it4L

Both Lifehacker and Teaching Mr Belshaw give details of the flight simulator that you can find in the latest version of Google Earth (4.2).  The flight simulator controls can be found here.

The latest search term I have found for Google is ‘time’, this allows you to find the time in ‘major‘ cities and towns.

After reading Wesley Fryer’s post on ‘Classroom Blog World Tour‘ and reading through the Google Earth Tutorial, I decided to have a go.  You can download my ‘Shropshire Secondary Schools‘ file and let me know what you think.

What tours do you think we could use in schools?  Maybe we could plot the route the Olympic Torch will take when it comes to England in 2012….

We’ve already pointed to a number of Google developments and acquisitions including the recent assimilation of Writely which has great potential in any collaborative writing. Well here’s the perfect complement in terms of collaborative spreadsheet work. I know some of us have had “Numbler” accounts but the Google machine seems unstoppable and more importantly appears to be striving for coherent and comprehensive coverage with Google Spreadsheets as one of the latest additions from Google Labs. Why not take a sneak peek - Great potential for cross school data handling projects at any level - topically we could be collecting interesting weather data from every school!

Google notebook is an extension for IE or Firefox web browsers.

Clip and collect information as you browse the web.

• Clip useful information.
  You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
• Organize your notes.
  You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
• Get access from anywhere.
  You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
• Publish your notebook.
  You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

Further details can be found on the overview page. I see this as an effective tool for students carrying out research on the internet.  All notes have the url they were taken from recorded underneath the note, you can edit the notes and even type in your own notes which will be related to the page you are viewing.  Here is an example of a public notebook that I made searching for information about Whitchurch, Shropshire.

Personal homepages seem to be a common theme on the web atm, I have had a play with pageflakes, My Yahoo! and more recently Google. So why would I want a personal homepage, these are the reasons on the Google website:

Your personalized homepage brings together Google functionality and content from across the web, on a single page:

• Preview latest Google Mail messages
• See headlines from Google News and other top news sources
• Get weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
• Select from a variety of popular feeds
• Drag and drop the sections to rearrange the page.

You can also add your favourite rss feeds from any website/blog. Are there any educational uses for this kind of application?

Most people just type their search terms into Google and then trawl through its results, did you know that it is possible to set up a couple of preferences for your searching. To do so click on the ‘Preferences‘ link on the right hand side of the search box, the preferences are as follows:

Interface Language - allows you to change the language you want your tips and messages in.

Search Language - this is the language that pages you search for are written in, by default this is ‘any language’. If you are an English speaker you could change this to English, or if you were doing a French lesson you might choose French.

SafeSearch Filtering - this allows you to change the default amount of filtering that Google applies. Further details can be found on the SafeSearch page.

Number of Results - this is the number of results per page, by default this is 10 but you can increase it to 100. Bear in mind the more results per page the slower the page will be to load.

Results Window - you can either have your search results opening in your present browser window or in a new window.

You can find further details on these settings here.  All these preferences are stored in your cookies so will remain on the machine you are working until you remove your cookies.

I am sure you can remember the times when you have been digging and someone says if you carry on like that you will arrive in Australia. This Google maps mashup (If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop?) allows you to find out exactly where you would end up if you carried on digging through the planet.

There is an article about this application at Stanford University.

Our next stop on the Google trail is the’define:’ command. Google has incorporated its glossary function from the Labs into Google search. Enter define followed by the word or phrase. Google will find definitions on web pages and display the first one with a link to more. For example if I wanted a definition of RSS, I would type ‘define:RSS’ into Google and it would return:

Related phrases: rss feeds rss feed media rss list of rss feeds rss feed reader rss point

Definitions of rss on the Web:

Rich Site Summary.
www.intensedevelopment.net/website-design-R.html

RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication – A lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.
www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm

and more…..