Google Earth Embeddables

Virtual Field Experiences (VFEs) in the Regional and Local (ReaL) Earth Inquiry Project are frequently media mash-ups involving at least two different kinds of software. That seems like it could be confusing -- teachers typically don't have time to either learn or teach lots of different software packages, but it's easier than it sounds.

Fortunately, many kinds of media can easily be embedded within Google Earth, making it so the user of a VFE really only has to interact with one piece of software. 

This short post shows a basic approach that allows authors of VFEs to include many different kinds of media and sources of information within a Google Earth file. Many websites allow sharing of content with embed codes, and they are really simple to use. 

Google Earth itself has a great deal of both power and flexibility, and to learn some basics, see Google's own Google Earth Tutorials. What follows in this post is also easy to do and mirrors the approach shown in Google's tutorial on embedding youtube videos, but it's for media other than youtube videos.

What does it look like to embed something in a Google Earth placemark? 

What follows are two examples with a bit of explanation. The first is as an image (showing weather information), and the other is in video form (showing an embedded Prezi). Both placemarks are included in the Google Earth file that can be downloaded here. 

Embedding Weather

A "Weather Sticker" from http://www.wunderground.com/.  

There is also the Weather Layer in Google Earth that provides similar information across the map. 

The information for the Weather Layer is provided by http://weather.com/.

If you want to see weather across a wide area, simply turn on Google Earth's Weather Layer, or whichever piece of it (Clouds, Radar, Conditions and Forecasts, or Ocean Observations) you're most interested in. That's a lot of information, and may clutter your view, so you may wish to simply add a placemark with the weather information, or you may want just a subset of what shows up by default. Both The Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com/) and The Weather Channel (http://www.weather.com/) offer embed codes for presenting weather information. The image above shows a "Weather Sticker" from wunderground.com and similar information is available in the form of "Weather Widgets" from weather.com. Both sites allow you to choose different templates. 

Embedding Prezi -- Zooming Presentations

What it looks like:

Prezi (see prezi.com) is a web-based presentation software (though Prezis can also be viewed offline) that allows the presenter or other user to zoom around on a large canvas. (If you're an educator, note that you can access more resources free than normal humans).

Google Earth can host Prezis, which means you can make seamless presentations that begin with a map view and transition to a Prezi. That's not quite what we do in the ReaL Earth Inquiry Project. Instead, we're using Prezi for building Virtual Fieldwork Experiences. Here's an earlier post with several videos to show you how we're doing that.

Prezi has added a number of new features since that earlier post was written, allowing some things to be done more simply and/or with more spiffiness. Check out Prezi's new features here. They also have nice introductory material here.

How it's done:

How do you embed an "embeddable" into Google Earth? on Prezi

A few sources for things to embed

Here are a few sites the include embed code and that I've successfully embedded within Google Earth Placemarks:

• youtube.com -- Allows embedding of videos, including ones you create. Click on the "share" button, then the "embed" button and copy the embed code. 
• prezi.com -- Allows embedding of on the homepage for a Prezi, click the "share" button, then, "</> Embed." then copy the code. 
• Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) -- Allows embedding of documents, forms, spreadsheets, and more. A later post (or posts) on this blog will provide instruction on how to use this feature. 

Wherever I've found embed code, it's worked within Google Earth, although some things have had formatting issues.

Have you find useful media to embed in Google Earth beyond what's listed here? If so, please bring it to our attention in the comments!

Influence the Direction of Science Education: How to read and comment upon the Next Generation Science Standards

In 1996, The National Science Education Standards (NSES) were published and in the intervening 16 years, they have provided guidance for K-12 science education. While NSES is far from the only document to shape science standards at the state level and science teaching across the country, it is almost certainly the most influential.

Sixteen years is a long time and NSES is showing its age. A new set of standards are now under development. The Next Generation Science Standards have a targeted release date of 2013.

A public draft is available for comment and this blog post is intended to give some guidance on how to provide that input. It's a complex document with complex implications about changes not only in K-12 science education, but also in the K-12 education system beyond the sciences. The time for feedback is short -- the close of comments is June 1, but you can target your comments on specific components of the draft -- so the task can be managed in this short amount of time.

I've played a minor role amongst a cast of at least hundreds (and probably over a thousand) in the development of NGSS, first as a member of the Earth &amp; Space Science Design Team for A Framework for K-12 Science Education and now as a member of the New York's Statewide Leadership Team. As someone who has been involved in the development of NGSS, I find navigating the NGSS Draft confusing. I know from talking to others that I'm not alone in that feeling, and that's why I've put this post together.

The complexity is to be expected -- reformatting American K-12 science is no simple task, and the complexities of science literacy aren't something that can be understood in a glance, but we can help make those complexities accessible.

We'll look at a video on why new standards are needed, and then two on how to read the standards. The first two of these are from Achieve Inc., the organization that is coordinating the writing of the standards. The third is a short one from me, showing some more of the technological tools built into the NGSS to help further with your reading, and simply pointing you to pages that I found helpful as I was working on providing my own feedback.

In addition to the videos below, and the information at http://www.nextgenscience.org/, the National Science Teachers' Association has put together some resources to help you make sense of the NGSS Public Draft.

Before the videos, I'll highlight what I think are some (there are many) important changes that NGSS includes in its vision for K-12 science education:

• Performance Expectations define what understanding looks like for each standard in NGSS, in ways far richer than what can be captured on today's standardized tests and this may be a catalyst for the development and use of more authentic assessments of understanding.
• NGSS is structured with three dimensions, each of roughly equal importance: 
• Science and Engineering Practices
• Disciplinary Core Ideas
• Crosscutting Concepts
• NGSS addresses four disciplines:
• Life Science
• Physical Science (including both physics and chemistry)
• Earth and Space Science
• Engineering and Technology
• NGSS is designed with an understanding that it takes years of coordinated instruction to build deep understandings of the central big ideas of science, and weaves this understanding into the fabric of the standards.
• While not always explicit throughout the document, a systems perspective is embedded in NGSS's design.
• Considerable attention to both evolution and climate change is included within NGSS; much more than in NSES. 

These changes define a new vision for science education. The three dimensions address not only the content of scientific disciplines, but also describe how scientific knowledge. The inclusion of Engineering and Technology as Core Discipline is also a marked shift from current practice, and an appropriate shift. Attention to building understandings of a few keys ideas over many years is not typically done in schools today, nor is significant understandings of a systems perspective. And, attention to serious omissions of fundamental science that shapes our world is long overdue. 

In short, these are important changes in positive directions and they are of substantial size.

On the NGSS website, you'll find a five page pdf with a delineation of what the authors regard as the important Conceptual Shifts in the NGSS.

Now, let's go to the videos.

Why Are New Science Standards Needed?

How to Read the Next Generation Science Standards

I found the above two videos helpful, but they didn't give me quite enough information to find all the pieces I was looking for. I learned more through webinars I've attended over the last couple of weeks and I wanted to share this with others who didn't have the benefit of those webinars. So, I put together a short video to tour http://www.nextgenscience.org/. Before you begin watching the video, you might open that link in another window, and pause the video as you explore the website.

More About How to Read the NGSS Draft

The final video closes with a few comments about targeting your feedback where it will likely have the most effect. The text in the colored boxes is from A Framework for K-12 Science Education which was published last year, and that text is unlikely to change. So, target your efforts elsewhere. Provide specific feedback on how to improve wording of Performance Expectations (those multi-colored sentences near the top of the box) or on the connections at the bottom of the box.

Direct your energies in providing feedback to the areas of the standards most relevant to your work and your experience. That both narrows your focus so that you can complete your task before the June 1 close of comments, and increases the likelihood that your comments are on target.

Also, if you think this document represents a vision you share for science education, include that in your comments. Be sure to say what you like about NGSS! Consider that individuals and groups of all sorts will be providing feedback on this work, and that your comments matter.

If there are strategies that you find helpful for navigating NGSS or for providing feedback, please share them in the comments below.

Don Duggan-Haas

Make a Virtual Fieldwork Experience Using a Simple Template

UPDATE: Since this tutorial was created in March of 2012, Prezi has substantially revised their interface. The Graphic Organizer within the Prezi has also been updated so that the text within it may be edited, and arrows and boxes containing the questions can be deleted or added. A new set of tutorials will be created to reflect these changes, but the basic procedures are largely unchanged, and the tutorials below are still useful.

There is a new version of the Template, now linked below and here. This link was added February, 2013.

Federal Geographic Data Committee Launches Geospatial Platform Website -- A rich map resource

This short post is to highlight a cool resource that just came to my attention.

From the EPA Climate Change and Water E-Newsletter:

Federal agencies and their partners collect and manage large amounts of geospatial data - but this data is often not easily found when needed or accessible in useful forms. The Geospatial Platform provides ready access to federally maintained geospatial data, services and applications, as well as access to data from our partners across state, tribal, regional and local governments as well as non-governmental organizations. The website makes it possible for users to create customized maps, or to integrate their own data into the maps, and share the maps through web browsers and mobile applications. The Geospatial Platform was developed by an interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For more information on the Geospatial Platform website, please visit:
http://www.geoplatform.gov/home/index.html.

The site has tools for creating maps as well as a gallery of maps created by others. Maps in the map gallery vary in what they cover and how to explore them. United States Omernik Ecoregions map is very slick and easy to use. Enter an address or zoom to the region you want to explore and click on the map to see a detailed description of the ecoregion. This is an easier to use source for identifying ecoregions than the one I've been using for gathering this information for the VFE Database Entry Form, so I'm updating that link to this one.

NOAA Weather Radar and Weather Warnings shows the areas under a watch, and a key that doesn't seem to quite cover all the possible warning types, so in the two times that I've looked, there are areas under warnings that don't seem to quite map the key. It's a cool map, but not as technologically slick or user-friendly as the Ecoregions map.

There are more maps to explore here, as well as tools for making your own. Explore the site and note things of interest and then share them in the comments below.http://www.geoplatform.gov/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=c694f5e9b94246c98506df9b1592dba3

Google Docs & Google Forms -- some ideas on labs and other uses

On the ESPRIT listserv (a list with over 1,000 Earth science teachers subscribed) there was a query this morning on using Google Docs for labs. This coupled with my recent realization that you can easily email a Google Form made me think folks might find it useful to put those things together. A Google Form will feed into an associated Google Spreadsheet.

I can envision ways folks might use this for the sharing of lab data and also for assessment. The Google Form link above (and right here) takes you to Google's site on using forms in education that I looked at only after writing much of this. Happily, what I've written complements rather than repeats that information.

You could put lab/worksheet/test questions into a Google Form and email it to the class. Then you can easily see how many people responded to a particular item in a particular way. For questions with one correct answer, you could even set up formulas to have the spreadsheet grade it for you. Of course, tests wouldn't be very secure as kids could email the form to their friends, so you'd need to think through how to deal with that issue. The Google site on Apps in Education has insights on some of these issues here.

Update: When I shared this through Facebook, Aida Awad pointed out a resource for grading in Google Forms. Here's what she said:

So much you can do with Google forms in Geoscience classrooms .... check out self-grading forms using Flubaroo at ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXFRpox7JyM and adding a motion chart to a Google spreadsheet that students used to collect lab data and submit it using a form ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ugTMZ75vA. You can also import data collected with a form into a Fusion Table and map it!

For data sharing and compiling though, it'd be cool. The automated response summary is also very simple to use and quite helpful.

The Summary of Responses option (available from either the top of the page when editing the form or from the Form menu in the spreadsheet view) provides summary charts of responses like the one shown below.

You can also use conditional formatting so you can see certain patterns in a glance within the spreadsheet. What does that look like? The spreadsheet linked here has most numerical values color-code based on a related map keys. The color-coding is done automatically using conditional formatting. To set that up, select a column or set of cells, and select 'conditional formatting' from the 'Format' menu. You can find links to the maps on the page with the form embedded in it. That's here (still in draft form).

You could also use Spreadsheet Mapper to plot mappable data.  Note that last time I looked there was a very confusing error in Google's tutorial. It pointed to publishing the spreadsheet in a way that didn't work -- you should share through the option in the File menu, not through the Share button. Spreadsheet Mapper was used to create this map of Virtual Fieldwork Environments.

At the end of the post, I took the spreadsheet I shared back in 2009 of the Geoscientists' to do list and converted it into a form and embedded it in this blog post. The content of that form isn't mine -- it's lifted from Garry Hayes's Geotripper Blog.

When generating a form automatically from a spreadsheet, the default question format is for short text response. That's what is done below. You can also create the form which will automatically generate a spreadsheet.

I changed the first several questions to the different formats of questions available, just to show what they look like. The remaining questions I left in default format.

I didn't include the grid type question in the to do list as it didn't make sense for what's asked. Here is what a grid-type question looks like (along with a few other questions).



I set up the above little form just to see for myself what the grid-type looked like and how it fed the connected form, but I decided to make it something that might be useful for me, so fill it in if you'd like. It should only take a couple of minutes. Completing the form will also allow you to see the summary of responses, available upon form submission.

I've not used the grid before and if I was starting from scratch, I might use it for the whole geoscientists' to do list, with a two or three column grid (yes and no or yes, no, and partially/sort of).

Virtual Field Experiences in Geoscience Education: Resources from our GSA 2011 Short Course

Earlier this month, Frank Granshaw, Richard Kissel and Don Duggan-Haas convened a one-day short course in conjunction with the Geological Society of America's Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. It was a great day of networking and resource-sharing. This post is the agenda of that day with links to resources from each instructor.

A Photosynth of the GSA Short Course while Frank Granshaw was discussing VFEs and geocognition.

Course Agenda With Presentation Links

Introductions of instructors and participants + Goals of VFEs – Don Duggan-Haas,* Frank Granshaw* & Richard Kissel*

• Click here for the introductory Prezi.

VFE in the secondary classroom – Sarah Miller, Deposit High School, Science; sarah@millerscience.com

• Sarah’s Prezi
• Sarah’s VFE (click Earth science, then Norwich)

VFEn design and geocognition – Frank Granshaw, Portland Community College, Portland, OR; fgransha@pdx.edu

An unfinished panorama for discussion and brainstorming

Exploring the Great Japan Quake of 2011 with Google Earth – Steve Kluge, Resources for GeoScience Education; steve.kluge@gmail.com

• http://stevekluge.com/geoscience/tohakuquake.kmz

• The Great Tohoku Earthquake of March 11, 2011 (pdf)

Google Geo – Stefan Kuhne, Google, Geo Education Team; skuhne@google.com

• Stefan’s Presentation (pdf)

VFEs in NASA Education Programs – Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University, Mars Education Program; Wendy.L.Taylor@asu.edu   & Phoebe Cohen pcohen@mit.edu 

• Wendy & Phoebe’s Beta VFT (html)

Falls & Fossils: A Model Virtual Field Experience Focusing on Taughannock Falls State Park, NY – Richard Kissel, Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, NY; rak256@cornell.edu

• Richard’s Presentation (ppt) (Large file: 85MB)
• The Virtual Fieldwork Database (html). The Taughannock Falls VFE was shared. Zoom into Central New York, and click to download the file.

The pedagogy of inquiry-based fieldwork – Eric Pyle, James Madison University, Geology & Environmental Science; pyleej@jmu.edu

Using Gigapixel Resolution Imagery for Exploration Across Scales – John Van Hoesen, Green Mountain College, Geology & Environmental Studies; vanhoesenj@greenmtn.edu

• John’s Presentation Website

VFE Development as Self-Documenting Professional Development – Don  Duggan-Haas, Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, NY; dad55@cornell.edu

• Don’s Prezi 

Connecting the New Framework for K-12 Science Education to Earth Science Bigger Ideas: An Updated Rainbow Chart

This summer, the National Research Council released A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas.* This post provides a very, very brief overview of the new Framework and maps its Earth and Space Science Core Ideas onto the Bigger Earth System Science Ideas from the ReaL Earth Inquiry Project.


The Framework will be the guide for the development of the next generation of science standards. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) are due for an overhaul (or replacement) as they are now 15 years old.

NSES were a great step forward in the field of science education, bringing more focus upon inquiry and narrowing the overloaded curriculum, but they didn't go far enough. Furthermore, the great ideas in  NSES didn't make large changes in practices in the majority of classrooms. Fortunately, those ideas did filter to some classrooms and students. The new Framework also represents a great step forward (if its ideas impact classrooms).

The Framework describes science across three dimensions:

1. Scientific and Engineering Practices
2. Crosscutting Concepts
3. Disciplinary Core Ideas
• Physical Science
• Life Science
• Earth and Space Science
• Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science

They are shown slightly expanded in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: The Three Dimensions of A Framework for Science Education (from page ES-3) 

Just looking at the outline of the Framework's three dimensions highlights the scale of change the Next Generation Standards hope to bring. Only one of the three dimensions is focused on what we traditionally think of as science content, the rest, the majority, is focused on the nature of science. That's the stuff that helps us see where science comes from and why it matters. I think the first two dimensions are the most powerful pieces of this new document.

It's not the part I worked on. I was a member of the Earth & Space Science Design Team that drafted the Core Ideas for that section of the third dimension. While some of my fingerprints remain in that section, I was a bit player, especially since the Core Ideas in all areas were substantially revised after they left the hands of the Design Teams. (Even if my fingerprints were more clear in the Core Ideas, I'd still identify the other dimensions as more important). The impact of the revisions are most apparent in the fact that the so-called ideas are no longer ideas, but rather topics.

It's an idea that the Earth is a system of systems. Earth's systems is a topic. It's an idea that the flow of energy drives the cycling of matter. These ideas, or their close cousins, were in earlier drafts and I won't hesitate to say that I prefer them to the topics that made the final cut. But, I'm also very pleased that the Frameworks do bring focus to small sets of Core Ideas in each of four disciplinary areas. That has the potential for a much more coherent and manageable conceptual framework than anything from NSES.


Speaking of conceptual frameworks, you might be wondering how the Earth & Space Science Core Ideas map onto the Earth Science Bigger Ideas from the Regional and Local Earth Inquiry Project, and to the Essential Principles from the various Earth Systems Science Literacy Initiatives. (Ok, you might not be wondering that, but maybe you should).

The Prezi below includes an expanded version of the Rainbow Charts that map the various Big and Bigger Ideas, Core Ideas, and Essential Principles together, color-coded by Bigger Idea. Areas highlighted in white represent nature of science issues addressed by the overarching questions.

Rainbow Chart with Earth & Space Science Core Ideas on Prezi

If you'd like to print a copy, you can follow the link embedded in the Prezi, or go here, or click on the thumbnail image below. It is formatted to print on legal-sized paper.

For more on Bigger Ideas, see:

• http://virtualfieldwork.org/Big_Ideas.html, and,
• http://virtualfieldwork.org/Rainbow_Charts.html

I've not mentioned how the Framework sketches out how understandings of the Dimensions and Core Ideas are to be built over multiple years of instruction. That's hugely important and fundamental to why successful students have long graduated from school without deep understandings of basic science. 

This is but a very brief introduction to some of the ideas in the new Framework. If you're a science educator, (and if you're a parent, you're a science educator) you should give it a close look.

Don Duggan-Haas




*Clicking on the link will bring you to Framework page from National Academy Press where you can download the full document free as a pdf. All National Academy Press publications are now available as free pdfs.http://virtualfieldwork.org/downloadabledocs/BigRainbowChart09.2011.pdf