8BL - Earth as Art challenge...

Good morning 8BL! Your challenge for today is to use Google Earth to produce a fantastic piece of art work... Below are two of my favourite examples from last year's Year 8 groups, and you can see some of the others by clicking here.

To make your own...

1. Open Google Earth (Start, Swanwick Hall, Humanities, Google Earth).

2. Spend some time exploring, and find yourself a beautiful view.

3. Open a new Ppt presentation.

4. Back in Google Earth, make sure you are happy with your view (do you want to zoom in or out, or tilt it?), then take a screenshot (hold down Ctrl + press PrtScn).

5. Paste your screenshot into your Ppt slide.

6. Crop your screenshot until you are happy with it.

7. Right-click on your picture, and select "Save as picture..." Give your picture a sensible name, and save it in your user area (preferably in a Geography folder!). Check that the filetype (in the dropdown box below where you type the filename) is .png or .jpg.

8. Go to the Big Huge Labs website. Upload your picture, and then experiment with colours, etc. and give your work a caption.

9. When you are completely happy with it, click Create. Once your finished poster appears, you can either go back and edit it, or click Save. Save the file to your computer, giving it a filename that includes your name.

10. Open your school emails. Type vel into the address bar, and then attach your finished work (not the screenshot from your ppt). Send!

I am expecting two brilliant pieces of work from each pair, and we will have a look at everyone's work on Friday morning. Have fun!

Svalbard

Some reminders for 8BL...

Laurel McFadden's Cold Photo blog...

Flickr

More Svalbard stuff here:

www.svalbard.net/
www.svalbard.com/

Dancing Matt...

I've posted about Dancing Matt before, but this is for the benefit of Year 8, especially 8BL, who enjoyed watching Matt's 2008 video this morning...



If you want to have a look at the other videos, including out-takes, and also check out maps and Google Earth files of where Matt has danced, they're all on his website here. (I have not read all of the comments on the website, or posted on the YouTube videos, and so I cannot guarantee that there aren't any rude words there.... If there are, I am very sorry!)

Yesterday's volcanic eruption...

Interestingly, it was my Year 8s today who could tell me all about the eruption of Stromboli - both Yr9 groups (who are studying Natural Hazards at the moment) claimed not to have heard of Stromboli!

Check out the BBC coverage here, or have a look at the webcams on this site (actually, I don't know how good they are - it's dark in Italy at the moment!!)