VIRTUAL FIELDWORK / FIELDTRIPS IN GEOGRAPHY

This page archived in August 2008

A useful quote from SLN GEOGRAPHY Forum c/o Chris Durbin (and possibly someone else first...) - how does this fit your viewpoint...

"A virtual fieldtrip is like a virtual pint of beer"...

• A good place to start for your virtual tour around the world is 360 TRAVEL GUIDE. The 360 of course refers to degrees, and the site offers an online library of panorama images taken in locations around the world. This uses the iPix viewer which a lot of online estate agents also use to allow people to see views of the interior of properties which are for sale. This is a good way to get a feeling for a place.

One of the best virtual experiences I've had was at the EXPO 1998 exhibition in Lisbon. The Expo was on the theme of the oceans, and included a tremendous aquarium with creatures from all the world's oceans. It's still there now, so if you're in the area pop in. Its called the PARK OF NATIONS, and some day I will have to go back. The Expo had hundreds of pavilions which represented different countries. The Croatian one had a wooden floor with an array of stools set out. Around the stools at head height if you sat on them was a circular screen. This had images of Croatia projected onto it. The first film was of a boat. Ahead of you as you sat was the front of the boat advancing across the sea, look to the left or right and you saw the view that you would have seen, and look behind and there's the wake of the boat receding. It then changed to the city walls of a Croatian town, walk along the walls and you could see the path ahead and behind you, or look over the walls. Go to a market and people are bustling around you buying things and passing you on all sides. This was a memorable part of our visit to Expo - one of many.  Has anyone else experienced anything similar to this ?

• A similar site to the one at the top of the page is that called VIRTUALLY THE WORLD - which apparently has links to over 14 000 virtual trips.

BBC DOMESDAY DISCS

Virtual Fieldwork was something I first experienced when using the old BBC DOMESDAY DISCS.

These were released in the 1980's, as part of the BBC's celebration of the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. They came on large video discs which needed a special video disc player. You can read more on this project at the page of ANDY FINNEY. A good article about the project to save it is HERE along with some images which take me back. I can remember being videoed using the discs at some point.

One feature of the discs was a number of VIRTUAL TOURS, which were explored using the tracker ball. These were a linked series of images which could be moved through in different combinations. This approach can be recreated using the HYPERLINKS which can be added to Powerpoint slides.

VIRTUAL LINKS

Try searching on GOOGLE using the phrase "Virtual tour" and then the place you want a tour of....

Found a chance to wander round the village of KYLEAKIN at the Skye end of the Skye road bridge this way (link below...)

I also frequently used to check out the WEBCAM at the Sligachan Hotel on Skye and curse those lucky people parking up for a pint, or heading off for a day on the hills. This webcam has now unfortunately been permanently closed !

http://www.blaven.com/webcams.htm - has links to some alternative webcams of Skye (and other information too) as well as rather nice FAVICON image...

There's also several virtual tours of the tourist 'honey-pot' of Castleton in the Peak District. This is something that students could put together on a field trip, if armed with a digital camera, or even a disposable camera where the images can be developed and then scanned (or put onto a Photo CD for a small extra charge)

A DIGITAL CAMERA has to be an essential resource for any Geography department, to be taken by any member of staff who's going somewhere different to capture useful images. They used to be rather expensive, but you can pick one up for next to nothing now.

• EARTH CAM has links to web-cams spread all over the world so that you can 'visit' places. Check the time zones as some of them will be showing black squares at any given time....

• Try a visit to VIRTUAL LEEDS. Has the rather nicely named Parkinson building at the University.

• A useful site which lists a large range of WEB CAMS located around the UK and elsewhere can be seen HERE. It's a very 'busy' design to the site, and a lot of clicking is needed to identify all the web-cams that are available, and (as is the nature of these things) not all of them are always available. Nonetheless, the site offers TRAFFIC CAMS to help you dodge the jams, and a series of cameras in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Isles, Shetlands, Scilly Isles and a section on London. A useful index site.

• Details on SAND DUNES here, and other material, courtesy of Paul Swinhoe. There is some excellent data which could form the basis for a 'virtual' sand dune trip.

• GEORESOURCES has some well used and well developed virtual tours, notably of the coastline around RECULVER in Kent and also SAND DUNES. David Rayner has also added a trip down a river in Kent, and other materials.

• SKY TRAVEL has a feature called WORLD LIVE where it takes a quick trip around certain places in the world as shown through webcams which show cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin and Hong Kong live....

• If you live in SHEFFIELD, you can keep track of the traffic conditions at certain times at this page of TRAFFIC CAMERAS.

• One of the best virtual sites is STROLLING. This allows you to walk around LONDON, starting in Covent Garden. Also previews of tours around PARIS and DUBLIN. Uses immersive panoramas. Recommended.

• Peter Collinson's TOUR OF CANTERBURY. A VIRTUAL TOUR and rather good.

• Virtual tour of IRELAND here. Choose a county to start - includes WAV files.

• WEBCAM CENTRAL has a selection of webcams. The one on SYDNEY HARBOUR for example can be controlled. These are useful. Also a good one at MONT BLANC.

One of the aspects of VIRTUAL TOURS is the ability to go to places which one would never normally get the chance to visit for various reasons.

• Wander round the SOUTH POLE here.

• Found this site via some images of Montserrat. The site offers the chance to buy a DVD of QTVR panoramas and images of Glacial landscapes. Some marvellous images produced by JURG ALEAN. The link then goes through to Jurg's own school's GEOGRAPHY SITE, which is all in German, but includes some marvellous images and VIRTUAL REALITY tours of a glacial landscape. There are a few samples on the shop page which give a real idea of the scale of some of the features produced by ice. Some marvellous images of permafrost landscapes too, as well as trips to Pompeii and other places.

• One of the better fieldtrips I've found is that produced by the University of Aberdeen showing the area around THE MUIR OF DINNET - click to enter and then explore the places shown with the red pins. From here there's also a link to a DIGITAL FIELD TRIP OF THE DESERT demo.

• Check out the excellent 360 degree panoramas at 360VR STUDIO. It includes an excellent version of the NASA earthlights image HERE.

• The idea of visiting a place without leaving your armchair is being brought to life at ARMCHAIR TRAVEL site. Can wander around the TAJ MAHAL.

• You can also take a wander around VIRTUAL DENMARK. Where is Aarhus ? In the middle of our street....

• A similar project has led to the production of 360 PORTUGAL. Click on different areas of the country to get a feel for what it's like - hot in my experience....

• VIRTUAL TOURIST has over 600 000 users apparently.

A selection of PANORAMAS at this Danish site. It has, for example, some full screen QTVR of the Eiffel Tower. The ARCHIVE has over 150 FULL SCREEN panoramas, including the Niagara Falls, the Petronas Towers, Mount Everest and various other locations.

On the 20th of March, 2004, more than 180 photographers produced a VIRTUAL PANORAMA. Head over to the PANORAMA INDEX and you'll find some excellent views, such as Niagara Falls, the Pyramids, Ipanema Beach and the Malverns. There are plenty to explore. Recommended.

Google have made available a zoomable set of aerial photography and mapping of the whole of the USA.

You can do GOOGLE SIGHTSEEING: this site has a selection of places which have been chosen by people, and has the tagline:

EARTH BROWSER & OTHER GLOBAL VIEWS

As mentioned elsewhere on the site, you need to download EARTH BROWSER. This will allow you to navigate the earth, zooming in on areas of interest and clicking on webcams. The FREE DOWNLOAD trial version will give you a lot of the functionality and allow you to open 1 webcam at a time. By registering the software for $23.95 (not a lot at current exchange rates...) you get all the extra features and you can open a number of webcams to compare weather conditions and track the daylight changing around the world. This is a marvellous piece of software.

GOOGLE EARTH

This is catered for with the GOOGLE EARTH PAGE which is now the most visited page on GeographyPages (after the Home page...)

Primarily, it allows browsing the planet -- nothing special, in the times of Google Earth. In contrast to that, however, it makes use of NASA's Blue Marble imagery

(one pixel per 500m) and thus allows separate views for each month of the year, nicely showing seasonal differences, most prominently in snow cover. This is probably

also provided by NASA's WorldWind software, but the site naturally requires no installation. A recent addition is night-time imagery by the NOAA: At one pixel per km,

city (and even village) lights can be compared across continents and between 1992 and 2002. An overlay mode allows local comparisons between day- and night-time

views as well as amongst those. Together with the option to display towns and cities, this should have great educational value concerning climate, land use,

urbanization and even politics (e.g. Ukraine's dimming and North Korea's constant darkness). Independent from my browser-like use of the night-lights pictures, 
you may find the original material -- strangely ignored by the media -- interesting, for which you get an overview and download links (including a poster distinguishing

different kinds of light sources)   

A good quote on the letters page of the December 2003 issue of Internet Magazine. A letter from Joseph Ortenzi:

"We must keep in mind that the Internet is only a gateway to the world, and not the real thing. It's fantastic and inspiring, but ultimately virtual and not social. Unless we get off our ever expanding arses and explore the world first hand once in a while we will not be enlightened, just entertained and questionably informed."

• Site I discovered in 2004 is VIRTUAL MONTANA

The name suggests that the area covered by the website is going to be.... MONTANA. In fact when you log on to the stylish site you are presented with 3 choices of location: the FRENCH ALPS, ROMANIA or NORTH WALES. By clicking on the NORTH WALES option you are presented with the opportunity to explore the Human and Physical Geography, Places or a VIRTUAL TOUR. The Virtual Tour is a map of the Cwm Idwal area. There are a number of red hotspots and blue arrows which reveal text and an image when clicked on. Worth a look. This would be good in association with some of the recent BBC Natural History of the UK footage.

• Some rather good PANORAMAS including ones of moraines and mountains at Erik Goetze's VIRTUAL PARKS site. This is well worth a visit.

Just revisited this site for the first time in a year or more. It's the NORTH WEST GRID FOR LEARNING site - click the link and you'll go to the homepage from which you can go on the following VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS:

FRESHFIELD: Sefton's Dune Coast

Long profile of the RIVER DANE in the Pennines

Settlement: URBAN LAND USE ZONES - explore them

The Hydrological Cycle

Floods: Wildboarclough

Pollution along the River Alt

About a year ago I provided some suggestions of sites to Richard Taylor, Head of Geography at Thorpe St. Andrew school in Norwich, who was starting to look at VIRTUAL FIELDWORK ideas. At a recent Norfolk Geography network meeting he presented his findings, and provided a list of useful websites, many of which are listed above. The research is now written up as an article in TEACHING GEOGRAPHY.

PRODUCING VIRTUAL FIELDTRIPS

SETT 2005

CREATING YOUR OWN FIELDTRIPS

If you want to create a virtual fieldtrip it is usually best to start with some sort of MAP as a basis. These can be obtained from various sources for use within the classroom.

You can then add HOTSPOTS to the map which then need to be turned into HYPERLINKS. These will then take you to particular images which can have captions on them, and can then lead on to other images in turn.

SOFTWARE TO DOWNLOAD

A search on the Internet soon throws up a range of software which allow you to have a go at producing your own panaromas. These are also sometimes called IMMERSIVE PANORAMAS. These can also be viewed with Apple QUICK TIME, which is a useful 'PLUG IN' to have. Do a search on GOOGLE, and you'll find lots of stuff in this area...

You can also try out a demo version of a PANORAMA CREATION software.

• A website called TRAMLINE offers VIRTUAL FIELDTRIP MAKING SOFTWARE. This is available on a free TRIAL DOWNLOAD basis. The site also has links to over 40 existing virtual fieldtrips, which are U.S based, and not necessarily geographical in nature.

Also my page for my SAGT Seminar: 'MAGIC REALISM': Virtual Geography and Online Communities

Meanwhile, why not buy Harry Pearson's book: "Around the World by Mouse". You can visit the BOOKSHOP to have a link through to Amazon. Harry travels virtually around the whole world.

Good quote from p. 98

"The internet is such a marvellous resource that the atmosphere of anywhere you visit simply jumps out and sucks your face like a calf at a salt cake.."

CHECK OUT THE MY WALKS PROJECT for another way to look at your local area....

A team of academics from Northumbria University’s Divisions of Geography and Environmental Management have recently launched a new website, entitled ‘mywalks’.  Mywalks is a project designed to encourage people to open their eyes to the ‘hidden’, perhaps less glamorous corners of their towns and cities - basically the things around you: the man-hole cover, the tower block, the back lane....  ‘Switch off your mp3 players and look around’ is the message. Don’t rely on ‘experts’ to tell you what is worth looking at or appreciating; break away from the tourist trail, which directs us to admire a parade of ‘landmarks’ in any city or town, and engage with the less obviously picturesque sights (or in some cases, the downright ugly…). The aim is to get people thinking about their immediate environments from a different perspective, and to appreciate that geography is everywhere around them, it’s about re-engaging with our immediate urban, day-to-day, city, country, local, taken-for-granted environments and geographies. Through the ‘mywalks’ website, http://nuweb.northumbria.ac.uk/mywalks/intro.php, everyone can share ‘their walk’ and the experiences they encounter, with others.

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