For Teachers and Educators…

One of the areas I have been working on over the last half-term is co-ordinating teaching and learning at my College.

As part of sharing our practice with other educators I have now set up the CITAL-TAL blog, please be gentle it is currently under construction.

You can read a ’snap-shot’ of our practice and other projects within our teaching and learning newsletter, which will be published half-termly.

Much will not come as a surprise for my online Geography colleagues, in fact, many are credited with ideas.

We are keen to have conversations with other educators across the world, whatever the subject specialism or age range. Please feel free to leave comments.

If you have a teaching and learning co-ordinator at your establishment, I would be grateful if you could pass on the link. This is a new role within our College and I’m keen to discuss it with others.

We now have a Research and Development Group, as a group we are keen to visit schools involved in innovative projects or just to see good practice. Of course, you are welcome to visit us!

Many thanks

Tony

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

This one looks worth investigating, a set of U.K. based webcams linked to Google Earth. 

A brilliant range of live feed and static, but periodically updated, web-cams that covers the whole of the United Kingdom,  all nicely classified according to place marks. 

It could make a nice resource for a weather or place related task. 

The original file was produced by Google Earth Community member Weatherman 22. Hat-tip Google Earth Library.

Click the image to find out more.

Thanks to Paul Day who has sent me a webcam wall (138 k.b.), particularly like the use of timezones on this one.

RadicalGeography is still active, but I’ve decided to slim it down and go for a thematic layout, it was looking a mess and I want it to reflect the new Key Stage 3 changes and Pilot course. My aim is to upload new resources as I teach or create them. All old links are now dead, apologises in advance for the inconvenience. This doesn’t effect uploaded resources on this blog.

This probably won’t work on your network, I asked, but was told no way, it’s too subversive to change your desk top! But some of you may use stand-alone laptops.

Basically, you can have static; but periodically updated web-cam images on your desktop. Some excellent images can be found at Global Desktop, I particularly like the Tokyo one.

Thanks to Terry Jones for the technique, it was new for me.

Instructions for Xp.

1. Right click on the desktop and choose properties.
2. Choose desktop and customise desktop.
3. In the dialogue box, make sure that Internet Explorer is checked.
4. Click web and then new.
5. In the dialogue box, paste the url of the web-cam page or image that you want to display on your desktop
6. Click OK, a new dialogue box will appear asking you if you wish the page to be viewable offline, click OK.
7. Click OK on the desktop dialogue box.
8. In the display properties box, click apply, and then ok.
9. The webcam will appear on your desktop as a window.
10. If you move the cursor to the top of the window a menu will appear, click on the arrow symbol and the menu will descend, choose cover desktop or split desktop with icons.

Bob’s your uncle…

Thanks to Helen, who has directed me to Camstreams , particularly like the Loch Ness camera. Helen has also sent me an example of a web-cam wall (PPT 139kb) she has produced.

In a previous post I discussed how people may integrate static, but periodically updated webcams into their blogs using Google Gadgets.

Many geography educators now have blogs, where they could potentially integrate live-streaming Windows Media web-cams and set an associated task. 

Copyright issue.

Embedding the webcams into your blogs removes the possibility of students viewing inappropriate advertisements or being forwarded to adult content. The video though is copyrighted, which poses a problem, but I believe the safety of students in this case is more important. I’m happy to remove this post at request.

The Method.

The following technique works in Blogger. Wordpress users need to first disable their rich text editor, this can be found under users, your profile, then uncheck the box.

In order to embed the Windows Media live-streaming webcams, you need to find the location URL, as explained in the ‘Webcam Wall’ process.

When writing your post you need to choose HTML, then paste the following code

<object id=”MediaPlayer” width=320 height=286 classid=”CLSID:22D6f312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95″ standby=”Loading Windows Media Player components…” type=”application/x-oleobject” codebase=

“http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version

=6,4,7,1112″>

<param name=”filename” value=

“URL location here“>
<param name=”Showcontrols” value=”True”>
<param name=”autoStart” value=”True”>

<embed type=”application/x-mplayer2″ src=

“URL location here” name=”MediaPlayer” width=320 height=240></embed>

</object>

You need to delete the the ‘URL location here’ highlighted in red and paste your chosen one.  Save and view post to see if this has worked, you may have to allow time for the video to buffer.

Repeat the process to embed additional webcams.

Any thoughts?

Thanks to Mark, who has found this nice Windows Media live-streaming web-cam of Dublin. Also thanks to Littlemiss, who’s found these ones of Shanghai. I’ve set up a page to collate some of the best cameras.

A ‘web-cam wall’ is a selection of live-streaming web-cams embedded into a PowerPoint slide. An example can be downloaded here (PPT 103kb).

Building a web-cam wall.

The web-cam wall only works with live-streaming web-cams that are embedded Windows Media Players.

The following instructions are based on a user using PowerPoint 2003. It’s easier than it looks!

Firstly open PowerPoint, choose insert, object

In the dialogue box, scroll down and highlight Windows Media Player, click ok.

A Window Media Player will now appear in the PowerPoint. You now need to find live-streaming Windows Media web-cams.

When you have found a suitable web-cam, right click on the web-cam image and choose properties.

Copy the URL location that appears in the properties box.

Return to your PowerPoint, right click on the Windows Media Player and choose properties.

In the dialogue box that appears, paste your URL in the URL box. After this, you can click the red cross to close the menu.

View show to see if the URL is correct, you may have to wait for the feed to buffer.

To complete the process, repeat the previous steps.

In theory, you can have as many webcams as your connection can support. Background is up to you!

Top-Tip.

Alternatively, copying your first Windows Media Player, pasting and then just changing the URL in properties, when you find a new web-cam is much more time efficient.

The issues.

• Do older version of PowerPoint allow this type of resource? (Let me know.)
• Will your network allow access?To avoid wasting your time, try it with one webcam.
• The streaming of the web-cams will depend on the speed of your Internet connection.
• There is a small risk that some inappropriate action or behaviour may occur in front of the camera, try to use webcams that show a large scale, rather than focused on a small area.

Potential uses.

• The ability of adding one live-streaming web-cam to a PowerPoint may enhance a piece of work based on place, and means the teacher doesn’t have to break their ‘flow’ to access a website.
• Illustrating different seasons.
• Illustrating different time zones.
• Discussing differences and similarities between ‘places’.
• To consider the environmental quality of different ‘places’.
• ‘Six places, one time’, I like the idea of a bit of creative writing here.
• As part of a decision-making exercise, where would you like to be? What evidence from the webcams do you have? What evidence don’t you have? I like the idea of devising an exercise where students choose the best place to surf in the world, depending on the conditions. I’ll need Noel’s and Tom’s help for this. Where do we go on holiday? This may add another dimension.
• Odd one out?

Any others?