views on my forum since I began.
I think that the most successful resource I have made, has been the BBC Planet Earth work. The TV series was quite amazing and when I found that much of the video content had been made available online via the BBC website I used it to illustrate the whereabouts of the different aspects of nature in GE.

The only disappointing thing is that although there have been many people viewing there has not been any contributions of content from UK teachers.

Geotagging: extended…

Google EarthPublished on

RoboGeo is now part of my software list, I purchased the simple program to help me tag my photographs I take. During our trip to the Norfolk coast I took many photos and recorded the locations using my GPS as before. I then loaded the photos into RoboGeo and edited the Lat/Lon manually; this is pretty time consuming and I think I will be getting a upgrade on my GPS soon so that I can connect to my PC and take advantage of down/uploading files.

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Once the information about the photographs location is completed you can export to Flickr / Google Maps / Google Earth. The latter creates KML or KMZ (if including the photos with the file) files and automatically opens in GE. There is even an option to plot a photo path or route; this adds a pathway in GE connecting your photo locations.

(The photo above shows the stamped data at the bottom)