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

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

Step 1
click images to enlarge
Find an RSS reader program. Google Reader is as good as any. Sign up for a Google account if you don’t have one. (A nice side benefit is that you get a free Google Mail account which is much better than the school supplied e mail program!)

Step 2

Sign into Google Reader with your Google Mail address and password. Click the “Add Subscription” link in the green tab on the left of the page.

Step 3

Find the RSS feed link on the page of the website you want to subscribe to. On Somerset Geographers it is in the Admin box on the sidebar. On many sites the RSS feed is marked by a red button that looks like this:

Step 4

Add the address of the feed you want to subscribe to Google Reader. Just drag the link (or the feed button) straight over to the Add Subscription text box. There’s no need to copy and paste.

Step 5

The posts from your chosen site appear in the main window.

Step 6

You can subscribe to lots of feeds and manage your viewing through the Settings and Manage Subscriptions functions. Now web pages come to you!

You can subscribe to the feed for both posts and comments in Somerset Geographers. Using a feed reader becomes second nature after a while and is both an effective time saver and a way to stay updated. Most blogs can be syndicated in this way and many web sites now offer an RSS feed. The latest web browsers like IE7 identify sites with RSS feeds.

Alternatives
The website Bloglines will also manage your RSS feeds and has other advantages as well, including the ability to save items in a clippings folder for later reading. Bloglines is free and makes a very practical alternative to Google Reader.

Click here for the new site.

As an example I’ve uploaded the presentation I used together with some Google Earth files and videos. I stuck them all in one zip folder and they can be downloaded from this link: http://www.4shared.com/file/6070757/1c44a16e/50_ways_to_leave_your_levee.html
Be warned -it’s a large folder so don’t try it if you don’t have broadband.

If you’d like to check this all out, but don’t have broadband – here is a free suprise resource that might be useful for teaching settlement. If you download it, you’ll find out what it is! Link to mystery resource (I wouldn’t get too excited!)

After clicking on the link you have to wait a few seconds before the download button appears at the bottom of the page. This must be some kind of feature that prevents automatic file scraping by robots (or something)

In this way we can all share files. Just remember this is a public blog and the upload links can be seen by anyone, so don’t upload anything you’re not happy to make public – including files with dodgy copyright! I also recommend editing your profile by removing your email address to avoid getting spammed.

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

(Permission has been granted to republish this picture)

Download the Flooded Houses file (opens in Google Earth)

To make similar placemarks in Google Earth, simply right click on the file placemark and choose properties. You will notice how a simple line of html code has been used to link to the picture. You could replace the URL of the Bangladesh photograph for any other online image. This is one good reason for uploading your photographs onto Flickr. More information about adding multmedia files to Google Earth placemarks here.

Kenny O’Donnell’s Odblog

Val Vannet prepared her students for their Iceland trip with her stunning HSD Iceland Fieldtrip

Val has also started publishing Higher Geog Blog for her 6th form students

Alan Parkinson and …

Tony Cassidy have created blogs for their students following the GCSE Pilot course.

Rob Chambers has somehow the time to create his blog for Year 10 GCSE Geographers This one is looking more like a textbook!

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. Here for example is my del.icio.us collection.

To use delicio.us simply create a free account. You can opt to install a couple of buttons on your web browser that lets you save a page to del.icio.us instantly. I highly recommend that you install these buttons. It’s possible to import all your current bookmarks into del.icio.us from your browser. When you bookmark a website, give it a couple of “tags” to remind yourself of the content. Later on the tags will prove useful. You can share your bookmarks, or just the ones with a particular tag with others – just tell them the link. For example, you might not be interested in my surfing or hip hop links, however the pages tagged with GCSE might be qute useful. Here is the link to my GCSE del.icio.us tags. If you use an RSS reader like Google Reader, you can even subscribe to this list, so that when I add a new link tagged GCSE you’ll be notified.

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?