Dimensions is an experimental project from the BBC that allows you to compare the scale of different types of events with something that we can all recognise. There are two parts of the project “How many really?” and “How big really?“

“How many really?” is all about the numbers of people that were involved in a whole range of different events throughout history. The tool allows you to either add in your own numbers, for example 30, the number of children in your class, connect with Facebook or Twitter and compare your networks or even the number of people who can board a double decker bus or a Boeing 747.

You are then shown a visual comparison with the number of people involved in the event that you have chosen. The events fall into the following categories:

• Battles
• Civilisations
• Current Affairs
• Disasters
• Diseases
• Entertainment
• Modern Society
• Religion
• Slavery
• War

The Dimensions tools would be interesting to use within a history class but also within maths to help children and classes get a better appreciation of different sizes. It will eventually be integrated into the online history resources at the BBC depending on user feedback.

The snow in the UK has really kicked in this week and many, many schools are closed – I thought we could take the opportunity to create some learning resources related to the conditions.

I discovered this list of snow depths but then thought perhaps we could simply crowd-source some accurate data from colleagues across the UK adding their own personal measurements. Collaborating on a map would also provide us the location too.

Here is the map so far – use the link below the map to add your own measurements.

View #UKSnowDepth in a larger map

I expect there are a great many different ways we could use this data (and this snowy experience) when we get back to classes. Here are a few thoughts of mine:

• Create simple graphs and chart to represent the data. Answer questions to interpret the information.
• Develop your own map for the snow depth on your school site, taking measurements in different locations. Explore the conditions that might have brought about the highest depth.
• Gather information from other countries in Europe that have been effected.
• Make comparisons to countries that have a constant or more regular snowfall.
• Cross reference the snow depths to the temperatures – repeat for other countries.
• Design a snow depth instrument.
• Learn about the depth of snow during expeditions to Everest or the Poles.
• Read historic accounts of expeditions and references to snow depth.
• Learn about different types of snow and how it changes under different temperatures and conditions.
• Explore freezing and melting.
• Look at insulation and conduct an investigation about keeping something cold or hot.

What ideas do you have for back-to-school-after-the-snow days – leave a comment with your thoughts.

This is a pretty straight forward process, but it also can have a variety of different outcomes depending on which map you want to display. It is useful to know these options to offer a richer visual experience on your blog or website.

Here is the basic run through:

1. Navigate to the location on Google Maps that you want to embed elsewhere.
2. Click on the LINK button above the map.
3. You can take the second link of HTML to embed in your blog – this is the default size 450 by 350.
4. Useful to note here that this is iframe code which doesn’t work well in WordPress (or Edublogs for that matter) – so if you have a WordPress blog write your blog post in the Visual editor and when you are ready switch to HTML editor, paste your code and then publish straight away. If you switch back to the Visual editor the code will get stripped out and your map will vanish.

Customise your map for embedding:

1. Hitting the Customise and preview embedded map link will give you a bunch of options and allows you to refine exactly what you want embedded.
2. The map sizes you can choose from are Small, Medium, Large and a Custom option for you to define the exact size.

You in fact have four different choices for the style of map you can use at this point.

Earth = Google Earth (plugin needed)
Ter = Terrain style
Sat = Satellite imagery
Map = Map

For a fifth and sixth option you can combine the Satellite or Earth imagery with the Maps labels, a little rollover on each button.

Here are the examples of the different maps that you can display embedded below, plus an extra bonus. I particularly like the Google Earth choice that provides that functionality to any user, they of course need the GE browser plugin which is available on Flock, IE, Firefox and Chrome.

GOOGLE EARTH

View Larger Map

GOOGLE EARTH and MAP

View Larger Map

TERRAIN

View Larger Map

SATELLITE

View Larger Map

MAP

View Larger Map

SATELLITE and MAP

View Larger Map

STREETVIEW

View Larger Map

To embed Streetview just drag the little Orange pegman to the map and find your preferred Streetview, then just follow the process explained above, easy. You can always alter the view on the Customise page if you need to.

The location of these maps is the Angel of the North. It is worth looking out for these special locations where Streetview goes offroad and follows footpaths to get up close to various monuments or unique locations.

There you go, seven different types of maps to embed in your blog or website – I hope you found this little guide useful.

At the London offices of Google they have a Google Earth tour displayed on a wall of the reception area. I happened to spot this quirky use of space by an Amsterdam based newspaper printing company.

View Larger Map

According to James Turnbull and the Google Sightseeing blog the translations include:

• “Entree” = “Entrance”
• “Afhalen kranten” = “Pick-up newspapers”
• “Parkeren vrachtwagens tot 5m” = “Parking trucks up to 5 metres”
• “Papier” = “Paper”
• “Aanvoer goederen” = “Supply Goods”
• “Uitgang” = “Exit”

I have begun a new Maths Map in Adelaide focusing on addition ideas that can be seen or referred to on the map. It would be great to have your contributions it is very easy to do:

How can you contribute?

1. Explore the maps below for the ideas already added, follow the links to open them in a new window.
2. Click on EDIT in the left panel.
3. Zoom close to the city and it’s surroundings. (Don’t forget Streetview)
4. Find some TOPIC ideas you can see.
5. Add a placemark (use the right colour for the age group it is best for – see purple pin)
6. Explain the activity in the description.
7. Change the title to show how many ideas there are.
8. Send out a Tweet or write a blog post to highlight this resource and encourage others to contribute.

View 6 Addition Activities in Adelaide in a larger map
Make sure you explore the other maps in Nottingham, Madrid and Paris that are currently running, you can see all 4 on the Maths Maps page.

Today I suddenly spotted the little ruler icon for the Distance Measurement Tool in Google Maps – click on the image to take a closer look at how to switch it on.

What is a Smoot?

Three new presentations have been kickstarted and are great additions to the collection. Interesting Ways to use the iPad, Google Search and Google Maps in the classroom. Please take a look and consider adding an idea to one of them. I will be updating the links on the collection page too.

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.

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:

• Geotag your Pictures - http://www.panoramio.com
• Geotag your old Pictures - History Pin
• Over 120 historical maps in the Google Maps Rumsey Historical Maps
• Scribbling + Maps = ScribbleMaps
• RadarVirtuel – real time European air traffic

Google Maps in Other Languages:

• Chinese Maps - http://ditu.google.cn/
• French Maps - http://maps.google.fr/
• German Maps - http://maps.google.de/
• Spanish Maps - http://maps.google.es/
• Italian Maps - http://maps.google.it/
• Russian Maps - http://maps.google.ru/

Google Maps beyond Earth:

• Planet Mars
• The Moon
• Google Sky

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.

__

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.

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.

When you share your classroom experiences and ideas, one thing you hope for is that they are transferable to other classrooms. This week I was delighted to see three examples of my ideas being successfully applied elsewhere.

The first is from Peter Richardson a primary school teacher in Preston who took my idea for using Voicethread for peer assessment of writing and used it for work in their Egyptian work. Here is the Voicethread he shared.

Kevin McLaughlin is a Year 4 teacher in Leicester and after reading my blog post about using Twitter and Google Forms for a data handling lesson, has applied the same ideas himself. His class compared music tastes from Kevin’s Twitter network (via a Google Form) with their own. I am pleased it worked well for his Year 4 class too, as Kevin explains,

The data that we now have will be used next week in further Maths lessons and the children added that they will continue to use the survey over the weekend at home and with friends. Real data from real people. This is what makes this type of investigation so very useful and brings an added dimension to data collection activities.

The final ripple I caused comes from Jan Webb another Year 4 teacher in Cheshire. Jan took up the challenge of using my Maths Maps idea with her class and developed a series of activities in a Google Map of Berlin for her class to use.

View Berlin in a larger map

Jan explains on her blog how they enjoyed using the resource in her class.

…a great deal of discussion arose from finding the shapes in some of the buildings and finding how many rectangles we could see in a building!  We all really enjoyed these tasks and they not only let us discuss aspects of shape, but also provoked discussions about aspects of life in Germany.

These ripples are very encouraging as you are able to clearly see the effect sharing your own practice has on other teachers and subsequently other children’s learning.

If you have always thought about starting a blog but never got round to it, why not give it a go. The more pebbles in the pond causing ripples the better.