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Monday, 20 June 2011

New Education for a Digital World Event Series

The "Education for a Digital World 2.0" series kicks off Wednesday, March 30th, with two sessions. This series is a part of the LearnCentral public Webinar program and FutureofEducation.com. The collaboratively authored book, Education for a Digital World 2.0, and its predecessor Education for a Digital World represent a shift in how educators are sharing their research, experiences and best practices in online teaching and learning. Join us as we talk with individual authors about their contributions and the global online collaborative writing journey.

Title: Cultivating Communities of Practice: Analysis of 3 Case Studies Using the 7 Principles
Authors/Presenters: Sylvia Currie, Patricia Delich, and Paul Stacey
Date: Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Time: 12:00 pm Pacific Time / 3:00 pm Eastern Time / 7:00pm GMT (international times here)
Description: "In this session we will describe 3 case studies using Wenger, McDermott, &; Snyder's (2002) 7 Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice. This framework provides a close look at how our decisions about community design and technologies to support community activities were made and revised, as well as a consistent and rich view to help those involved in online and hybrid communities learn from our experiences."
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/edw20. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. If you haven't used Elluminate before, you can make sure your computer is configured correctly to enter the room by going to http://www.elluminate.com/support
Event Page: http://www.learncentral.org/event/65701

Title: Blended Work – Experiences From International Development Projects

Authors/Presenters: Susan Crichton with Azra Naseem

Date: Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Time: 12:30 pm Pacific Time / 3:30 pm Eastern Time / 7:30pm GMT (international times here)

Description: "We know about blended learning but what about blended work? When we use learning tools in academic work place applications, what changes and what are the challenges? This seminar shares the authors’ experiences from the last fourteen months as we’ve navigated the virtual terrain connecting colleagues in Pakistan East Africa, the UK and Canada. Trust us, time zones weren’t the biggest challenge!"

Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/edw20b. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. If you haven't used Elluminate before, you can make sure your computer is configured correctly to enter the room by going to http://www.elluminate.com/support

Event Page: http://www.learncentral.org/event/65704

[Cross-posted from http://www.stevehargadon.com]

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Sunday, 19 June 2011

Run Anywhere in the World With iFit Live Powered By Google Maps

(Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog)

Editor’s note: From time to time we like to showcase how our customers are building fun and innovative products with Google Maps. Colleen Logan, VP of Marketing for Icon Health & Fitness, explains how a Google Maps API Premier powered treadmill helps exercisers reach personal fitness goals.

Most people use Google Maps for reasons of pure function: Where is that new restaurant? How do I get there? How long will it take? We thought Google Maps could be used for an entirely different purpose – as entertainment while working out on the NordicTrack home fitness equipment.

People buy fitness equipment for a range of reasons – train for a race, lose weight or simply stay in shape – but a universal challenge for most is staying motivated and finding the time to exercise. In order to reach their goals, more people are turning to technology for time-saving, motivating exercise. We thought the visuals provided by Google Maps, combined with our fitness products and iFit website might be so compelling, consumers would have more fun and stay on track. Even if the only time you can squeeze in exercise is in the evenings when kids are asleep in or in the early, snowy mornings of winter before a long day at work, the iFit exercise equipment can bring the experience of exercising on varied terrain into your home.

For example, if you wanted to experience a run through San Francisco’s hilly terrain, you can go to the iFit website and draw a running route on Google Maps. When you get on one of our treadmills, such as the NordicTrack Elite 9500 Pro, the treadmill pulls up Google Maps on the screen with the newly drawn running route. The treadmill mimics the incline of the real world route you are running, thanks to the elevation service of the Google Maps API. The runner experiences a real life running route by seeing the runner’s location move about Google Maps with Street View images flying by a she reaches new personal records.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team

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See the seafloor like never before on World Oceans Day

Only a tiny fraction of our oceans have ever been explored. As a matter of fact, we know more about the surfaces of Mars and the Moon than we do about our own ocean floor. So in honor of World Oceans Day, we collaborated with Columbia University to add more ocean seafloor terrain to Google Earth than has ever been available before. With the addition of Columbia’s Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) synthesis data, you can explore half the ocean area that has ever been mapped, an area larger than North America.

The red lines show new seafloor data from Columbia, CSUMB and UH.

Our partners at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia have curated 20 years of data from almost 500 ship cruises and 12 different institutions. See the full GMRT attribution layer in the Earth Gallery to learn more. High-res underwater mapping is vital to understanding how tsunamis will spread around the globe. For example, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created a Tsunami spread map after the Japan earthquake to allow anyone to visualize the wave spread.

To get started, dive under the ocean surface by clicking any ocean in Google Earth and explore underwater volcanoes, trenches and sea mountain peaks. You can also download this Seafloor Updates kmz file to take a tour of the new high-resolution data.

Explore the Ocean Seafloor tour and others on the Ocean Showcase.
Our 2011 Seafloor Tour video highlights some of the amazing places you’ll find in Google Earth, like the Mendocino Ridge, where the massive Juan de Fuca Plate slides toward western North America.

Deep Sea Vents tour video.
Continue exploring with the Deep Sea Vents Ridge 2000 Google Earth tour, which includes the deepest volcanic eruption ever captured on video at the West Mata volcano, near Fiji. Twenty additional ocean education posts from Ridge 2000 can be found in the Explore the Ocean layer in Google Earth; download this kmz to see them all.

Complete your tour, by checking out the recently published University of Hawaii at Manoa's 50-meter seafloor synthesis for the US Hawaiian islands and California State University Monterey Bay’s new data for Cordell Bank and the Gulf of the Farallones off the west coast of California.

We hope our new high-res terrain data inspires you to dive into the unknown world that is the ocean and discover the many underwater treasures that lie beneath.

Posted by Jamie Adams, Ocean in Google Earth Team

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3D trees in Google Earth - now in more cities around the world

Last month, we celebrated the trees of the great American wilderness on Arbor Day. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get the opportunity to visit majestic forests like these very often, which is why we're making them available on Google Earth.

Since we first launched 3D trees in Google Earth 6 last November, we’ve worked to bring this experience to more cities. Today, we are happy to announce that the latest group of cities with 3D trees include: New York, Philadelphia, Boston, London and multiple cities in the California Bay Area.

This new 3D imagery brings new perspective to your favorite historical buildings and parks. In Philadelphia we have complemented the Independence Hall model with new 3D trees in Independence National Historic Park to enhance the realism of the historic site. Other examples are Delacorte Theater in New York City and the the famous Emerald Necklace, a gem of Boston designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, a shared experience and memory for many people – locals and visitors alike.

Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Delacorte Theater in New York City, New York

Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts
We hope that among these new cities you find fond memories of a park, a tree lined street, or even a special tree where you’ve had a fun picnic or family outing. To relive those memories by viewing 3D Trees (or start planning to make new ones), make sure you check the “Trees” layer under “3D Buildings” in your Google Earth left panel. Enjoy the new tree-lined city streets and filled-in parks!

Posted by Kay Chen, Geo Program Manager

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Friday, 17 June 2011

How Internet Affects Our World (Infographic)

Internet is a wonderful place to grow, learn and share stuff with your friends, colleges and family members. But have you ever thought how much is used produced by the internet and how it affects our world or other stuff like this? If not then head over to this image below to get up close and personal with some of the major problems we don’t realize we have.