Tag: Google

Google Maps Session at #GTAUK

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During the Google Teacher Academy UK I ran a 30 minute session on Google Maps. It was a bit of a whirlwind of a training session but hopefully allowed the participants the chance to briefly play with Maps and also to think about how we could use Maps in a different way.
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Here are some of the highlights:

Overview

10 minutes

  • San Francisco map from 1915 – mapping has come a long way. 95 years of progress.
  • Classroom ideas – Google Streetview, seeing Tom teaching PE, exploring Whitby Harbour and Abbey during work on Dracula with Year 6.
  • Classroom ideas – James and the Giant Peach, using the map to tell a story.

10 minutes

  • Activity time – add a placemark and continue the story in the Story Map

10 minutes

  • Practical thoughts about classroom use
  • Mashup Magic – some examples of the API use

Presentation

Google Maps GTAUK Page

One of the strongest elements of the Google Teacher Academy is the huge resource that has been accumulated on the GTAUK wiki. Each presenter has had a page that they have populated with a vast amount of links and all sorts of resources for people to explore further. Here are a few of mine and be sure to explore the rest on my Google Maps page.

Mashup Magic:

Google Maps in Other Languages:

Google Maps beyond Earth:

Activity: Story Maps

On the wiki I have outlined two different activities for the participants to look at but with little time to explain them we used the Story Map idea. I gave a simple story starter in a placemark on Westminster Bridge in London:

It was exactly where they said it would be. The Thames swirled below me from a passing barge as I lifted it too my chest.

The bridge seemed quieter than usual, and yet I could feel eyes watching. Which way now? I needed to get moving. I had already spent too long.

I turned and pressed on.

The participants would then choose from a number of story paths I had drawn on the map using the line tool, adding placemarks and continuing the story. It was a simple idea that showed the collaborative potential of maps that is often overlooked. You can see our efforts below.


View GTAUK – Story Map in a larger map

Mashups

One of the last things that I showed was the amazing Kinomap that allows users the ability to map a video route such as a bike ride or a run. I showed a cyclist doing a tour of the Googleplex – well worth a look. (It also has a mobile app you can download)

An amusing diversion

If I could do it again?

There are a couple of features of Google Maps I wanted to emphasise and demonstrate more clearly, time was a little tight and I probably didn’t do them justice.

Distance Measurement Tool – can be added from the Labs link at the top and appears in your maps “Created by Others”. It is really useful as a comparison of units of measurement. It even has Smoots, which the GTAUK planning team spent a bit of time talking about the day before the event.

URL Shortener – the links provided for Maps is always really long. Again from Labs there is the URL Shortener. But the trade off is that you lose the option to grab the embed code.

Place Pages – recently added to the mobile version of Maps, it is really handy to have a single page of information about landmarks and search results. From a search result placemark look for the More Info link – it is a single web page summary about that place pulling in photos and information from other sources. Useful for classes when they are doing any type of research.

Collaborate – each map gives you options to collaborate with others. From the top of your map find the Collaborate button on the left, opposite the Edit button.

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I hope that those of you who were with me in the sessions enjoyed them and took away something you could use in the classroom – and for those who weren’t, that there is something in this blog post or in the wiki to instigate some ideas. Please let me know.

A Google View of One of My Lessons

Google, Mapping, My classPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on A Google View of One of My Lessons

It is certainly not normal to have people taking pictures of your lessons without your knowledge, well here is one that I wasn’t expecting!


View Larger Map

Yes that’s me and a colleague doing some throwing and catching work with our Year 5s during a PE session.

Since it started Google Streetview has been criticised by many for possibly breaching privacy laws and some residents in Buckinghamshire have even blocked the images being taken.

That said, I think the new imagery provides an incredibly rich educational resource. I think it can be used in a number of ways to support curriculum work:

  • Illustrate places that are crucial parts of topics, such as historical monuments or geographical features.
  • As part of a local area study explore the Street View imagery (where available) to start discussions and activities before going on a walk.
  • We used Street View to look at a type of building described in detail in Streetchild used in Year 5.
  • Help children picture part of storytelling or writing by following a path or looking at a setting using Street View imagery.
  • Explore the maths that surrounds us all using the resource and Maths Maps.

Let me know of any further uses you have for Street View in the classroom – or indeed if your lesson has been caught on the Google cameras.

Google Teacher Academy :: London, UK :: 29th July 2010

GooglePublished onUpdated on14 Comments on Google Teacher Academy :: London, UK :: 29th July 2010

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London to NYC: Swim the Atlantic…

I am so excited to finally be writing about this! Just as the English school Summer holidays are beginning, teachers and educators in Europe will have the opportunity to share their great ideas and exceptional implementation of Google Tools in the classroom.

For almost 3 years I have been running my own mini campaign to bring the Google Teacher Academy (GTA) to these shores. I recall sending numerous tweets, emails and messages to organisers, certified teachers and attendees at US teacher academies, urging them to ask about a UK event. They asked on my behalf and I thank them for raising the flag for me so many times, and putting up with my pestering.

I took every opportunity to press the need for something in the UK as I was experiencing and reading about so much good practice that centred on the use of Google tools. And I have done for the last 3-4 years.

Unfortunately my wishes seemed to be falling on ears that were unable to help:

“We have many requests for Google Teacher Academies to be held in other countries, however we are unable…”

However my determination was reinforced with the GTA UK Google Group and the support shown for it. I was fortunate enough to meet with Google at BETT this year and took the idea of a GTA UK on another step, which has eventually led to this announcement.

Back in November 2008 I wrote about some of my frustrations, and why a GTA in the UK was (is) a good idea,

50 certified trainers in the UK and Europe taking innovative ideas with them back to their schools, districts and counties would help other teachers to begin to better understand Google tools and the potential they have. Admittedly Google tools are not the only thing available, but in my opinion used in the right way they hold a strong place in any classroom toolkit.

I cannot wait to see you all on July 29th at the Google offices in London to share your stories, innovations and ideas. Let’s make it a great one. Good luck with your applications.

Pic: London to NYC: Swim the Atlantic…

3 Educational Web Applications I’d Like to Make

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I am sure you have had moments when you discover your inner inventor too. Here are three web based applications I have much pondered and if I had more time, money, expertise would probably have made by now.

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The old Story – A2 by h.koppdelaney
Attribution-NoDerivs License

StoryBook Earth

Inspired by my work on storytelling using Google Earth and WeTellStories, StoryBook Earth would be a place to share, develop and create geotagged stories. When we write or tell stories we are picturing a location, a setting. In combining the imagery of Google Earth, the ability to add text, audio and even further media to specific places, you have a powerful storytelling form.

StoryBook Earth would develop the idea of “story” and “narrative” and to connect students in different parts of the world. It would also be an attempt to explore how the local becomes the global: to provide an appreciation of students in other parts of the world. It would provide an alternative way of “seeing” and “reading” the world, and possibly introduce students to young people who have experienced:

  • Very different lives and personal circumstances
  • Conflict
  • Natural hazards
  • Different climates and natural environments
  • Alternative cultures and traditions

I remember watching a 9 year old in my class tell a story to a friend whilst looking at his street in Google Earth, there is something very immediate about such narratives – similar in part to historical walks that explain a story in the places they occurred.

In partnership with the Geographical Association, StoryBook Earth was entered into the Google GeoChallenge grant application process but unfortunately was rejected.

(Thanks to Alan Parkinson at the GA for all his help developing this idea.)

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On the platform, reading by moriza
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My Reading Diary

In our school the children use little paper reading diaries, similar I am sure to many other primary schools. In it they record the books they are reading, their progress and there is a place for pupils, teachers and parents to make written comments too

So for this one think: Shelfari for kids. A learner centred online tool that would allow children to do all they could with a paper diary – without the worry of losing it! But it would also have a database behind it that would allow children to tap into further reading recommendations. Children could read reviews from other users and discover new genres or books they may not normally.

I would imagine that My Reading Diary would have the potential to integrate with library management systems, so children could read a review or see a recommendation and immediately know if it is in school – and if it is available to read or someone else has it out already!

A further unique feature of My Reading Diary would be as a reading portfolio for children as they progress through school. With simple book profiling it would allow teachers and parents to see the types of books any child is reading and make future suggestions.

I think there is huge potential in this to not only provide a manageable online system to track reading progress throughout school but to also engage children with reading and a social, smart, personalised reading diary.

This idea was sadly rejected by Channel 4’s 4iP which is an innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media (beyond television) across the UK.

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Firespeed by kwerfeldein
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Connect Collaborate Content

I don’t know what I would call this application but I think it could be very important in the way teachers work in the next 5-10 years.

I would propose a single online place for teachers to find curriculum resources and ideas, connect with colleagues teaching the same topics and a platform for collaboration.

Ian Yorston quite rightly said that this place is the web. It perhaps is a matter of pulling streams of different information together, but I just don’t think there has been a purpose built online space that does all of these.

I am doing some work on the Victorians next half term – with my proposed web idea I want to be able to do a single search for “Victorians” and see a multitude of things that we regularly look for and seek out in further web queries elsewhere.

  1. Resources – planning, images, video, notebook files, PPTs, worksheets, that sort of thing.
  2. Ideas – the resources found on the web do not often come with the narrative behind it, I want to be able to read blog posts and summaries of experiences from those who have taught my topic already. My search results would draw in comments from Twitter and other platforms too.
  3. Connections – so many schools, teachers and pupils are working on the same topics, I want to know who is actively doing them too.
  4. Collaborate – once I have discovered that XYZ are doing the same topic, I want to have the means to collaborate and work with them.

We have a myriad of educational blogs to cover the ideas, places like Gareth Pitchford’s Primary Resources, Classroom 2.0 that does much to connect teachers and then there is simple tools like Teachers Connecting from Ben Hazzard that is a platform to connect and work together.

But we need one place to do all of this from a single search query, that would be the unique feature. You enter a single topic key word and your search results provide everything.

Another aspect that is important is what happens as we share our current classroom work. From blogging about my topics at school this year, for the first time my network has brought resources and ideas to me. Not as a result of me asking, but because they “read a post a few weeks back that I was doing sealife”. If we are all more aware of what topics colleagues are doing in their classes our sharing of ideas and resources can be more purposeful.

It will be intriguing to see what develops with mycurriculum.com from the QCDA and whether it will be able to build the critical mass of users to make it truly worthwhile – and also if it is smart enough to do some of the things I have outlined.

It has been an interesting process getting these ideas down in a post – let me know what you think of them and if they would have value in the educational world we work in. The ideas are there, feel free to go ahead and make them, just let me know you have so I can use them.

Class Blogging – Joining Up the Dots

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When I first began my own blog nearly four years ago I also had set up a class site too. We had a year of great fun and connections. The experience made me realise how easy it is for classrooms to have a global dimension through the power of this technology. No doubt many of you with class blogs experienced this realisation too.

I have had a fantastic week returning to classroom blogging and starting our new class blog >> Priestsic5. Before Christmas I wrote a post asking for teachers to share their experiences with class blogs. To explain what platform they were using and to share some reasons behind it’s use. As you can see from the link I have decided to use Blogger as our platform.

Why Blogger?

The two main reasons are ease of use and sustainability, and I think that the former directly effects the latter. I want the blog to be a well established feature of the classroom and for it to be sustained into the future. Blogger is extremely easy to setup especially if you have some blogging experience of your own – but even if you have not.

One big plus is the associated services and tools that can be utilised alongside your Blogger (Google) account. The most important is perhaps image hosting in the form of Picasa Web Albums. Used alongside the desktop Picasa 3 application it is a good solution. Amongst other things I can blog directly from Picasa, synchronise local image folders to the web automatically and upload photo videos directly to YouTube.

Synchronise

Just to unpick the image folder synchronisation a little further – on our blog I have created an Art Gallery slideshow in the sidebar. I want this to be a collection of all that the class create and so I will be regularly updating the set of images. Currently all I have to do to add another image to this slideshow is add it to a local folder on my class computer – that’s it. I think this is a really useful feature as we are often managing lots of images from a whole class set of work. Using the Art Gallery example here’s how to do it:

  1. Upload you images to your computer, Picasa should automatically pick these up and display them for upload.
  2. Create an Art Gallery folder for the images (usually done during upload process)
  3. In Picasa next to the folder, on the right hand side of the screen, click the Sync to Web button.
  4. Sign in to your Google account.
  5. Your images will be uploaded to a web album.
  6. Click on the newly created online  album – click on “Link to this Album” in the right sidebar.
  7. Select “Embed Slideshow” and copy the code.
  8. Paste this code in your blog. For ours I used “Add Gadget” (HTML/Javascript type) from the Layout settings.
  9. Save and refresh your blog to check it is working OK – you can manually change the size in the code.
  10. Now every time you add an image to the original local folder (on your computer) it will automatically update to the web and consequently update your slideshow too.

In the remainder of the post I will be explaining a few additions and changes I have made to our class blog that I consider to be important.

Next Blog Link

One of the features of a blog with Blogger is the top navigation bar that appears. This has a “Next Blog” link button which takes you to a random blog. Naturally this is not ideal for a class blog as you have no control over what you are linking to.

The first thing I did was find out how to remove it. It is a pretty simple case of adding a small piece of CSS code to the Template code. I found this site’s explanation exactly what I needed. Here is a short screencast from the same website illustrating the process:


Remove Blogger Navbar – More free videos are here

How Many Visitors?

By simply tracking the number of visitors you are able to illustrate to your class that we have an audience. There are people out their in the world reading what we post. These numbers are important in helping you establish rules for writing posts and comments. Children have a better appreciation that their work is going to be viewed by more than just “us”. A visible visitor counter like StatCounter provides some useful analytics for your blog that you could use in maths further down the line

Dots on a Map

In my experience one of the greatest ways to hook your class into the use of the class blog is to display a map of your visitors. In the past and in the last week I have found this to be a great focal point for the class when they are looking at the blog. I have used ClustrMaps for years on my own blog and with classblogs.

priestsic5.blogspotIt is simply a case of creating an account and then embedding a short piece of code in a blog sidebar. After 12 hours or so the map will begin to be populated with visitor dots. It is these simple marks on a map that become points of intrigue for the children in your class. After 24 hours of our own blog we had about 400 hits – I displayed the full screen map and just listened to the children pointing at the different countries and chatting about where their visitors were from. There was a buzz of excitement.

There is something so powerful and yet so simple and wonderful in allowing your class to realise that those little dots are people who have just visited your blog and read about work you do in your classroom. They begin to realise the connections we can make and begin to develop an awareness of things beyond their own community.

I know it is only a little map, but it really is a powerful aspect of class blogs and I would strongly recommend you display something too. Can you think of any other way that your class would willingly look at a world map every day and ask questions about where places are? Have your class blog displayed when the children come in first thing and leave room for their geographical curiosity to shine through. What you do with that natural curiosity afterwards is up to you!