Inserting Mac images into Google Earth placemarks

Adding Placemarks and personalized tours to Google Earth is one of the main reasons why I like Google Earth so much. Being able to edit the GE Placemark with photos, text, hyperlinks and videos make the experience very interactive.

And up until four or five months ago, I had no problem doing that. (Heck, I was even getting pretty good using the Google Outreach spreadsheet template!) But for some reason, the latest versions of Google Earth have not allowed me to upload my own images from my Mac into a Placemark.

Working on a Mac and using the standard file path for inserting images was pretty straightforward:

• <img src=”/Users/glenn/Pictures/gettysburg.jpg”>

But . . . now, nothing. No image.

So I asked my PLN buddies. Nothing. Google Earth manual. Nothing. Tech nerds in the office. Nothing. All I would get is the little blue question mark box. I fiddled with quotation marks and slashes and colons. Nothing.

Then late last week during a conversation with the voices in my head, I began thinking about how a browser displays a local image. So I fiddled with the html code and  . . . whadda ya know?

Problem solved.

So . . . either of the following file paths will work:

• <img src=”file://localhost/Users/glenn/Desktop/favefive.jpg”>
• <img src=”file:///Users/glenn/Desktop/favefive.jpg”>

And I know many of you have already figured this out and many more might not even care but it was a big day for me.

So if there is anyone else out there who’s been struggling with how to get local images to appear in their Google Earth Placemarks, I hope this helps.

For you Windows folks, this file path still works:

• <img src=”C:\Documents and Settings\Glenn\My Documents\Pictures\Gettysburg.jpg”>

(For more Google Earth stuff, head on over to Social Studies Central.)

Vampires, middle school & social studies. Oh, my!

Okay . . . first, a disclaimer. I haven’t actually read any of the books that make up the Twilight series. But I have seen my middle school daughter work her way through them at a breakneck pace. And her friends.

And her mom.

And her mom’s friends.

I’ve seen my high school son get dragged to the movie by his girlfriend. And seen his friends get dragged to the movie by their girlfriends.

You get the picture.

So . . . if there is some sort of pop culture phenomenon going on outside my classroom that can be used to connect my students with specific social studies content, I’m all over it.

Even if I’ve never read the books. (I can always head over to Wikipedia to get the highlights!)

Heather Marie Kosur of Suite101 has put together what looks like a very nice lesson plan that incorporates the Twilight series into middle school geography, Native American and mythology instruction.

At the very least, browse through the article and get some ideas of how teachers can merge engaging stories and culture from outside the classroom into their instruction.

Abe Lincoln, Facebook, Twitter and teaching history

Update 2/10/2010 – I’ve created a step-by-step tutorial about creating your own blank Facebook template with downloads here.

Update 1/4/2011 – I posted some new Facebook online creation tools and Facebook templates on a recent Tip of the Week. Find it here.

—————

I’ve been wanting to get this screen shot of Lincoln’s facebook page off of my desktop for a while and you’re looking for a fun way to suck kids into talking about historical people. I think we can help each other.

Not sure who first came up with the Lincoln Facebook page but it’s been floating around for a while. But if you look closely, you’ll see that who ever it was put some real work into it. (Do you know who Jack Armstrong is?)

And it got me thinking . . . could I use this with middle school and high school kids? I like how we can learn about Lincoln from his Facebook page through a variety of different perspectives, media and voices. Couldn’t we use this format to create some sort of research project or assessment?

A few ideas:

• The teacher acts as the historical (Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, D-Day paratrooper, Henry VIII) or fictional (Johnny Tremain, Pink & Say, Hawkeye) character and posts comments, photos, speeches, quotes and status updates. Kids interact with the page in much the same way they would on an actual page.
• Ask your student to create a Facebook page instead of the traditional book report.
• Students create their own Facebook pages based on research that you assign. This could be a specific person or even non-human kinds of things such as a country, region, event or place. Students would then respond to each others’ pages.

Possible problems?

No access at school. Parent concerns about social networking.

The work- around?

Create an offline template. Not the best but a nice solution that lets you get the same Facebook feel. Kids could do some simple research and complete different pieces of the template, exchange papers and add to one another’s work. This could include fictional and actual links, photos, quotes, friends,  flame wars and possible groups.

And when you’re finished with Facebook, what about Twitter? Historical Tweets puts together some great tweets from historical characters. (There are some other sample Twitter profiles out there.)

Sticking with the Lincoln theme:

This seems like more of a hook activity though you could extend the assignment to the creation of Twitter profiles.

Whether Facebook or Twitter, I think it’s a useful way to engage kids with historical content in a format that is familiar and engaging to them.

What ideas have I missed?

(inspired by Multimedia Learning)

Tip of the Week – Creative Commons & Google Images

Let’s say you’re a social studies teacher looking for some multimedia resources that will enhance a Battle of Gettysburg unit. You jump over to Google Images and do a quick search using appropriate keywords. Google returns over 327,000 results.

The problem?

Copyright issues.

The question?

What can you legally use? Most of us are very used to just taking whatever we want and have been doing so for years. We often comment on how our students are downloading and sharing illegal music but don’t often see anything wrong with downloading and sharing digital media for instruction.

It’s just for classroom use and I need it. It’s not like I’m stealing anything, it’s Fair Use.

Well . . . Fair Use depends on a lot of factors. And what you might think is legal, may not be. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of system in place that would answer most of your copyright issues and allow people to legally share all sorts of digital media?

You’re in luck! The Creative Commons people have worked very hard to create just such a system:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

The result?

People are creating and sharing digital media files in ways that allow others to use them in a wide variety of ways. It’s not so much eliminating copyright as providing a way for people to use the outdated copyright law in new ways. Basically what happens is that people create things and give other people “automatic” permission to use their work in a variety of ways – from completely unrestricted use to only non-profit, educational use with citation use.

So . . . back to your search for legal images of the Battle of Gettysburg. Google Images just recently began working with Creative Commons to update its image database. So now, for example, you can search Google Images for just photos of the Battle of Gettysburg that allow unrestricted use.

The Google guys explain it best:

To enable this feature, go to our advanced image search page. Under the “Usage rights” section, you can select the type of license you’d like to search for, such as those marked for reuse or even for commercial reuse with modification. Your results will be restricted to images marked with Creative Commons or other licenses. Once you confirm the license of the image and make sure that your use will comply with the terms of the license (such as proper attribution to the image’s owner), you can reuse the image.

Pretty simple! And you’re legal. Problem solved.

Of course, you should also encourage your students to do the same!

Other places that incorporate Creative Commons images or provide Fair Use access:

Social Studies Central Resources for Teachers
Flickr Creative Commons
FreeFoto
Morgue File
Pics4Learning
New York Public Library
Nations Illustrated

Have fun!

Google Earth celebrates Apollo 11 anniversary

The LatLong site by the Google Earth people has announced a special event for July 20th.

Frank Taylor over at the Google Earth Blog speculates:

Google sent out invitations last night to the media for an event to be held in Washington DC on July 20th – the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. The event is about the “…newest addition to Google Earth”. Given the list of speakers (Buzz Aldrin – Apollo 11 astronaut, NASA dignitaries, Anousheh Ansari – first private female space explorer, and Andrew Chaiken – author of “A Man on the Moon”), there can be little doubt what this is about. And, GEB definitely plans to attend the event!

In the summer of 2007, Google released an updated Google Moon – the 2D version for Google Maps. At the same time, Google announced the $30 Million Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP). When the new Google Moon released, GEB immediately speculated on how soon Google Earth would have a 3D version of the moon (see the last part of this article on the GLXP announcement). So, I’m pretty confident we’ll be seeing the release of a 3D Moon mode for Google Earth. Google released a 3D Mars mode for Google Earth earlier this year. So, the moon is naturally going to be next. And, for the record, NASA has their own virtual globe application called WorldWind which has had a 3D moon mode available for several years now.

Google will surely make use of NASA Apollo mission imagery (panoramas, video, and stills – like in the 2D Google Moon), and hopefully HD video of the moon from the Japanese JAXA SELENE mission. More importantly, I’m sure we’ll see some nice 3D terrain for the moon.

Head over to the LatLong site Monday to check it out!

– July 20 Update from the LatLong Blog site:

Today, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Google is proud to announce the release of Moon in Google Earth, bringing you one step closer to understanding the experience of standing on the moon. It brings the Apollo stories out of the history books, recreating them in an immersive and interactive 3D environment.

To see for yourself, all you need is Google Earth 5.0 (if you already have it, no upgrade is required). Just click the planet button on the top toolbar of Google Earth, and choose Moon. You’ll be flow to the Moon, at which point you have all the same usual Google Earth controls — drag your mouse on the globe to fly around, and use the Layers panel in the lower-left corner to discover content. Double-click any Layers item to fly to it.

Each of the Apollo landing missions is chronicled in detail through pictures and stories. We’ve even embedded video footage from Spacecraft Films that covers the most well-known moments on the surface. There are also immersive lunar surface panoramas, composed of photos taken by the astronauts themselves, presented for the first time in a 3D “Street View” style interface.

The best educators are all heretics

I had the chance to listen to Seth Godin the other day. You know . . . author of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, The Purple Cow and Small is the New Big?

No?

Well . . . he’s not really an education guy. He’s a marketing guy. But he said some things the other day that I think can apply to us.

Like many others before him, Godin compared K-12 education to the traditional factory system. And not in a good way. Not really a novel idea but he went on to suggest what I think is a novel solution.

You ready?

Create a tribe.

That’s right. A tribe.

In his latest book and during his keynote, Godin suggests that all people want to belong to a special group, that we all want to be “insiders,” that we want to belong to a tribe. It could be the Red Sox Nation, the Red Hat Club, the Red Hot Chili Peppers fan club or the Red Cross 10 Gallon donor group. His point is that  people have been joining tribes forever.

And he suggests that we as educators can use this desire to join tribes to our benefit. If we truly want to change the educational system, it will have to come through the work of a group of dedicated people. And to be successful, this new tribe must be led.

And led not just by any kind of leader. Godin makes a very strong case that:

every successful tribe is led by a heretic.

I love that quote!

Change is hard, especially in education, and it take people who are willing to bend the rules a bit (and maybe break them once in a while) for real change to happen.

And the scary thing is that many of the leaders now in place – principals, superintendents and Boards of Education – are often not heretics. They like things to be stable and comfortable and “manageable.”

(One exception might be Michelle Rhee of the Washington DC school district. Rhe has offered teachers the option of merit pay, closed poor performing schools and fired administrators – all while saying “what happens to kids is what’s most important.” Heresy!)

Godin suggests that it’s up to you, the point of the spear, to make sure that true change occurs. And I see his idea apply both directly in the classroom and in the larger education realm.

How to effect change?

There is no Tribes for Dummies book but . . .

• Challenge the status quo
• Create a culture that encourages positive deviancy, a change for the better
• Develop the idea of “insiders”
• Create a culture that stands for something
• Be curious about everything
• Be charismatic – “Charisma doesn’t make a leader, being a leader makes you charismatic.”
• Communicate a ton
• Connect with your insiders

He ended with the phrase:

2v4

If you are doing this 2 people, you fail. If you do this 4 people, you succeed.

I’m still working through this in my own head and will be going back to his book to review. But I like Godin’s very positive attitude that we can effect change and that we can improve education.

If nothing else, Godin’s ideas make me feel optimistic about the future of K-12 education. And I like that!