On the Google Earth Blog, Frank Taylor lists the top ten Google Earth time animations for 2006. Time animations were added in Google Earth 4 and are a great way to view data that changes over time, for example animal and human cases of avian flu (Declan Butler’s blog). Authors simply add a time span element to data in kml files, like so, and Google Earth renders a time slider bar in the user interface.
<TimeSpan id=”ID”>
<begin>begin date here </begin>
<end>end date here</end>
</TimeSpan>
The time slider is highlighted in a screen shot of the avian flu map below.
There are some Google Earth software limitations that were apparent when viewing Hurricane Katrina data. I wished I could have incremented the “animation” in hours rather than days. There are some great suggestions for improvement on Stefan Geens’ Ogle Earth Blog, so I won’t rehash them here. This functionality is a great addition to GE!
Tim Lauer of Lewis Elementary School points to an interesting use of Darwiin Remote Software and the Nintendo Wii remote to run a Roomba (a robot which will vacuum your house). I don’t have a Nintendo Wii game, but if Darwiin will capture 3D acceleration from the Wii game remote, it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine force information from the remote. So if someone is playing Wii baseball for example, it should be easy to capture the force of their swing. Perhaps students could experiment with different variables to increase the force of the swing and determine the impact on the distance the batted ball travels. Does the game show the force of the swing already?
In my physics classes we used the Vernier accelerometers to capture 3-dimensional acceleration on different amusement park rides. Although the experience turned me green, we got exceptional data (see image and graph below). I wonder if using a combination of a Wii remote, Bluetooth, and some sort of handheld device if the same sort of data could be gathered on the ride? It still doesn’t solve my motion sickness, but maybe it would save a few bucks and be fun to try.
After complaining this summer about the limitations of PowerPoint as an information-sharing medium this summer, Dr. Jane Love at Furman pointed me towards Edward Tufte’s essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Great stuff! I was really struck by the chasm between what our brains and eyes want to see and what a PowerPoint presentation gives us instead. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to read his book The Visual Display of Quantative Information and get one of Tufte’s posters like the one graphically displaying Napolean’s march.
Shortly after reading Tufte for the first time I added the Information Aesthetics Blog to my reader. I enjoy the blogs but confess I usually have to go to the source to understand the data being represented. Below is a nice link from infosthetics to a Google video comparing stellar and planetary sizes. Although one missing planet begs a question that would leave my kids unable to contain silly laughter. That’s where their sense of humor is right now.
As I mentioned in a previous post we’ve just begun to explore the use student-generated wikis to help students construct chemistry knowledge, making use of ChemDraw to generate chemical structures. After an initial introduction today, ChemDraw seems to be a great way to create very nice chemical structures for a final page. However, it’s definitely not as quick as drawing the structure on the back of a napkin, so the extra time involved in creating the structure could limit a good wiki collaboration. I read that the open source course management system, Moodle, is looking to integrate a collaborative whiteboard currently available through Jabber / Coccinella. I tried it out and it’s pretty simple. Since Moodle has a Wiki module and will soon have an interactive whiteboard via Coccinella, we could do what we need with Moodle and ChemDraw. While the wiki page is undergoing development, the students could “hand draw” the chemical structures and then use ChemDraw for the more formal, final presentation.
One of the output formats of Coccinella is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) but not jpeg. Although the new Mozilla browser supports SVG display, I didn’t want to bank on the fact that everyone’s browser would support SVG. I found a nice SVG converter online, so I was able to convert the molecule above to a jpeg from home, without photoshop.
GE has a collaborative online whiteboard as well that looks potentially useful. The sketching session can be saved, so that you can see the progression of the diagram as well as the final product.
You’ve probably experienced AJAX through google maps and other websites. It makes for a great web experience, especially for the impatient. Dr. Lloyd Benson provided this timeline link. My colleague, Dr. Diane Boyd, had a great idea to combine timelines and maps, updating the map as the user progressed along a particular timeline. We’ll have to learn AJAX programming to do it, or perhaps it might fit into an First Year Seminar with a historical and technological focus, and the students could drive the construction. It’s definitely something to keep on the radar as we continue to strive to help students incorporate historical perspectives into their learning experiences.
We’ve formed a group to explore the potential of gaming for education. Here’s an interesting implementation in organic chemistry. This paper (created via wiki) explores two games, OrgoFrag and Wheel of Orgo, and has several screenshots and examples. Here’s an example of one taken from the following website.
You can even download the free version or full version of Unreal and download the games from Drexel. Setup is explained here. There were some issues with video drivers and parallels (I’ve been converted to Mac / Parallels user) when I tried this, so I’ll have to wait to try this on a real PC. I’m trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. I’m not a gamer, so this is new territory for me!
Structuring the activity so that students that are pressured by time constraints or hindered by the competitive atmosphere can still get the most out of the opportunity would be very important. If we decide to explore this, I’ll share those strategies in a future blog.
This looks really interesting - 10 case studies of wikis in education. The first chapter is free, but to get the rest of the book and to contribute to the final chapter requires a payment of $19.99. The book was created via Wiki technology. The chapter on “Constructing Science Knowledge Using a Wiki” looks especially interesting, in light of a recent talk with Brian and Greg. Stewart Mader’s website Using Wiki in Education also has some good examples and links.
