zSuccess StoriesDr M. Antoni J. Ucerler: Google Earth for teaching Global History: A Virtual Interactive Experience

Case Study

http://oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg

ltg@oucs.ox.ac.uk

OUCS, 13 Banbury Rd,

Oxford, OX2 6NN

“I have always been quite passionate about using IT for teaching in the humanities, especially in history.

Colleagues in the Oriental Institute have been very supportive and the help from OUCS has been excellent.”

-Dr M. Antoni J. Ucerler

The Learning Technologies Group, located in the Computing Services Department, finds new and innovative ways of using technology to enhance teaching and learning at Oxford University.

AimsThe project’s aim – to

use Google Earth to teach global history – grew out of a practical need to help undergraduates in a survey lecture course co-taught with other lecturers over the past two years in the sub-faculty of East Asian studies for undergraduates reading 1st-year Chinese and 2nd-year Japanese. The lectures were focused on the theme of European expansion in Southeast and East Asia (1498-1650).

The vast number of geographical places unfamiliar to students as well as their difficulty in grasping accurately the relationship of historical events to the geographical terrain, prompted me to use the new ‘overlay’ tools in Google Earth and encode them in KML to illustrate: (1) the historical routes of navigation from Europe to East Asia; (2) the visual context of geographical locations (e.g. Goa, Nagasaki, Malacca, Macau, etc…), and how the terrain aided or hindered travel to and from them; (3) the evolution of historical maps and how these differ from contemporary maps and satellite photography (e.g. 17th-cent. maps of the port of Nagasaki vs. the modern lay-out of the entrance to the port with areas of recently

reclaimed land).

I later also used the materials I had created with students from the sub-Faculty of Portuguese. Why a battle was won or lost, why a ship sank, or why a port was considered safe or unsafe often depended on a number of key geographical features of the location. Google Earth provided an interactive visual experience, which combined both the satellite imagery and historical maps and images of relevant artifacts.

During the lectures I used the Google Earth overlays created in KML. These included place markers to indicate key historical locations around the globe. To enhance the visual experience, I used the ISIS multimedia room at OUCS – with a touch-sensitive SmartBoard so that the process of lecturing would not be interrupted by having to stare into my computer rather than engaging the student audience. This was supplemented with encoded pop-up windows with further maps and customized information, including links to websites. I could rotate the globe and zoom into locations in Google Earth, open up pop-up windows, turn certain overlays on or off, or fade them gradually in and out while I was speaking by simply touching the SmartBoard screen. available to students on WebLearn for them to download for further study by loading it on their own computers.

Pictures from Top: Screen Shot of Dr Ucerler’s Google Earth teaching seminars, inset; Dr Ucerler receiving his award from Computing Services Director Dr Stuart Lee for ‘Use of Technology in Learning Spaces’ at the 2009 OxTalent Awards Ceremony

If you would like to find out more about Dr Ucerler’s use of Google Earth in Teaching World History, please visit: http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/orient/ea/japan/ucerler/

For more information about the Learning Technologies Group’s work or to sign up for courses please visit: http://oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg

The use of a second projector and screen in the multimedia classroom made it possible to provide an outline of the contents of the lecture and supplementary images of historical artifacts, presented in PowerPoint. The Google Earth KMZ file I had created and some of the PowerPoint materials were then made The Google Earth KMZ file I had created and some of the PowerPoint materials were then made available to students on WebLearn for them to download for further study by loading it on their own computers.

OutcomesBy using the above mentioned KML-encoded overlays I was also able to perform virtual ‘fly over’ simulations, as if in a helicopter, of cities such as Lisbon, Cape Town, Goa, and Kyoto among many others. In key areas around the Cape in South Africa, for example, it was possible to show students virtually what a Portuguese navigator might have seen and to explain why the geography (e.g. where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet) played such an important role in their early failures and subsequent successes in rounding the treacherous Cape. Another example of how the visual technology of Google Earth made it possible for me to explain the historical maritime strategy of Portugal was the ‘fly over’ of the Portuguese fortress on the Island of Mozambique – the ruins of which are clearly visible from satellite images. The students’ reaction to these ‘virtual recreations’ of historical navigations on the SmartBoard was very positive and helped them, I believe, to engage in a new way with an otherwise very complex set of historical data.

Pictures from left: Screenshots from Dr Ucerler’s Google Earth for Teaching Global History Project