4th Form ICT

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Lesson 22

Lesson 22: Holiday work — blog design, Google Earth (mapping)

In this lesson we'll continue to look at how you're developing your online work and publishing. We'll also be discussing your holiday work relating to Google Earth and mapping, raise some password security issues and begin work on Wikipedia.

To start with, and for much of the lesson, we'll focus on the work done over the holiday:

1)  Your blogs: these should show evidence of having been designed and built upon.

2)  Your new blog post about Google Earth.  You had the option of also looking at Google Sky — either within Google Earth or in its separate web-based version — and Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope. You should have used Google Earth and its latest functionality so that you were then able to write about your experience of it and how you see it being useful and interesting.

3)  Your teacher may ask you to look at  Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World (Wired, 2007) and/or Google Maps for mobile with My Location (beta) (UK, YouTube, 2007). Also, on 15 April Google updated Google Earth: see here for details — and there's a video about the new features here. (There's a longer, six minute, video that's worth watching, too.)

Google's mapping projects once again raise important questions as well as creating new opportunities: privacy issues; better understanding, through mapped representation, of complex issues (eg, ecological trends);  new ways in which other kinds of data can be brought to bear in maps. Here are some things new this holiday that we might ask you to look at or discuss with us:

A Drug Deal Caught From Every Angle (this is Google Maps): link to privacy/surveillance issues

Amazon tribe enlists Google in battle with illegal loggers, Independent (2008)

New Greenpeace Layer in Google Earth, found in the "Global Awareness" layer

Global Temperature Trends for Google Earth

Contour Lines in Google Maps

New York Times in Google Earth — "the first time Google has supported a news layer in the built-in layers of Google Earth"

If Google Earth interests you there's an official blog, an unofficial blog already linked to above and tutorials (both in Google Earth and outside it).  You could bookmark these now in del.icio.us and perhaps add the RSS feeds for the blogs to your Reader.

4)  If there is time remaining (if not, this will be part of your prep), this is a good moment to discuss how you're handling password security on your new sites/accounts. This might be the time to start looking at password manager programs, and here are two suggestions:

Roboform for Windows

1Password for Macs


Prep: i) make any improvements to your blog as specified by your teacher during the lesson. ii) Read 7 things you should know about Wikipedia, Educause (pdf), and create a blog post summarising the points it makes. iii) Read this recent BBC piece, Wikipedia takes business approach.