With the release of Google Earth 4.2, a new arsenal of cool tools have emerged. The most visible and notable probably is Google Sky and it's ability to fly out in space and see some terrific imagery of celestial objects. To be honest, I haven't played with Google Sky that much. I'm currently more interested in Terra Firma.

Over the last few years, mashing up Google Earth with United Streaming and other video services has allowed us to link to related videos that, when clicked from within a place mark, would open a browser window directly to the video. I've often wondered if there was a way to directly embed a You Tube/Google Video/Teacher Tube video into a place mark that could be played from within Google Earth. You alway have been able to embed a static image but it always kept me wanting a little more.

Enter Google Earth 4.2. Now those videos can indeed be played from within a GE place mark. There's even a new You Tube layer that totally rocks. But, as I try to push the envelope, I kept thinking of other possibilities.

Let's take a step back...

This week and last week, I introduced Animoto and Voice Thread to my 8th grade digital media class. What fun and exciting new tools for students to find their creative side. For a short project, I had them find 6 pictures from FlickrStorm (thanks David Jakes for that one) with which they could tell a story, any story that they wanted. They loaded them to Voice Thread, added some narration, and voila, instant story. While some of the end products were random and silly, a few students managed to build fairly cohesive and linear stories. Keep in mind that I like to throw kids into a new tool without a life vest (they are digital natives after all), give them a parameter or two, and see what they come up with. Afterwards, I have them reflect on the tool and how they could use it for other projects. I did this with bubbl.us and now the kids are constantly using it to brainstorm and plan out projects. So, this method works for me as a scaffolding process. Here are a couple Voice Thread examples.

<object height="600" width="800"><param value="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=8221" name="movie"><param value="transparent" name="wmode">
</object>

and this one...

<object height="600" width="800"><param value="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=8214" name="movie"><param value="transparent" name="wmode">
</object>

OK, now back to the here and now. As I was thinking about doing embedded video with the new version of Google Earth, it dawned on me that perhaps I could embed a Voice Thread project into a place mark. I quickly added a place mark and in the description pane, I pasted the embed code for both Voice Thread and Animoto projects. It worked beautifully! Try it yourself, it is remarkably simple to do. Below is a short tutorial video to show you the process of embedding Voice Thread into Google Earth. The audio get slightly choppy, probably due to GE running.

The implications for this, at least for my students, is that they don't necessarily have to use stock or canned video from You Tube (and others) to enrich a GE presentation tour. They can create their own with their own pictures (or Creative Commons images) and narration using their own voice! Wow! Wow! Wow! Side note: this has been more of a Ah! moment for me as a teacher than the slew of "Hey, look at me live on the Internet" tools that literally have been changing on a daily basis this week. Don't get me wrong, I too have a fever, and it can only be cured by more Ustream... or is that cowbell (for you SNL/BOC fans). But having creative tools like Google Earth, Animoto, and Voice Thread, kids get to create something right now on topics they are interested in.

Case and point: I spoke with our Language Arts teacher about what they are reading in class. She mentioned Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. Great book that centers on geography, specifically the four corners of the continental U.S. I thought it would be a great Google Lit tour with links, pictures, and now videos embedded into their tours. I really thought the kids would think that it would be REALLY cool. Boy, was I wrong. The groans and moans that emanated from those 13 year olds was striking. They didn't have ownership in the book. Frankly, some of the kids didn't like the book. Plus, they just completed a very long writing assignment about the book so I think they were just burned out on it.

So, within 5 minutes, we did a 180 and took a different direction, still using Google Earth, but centering on topics that were of immediate interest to them. For homework, I had them think of a theme or topic that could be referenced geographically and with multiple locations. I'm really curious as to what they will come up with in the morning.

This project probably will end up being a personal story using Google Earth, Voice Thread and possibly Animoto as a splash video. Storyboarding will definitely come first so that their stories are sound. We also have the (free) Google Earth Pro license that includes the Movie Maker tool. I'm not sure how that will work with embedded video but I'll take a stab at it and see how it goes. I may also have the kids use CamStudio to record their GE tour and then they'll post them to their blog or You Tube or Teacher Tube or Google Video or all of the above.

So, this is what's making me smile this week (other than the fact that my birthday is this Saturday, the 13th and my wife is taking me somewhere that remains unknown to me).

What is making YOU smile this week?

All I can say is WOW! Ustream.tv could arguably be the favorite web 2.0 tool of the new millennium. Over the last week or so, I have seen Will Richardson start his new Weblogg-ed TV show, beginning in a sports bar with David Jakes and Steve Dembo chatting and demo'ing (and lamenting their beloved Cubbies) how simple and inexpensive it is to set up a live studio. And just tonight, Will has another episode that centered on some of the very cool things you could do using a free program (albeit just for Macs) called Cam Twist.

Just think of the possibilities of Ustream. For instance, our school has been toying with the idea of setting up a daily video newscast that can be broadcast live to every classroom. In the old days (B.U. - Before Ustream), we would have to run a bunch of coax cable to each classroom, install TV's, and basically set up a small cable TV operation. It's a great system that doesn't rely on Internet bandwidth to work. But how expensive would this be for a school with no such infrastructure in place? I'll tell you, it ain't cheap!

Now that Ustream is in the here, the now, and the free, the obstacles seem MUCH smaller. Will showed very eloquently tonight how simple it would be to set up a school TV broadcast center using a computer, one or two web cams or digital video cameras, a microphone, and that cool Cam Twist program. I plan on starting a broadcast club much sooner than I anticipated (2 years early) as a result. The technology is simple enough to where the students could run the show pretty much by themselves. How's that for motivated and student-centered learning? The one issue that still is gnawing at me is having 30 plus classrooms tuning in live to our Ustream broadcast, all within the same network sharing a T1 line. I'll be curious at what point the network cries Uncle when so many people are trying to stream video at the same time.

And professional development? Now we can tune in live to workshops and conferences very easily. Although I didn't personally see it, I noticed that Vicki Davis was Ustreaming some workshops she is attending this week. I'm sure that as more folks start using Ustream, the world will become so flat that it will start bending in the middle with all the personal learning that is and will inevitably take place.

I plan on attending the Tech Forum in Austin on November 2. Wesley Fryer, David Jakes, and several other heavy hitters will be presenting. Will they Ustream their sessions? I hope so. I'll even volunteer to do it for them if they'll let me. As wonderful as it is to Skypecast or live blog a workshop to generate a back channel of communication and feedback, we are a visual society. We like to see what's going on to better understand the context of what we're learning. I guess that's why Second Life seems so popular right now.

As I'm writing this blog entry (the few and very far between), I keep thinking about how to aggregate ed tech shows that will be popping up all over the place very soon (my prediction). Could we push for a common tag that could be used to advertise when these shows will be broadcast? Twitter is great for this but is sometimes too immediate and by the time I see it, the event is over..I'm a day late and a dollar short. If show producers blog-ertize (blog + advertise) their shows and use a common tag (say edtechbroadcast or edtechustream or something else?), we could subscribe to that tag and have an RSS enabled schedule of events. Any other thought on this idea?

I just recently heard about the YouTube Custom Player from somewhere in the blogosphere. I checked it out and found that this is a great way to embed a series of videos into a player which can then be embedded anywhere on your blog (like this) or on a wiki or on a "regular" webpage. For instance, I've been tagging several great web 2.0 and Internet safety videos recently that I want to show my students to start meaningful discussions. Sure I can embed them individually into my medium of choice. But, every time a new one comes up, I have to embed that one. Now, with the custom player, I can create a playlist in YouTube, add whatever videos I want, go to the YouTube Custom Player page, enter the appropriate information, grab the code, and place it somewhere on your site. Now, if you find a new video on YouTube, add it to the playlist and your custom player gets updated immediately. Pretty darn cool me thinks!

<object height="445" width="780"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/cp/vjVQa1PpcFPfjWVqyNlcYgKJPSFhQizozx6AtavZaCM="><param name="wmode" value="transparent">
</object>

What an interesting idea to use Flickr images to create banners and titles for multimedia and print projects. Check out the Spell with Flickr site to get started. Pretty cool, eh?