<![CDATA[Henry Keil : Weblog items tagged with IGBL2009]]> http://elearningblogs.education.ed.ac.uk/oldelgg/elgg/hkeil/weblog/ <![CDATA[Google Earth Game]]> http://elearningblogs.education.ed.ac.uk/oldelgg/elgg/hkeil/weblog/1833.html http://elearningblogs.education.ed.ac.uk/oldelgg/elgg/hkeil/weblog/1833.html Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:38:50 GMT Know Your Island

This is the name of the game we have chosen to put forwad as our Google Earth team project.
Its aim is to test the user's geographical knowledge of islands.
However instead of just looking them up on a world map in this exercise you will be given the opportunity to 'fly' along parts of or its entire coastline.
The learning objective is to concentrate on the coastal features as the user will be traveling a predetermined path for about a minute. Certain geographical features such as the extent of agricultural land, rocky coastline, sandy beaches and marshland will provide important clues, as will the degree of habitation (towns/cities) and the presence of ports, bridges or jetties.
The game can be played individually but also as a group, competitively, based on a point score:

Rules
The rules are as follows:
1. Click on the file link at the bottom and play back the flight tour; if you can't work out the island repeat the flight, a maximum of four times
2. If you have not identified the island after the fourth time select the 'Places of Interest', and 'Borders and Lables' option from the Layers feature in GoogleEarth and try to identify the island using the landmark names
3. If you have not been able to identity the island at this stage start 'zooming out', one incremental step at a time until you know its name.
Points awarded as follows:

  1. If you recognize the island on the first tour you get 10 points, if you recognize it after the second run you get 8 points, at the third attempt 6 points and at the fourth time you get 4 points.
  2. If you need to switch on the landmark layers in order to identify the island you get 2 points
  3. If you have to make use of the 'zooming out' option you will get for each incremental 'zooming out' a penalty point, for example if you zoom out one increment and then recognize the island you get get -1 points, if you need to scroll out three increments you score -3
  4. Note down the score for each island you identify and move to the next one
  5. Total the number of all points during your island hopping to obtain a final score
  6. The person with the highest score wins
P.S. Is is recognized that there is a strong local bias within this game hence the choice of islands should be adapted to the nationality/residency of the player. For example local versions of the game may be created for particular countries such as Greece, Spain or Denmark.

Target group: GCSE to A-level Geography students
Below is the example of the first island tour, called Island1. Click on the file to launch GoogleEarth:

island1.kmz  

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