3D panoramas as a teaching resource

Here’s an excerpt from a Digital Geography blog post about 3D panoramas. The Panoramas dk site is a great resource. You need to check your PC has a recent version of QuickTime before you get too excited – but it’s hard not to be enthusiastic about resources like the street scene in Rio:

Panoramas for geography lessons
It all gets even better if you go to the Panoramas dk home page and start to explore. Try the drop down menu in the top right and prepare to be amazed by some of the potential. As a taster, have a look at this image of a weapon search in Rio de Janiero

Note to Tim Spearing@Robert Blake school

Tim,

I have spoken to our people about the 12th January, as a proposed visit day and everything is now in place and arranged. I have spoken to Noel and he is available as well for some ICT should that be considered helpful. If you are having problems using this blog site, give me a ring at Court Fields and i will happily try to assist.

Danny Williams

RSS tutorial

You think this blog could be useful but you don’t want to keep returning to this page in the hope that something new has been published. The answer is to let updates come to you, rather than the other way round. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) provides a neat solution, and this post is a short tutorial to getting it working for you.

New site for teaching with Google Earth

The Google Earth page on Juicy Geography has been revised and republished as a mini-site based on a blog (which looks remarkably like this one apart from randomly generated Google Earth images.) Classroom tips, user guides, lesson ideas and lots of essential downloads…

Click here for the new site.

How to share files

There are 8 authors signed up to the blog now. Hopefully that number will continue to rise. But what if we want to share files?

Course: map skills for primary geography

The second of three day courses for primary geography subject leaders – on Monday Jan 22nd 2007 at Elmhurst Teachers Centre.  This course will give guidance on teaching the skills of reading, using and making maps, and how these skills progress through KS1 and KS2.  It’s also a practical course, with opportunities to use a variety of resources including ICT packages, and with activities to take back to school.  During the afternoon we’ll take a look at some assessment activities and opportunities for both key stages.

Closing date for booking:  4th December 2006.  Further details and application forms are on Six, or contact Kate Pike at County Hall on 01823 356612

Flooded houses image in Google Earth

Examples of teacher blogs for students

More geography teachers are using blogs to communicate with students. Here are some examples of the best ones:

Del.icio.us

What’s it all about?

It’s a strange name, but del.icio.us is an incredibly useful “social bookmarking” application that allows you to save your favourite bookmarks online. This means that they can be accessed anywhere, and shared with others.

Start blogging here!

Joining this blog is simple. Follow the link from your invitation email to register yourself on WordPress.com. You’ll be offered the choice of a new blog or just a user name. Choose a suitable user name (you can edit how this appears on the blog later) and complete the rest of the details. You’ll be sent a password to go with your user name, and this can be used to log in to admin area.

After joining the blog you will automatically be given authoring rights, allowing you to create and edit your own posts. Please let us know if we can help you, by posting a comment below. Initially it can be a bit daunting to publish online, but do have a go. You can’t break anything! If you find you can’t post straight away, it’s because we haven’t got round to updating the User list.

On logging into the site as an Author,you should see a blue administration bar appearing in the top of your screen. Click “New Post” to publish something new. As an Author you can make any changes to this post or delete it, so just have a go. Choose a category from the left of the Admin area to add the post to. There are tools to upload pictures – though it is best to reduce the file size first. The form below the Write Post box is for uploading pictures. At the moment you can’t upload any other files – that will have to wait for a while.

When you’re joining this blog, why not set one up at the same time for your own students / department and share your experiences?