La rambla, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain - Google Maps

La Rambla, Barcelona, Spain

Google Street View on La Rambla in Barcelona, Spain. I have fond memories of my time in Spain a little over 10 years ago. Of course, things change. I hardly recognize most of these places now.

This post, however, is not just a nostalgic look into my past. I want to focus attention on the use of Street View for virtual touring. You now have the ability, not only to look at a picture, but rather to get the overall lay of the land before visiting a place. If you take a look at my link, you're able to see business names and other landmarks. Heck, you could plan a sightseeing trip and where to go for lunch along the way with this tool.

This tool situates users in the context more so than anything else we have available to us. You can see the style of clothes people wear (not faces in the EU), cars they are driving, and, of course, the architecture. You can visit famous places when discussing issues in history or current events, or you can visit the places less traveled to better understand how common people live or particularly sub-groups live (i.e., Harlem, Beverly Hills, or rural areas).

I haven't seen anything published on how people are using this, but I expect that you will in the near future.

KnowledgeWorks - Map of Future Forces Affecting Education - Education Map

KnowledgeWorks - Map of Future Forces Affecting Education - Education Map

Neat conceptual map (with links)on the future of education with a particularly techno-centric viewpoint (not saying that is a bad thing)

A good conversation starter

Dan

Google Maps

I know that this will just end badly, but I think that I love Google. They just keep on coming out with new, cool, tools all the time.

I've loved Google Maps (http://maps.google.com), but their newest feature just thrills me to no end.

You will now notice a new tab in Google Maps called "My Maps". This lets you annotate, save, and publish your own personal maps. Don't think that this is just a way to look at places, it is most definately a communication tool as well. These annotations can tell a story with text and images.

It was so cool I had to map out a few places around my campus. Check it out.

http://tinyurl.com/26gf2b

Lastly, this tool is incredibly easy to use. There's not that much functionality yet, which is good because there's not too much getting in the way of you using it. I predict that this will become one of my favorite tools to use both personally and professionally.

Dan

http://www.GoogleLitTrips.com

Everyone is commenting on this in the listservs and I assume that it's being blogged about quite a bit too. Time to unleash it on you all :)

This is an interesting project that uses Google Earth (which is a program you have to download to your computer) to map out the literary routes for a number of novels. I'm assuming that you will see many more in the next few years.

Go to the site for information, resources, including the .kmz files for use with Google Earth.


Also check out Google Certified Teacher program (http://www.google.com/educators/gtc.html). Looks interesting for those of you a little more ambitous on the technology end.

Geosense: an online world geography game

This game was simply addictive. You can play alone or with another player online.

I don't have a lot of ideas for this, but one obvious one would be with cities and countries.

I'd love to hear any ideas you have (if you can stop playing the game :)

Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole Earth!

This one was just too cool for me not to pass on to you all. This is an extension of Google Earth. Wikimapia allows you to make notes on areas (and even individual buildings). All of this in a Wiki-type format that allows editing from the masses.

Just imagine what you could do with this in your classroom. Those boring "My Hometown" reports really could be juiced up. I suppose you'd want to guard against them adding their homes in there (I was tempted to do so for a minute), but otherwise, how neat would that be!

Check out my brief entry on Festa Plaza in Ilsan. Unfortunately, Google doesn't zoom in that far in this area. I'm assuming that its proximity to North Korea (about 25km north) might be a reason. However, you can see what's possible. It would be nice to get someone to modify it with a Korean entry. I'll have to wait and see.