THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE
INTERCOLLEGE PROGRAM
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: CREATING AN OCEANOGRAPHIC GOOGLE EARTH TOUR USING SPREADSHEET MAPPER
JONATHAN D. HARTLINE Spring 2011
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Information Sciences and Technology with honors in Environmental Inquiry
Reviewed and approved* by the following:
Laura Guertin Associate Professor of Earth Science Thesis Supervisor and Honors Adviser
Nannette D’Imperio Instructor in Computer Science Thesis Reader
* Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College.
i ABSTRACT
Google Earth is free, downloadable software offered by Google that allows people to explore the Earth through satellite imagery. In recent years, Google Earth has been used as a technological tool to teach students in the classroom about varying topics from geography to literature. Google Earth Outreach, Google’s program which supports non-profit organizations, has released Spreadsheet Mapper, a Google spreadsheet which can be used to create and compile more complex Google Earth tours. Four of Spreadsheet Mapper’s default templates were modified to suit the needs of a “choose your own adventure” style oceanographic tour which teaches users about surface ocean currents. The tour follows a branched structure in which the user chooses one of four ocean basins to explore: North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, and South Pacific. Each basin starts with the scenario of throwing a bottle with a message inside into the ocean and tracing its journey through the four major basin-specific surface ocean currents. At the end of each tour is a video which shows users how the bottle traveled on the ocean currents. After each video, the user is given the option to restart the current tour, go back to select another ocean basin, watch the video again, or end the tour. Additional uses for Google Earth and Spreadsheet Mapper to raise awareness of environmental issues are suggested.
Keywords: physical oceanography, Google Earth, Spreadsheet Mapper, KML, environmental inquiry, Choose your own adventure
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i LIST OF FIGURES iv LIST OF TABLES v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Classroom Uses 1 Current Out-Of-Class Examples 3 Why Physical Oceanography? 4 Why Choose Your Own Adventure? Education and Google Gaming 4
Chapter 2: A Closer Look at Google Earth and Spreadsheet Mapper 6 Anatomy of Google Earth 6 HTML, Tags, and Google Earth 10 Spreadsheet Mapper and Developing Dynamic KML 11 Customizing Spreadsheet Mapper 14
Chapter 3: Methods 17 Deciding on User Inputs 17 Specific Modifications 20 Creating Content 25 Spreadsheet Mapper Issues 26 Spreadsheet Content 28 Creating the Video 28
Chapter 4: Oceanographic Currents 31 Ocean Currents 31 The Tour 34 North Atlantic Basin 34 South Atlantic Basin 35 North Pacific Basin 35 South Pacific Basin 36 Tour Conclusion 37
Chapter 5: Future Applications in Environmental Inquiry 38 Existing Environmental Layers in Google Earth 38 Mountaintop Removal Mining 38 Endangered Species 39
iii Possible Future Projects in Google Earth 39 Invasive Species 39 Watersheds 40 Rainforest Conservation 40 Conclusion 41
Bibliography 42 Appendix A: KML Output for Spreadsheet Mapper 45 Appendix B: KML Code for Video Tours 210 Academic Vitae 282
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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1: The basic Google Earth interface 7 Figure 2-2: The Edit Placemark window 9 Figure 2-3: The text that appears in row 13 13 Figure 3-1: Spreadsheet Mapper’s Sample Template 1 19 Figure 3-2: Spreadsheet Mapper’s Sample Template 2 20 Figure 3-3: The start point for one of the Ocean Basins using Template 1 21 Figure 3-4: The start point for one of the Ocean Basins using Template 3 22 Figure 3-5: The start point for one of the Ocean Basins using Template 2 24 Figure 3-6: The number in cell H-10 27 Figure 4-1: The surface currents of the Pacific Ocean 32 Figure 4-2: Ocean surface currents around the globe 33
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LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1: Network Link Attributes 12 Table 2-2: Attributes required for every Spreadsheet Mapper Template 15
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have learned a lot about myself over the course of this thesis, none of which would be possible without the following people. I want to thank Dr. Laura Guertin and Nannette D’Imperio for the countless hours of their time spent answering my questions and editing my thesis. Without their suggestions and guidance I would not have stepped out of my comfort zone or accomplished half as much as I have. I thank my family for their endless supply of support and optimism, especially when I had none. Over the course of my college career my father has given me a bed to sleep in, my mother a shoulder to cry on, my brother Justin a model for success, and my brother Douglas a friend to confide in. Without any of these things I could not have succeeded in doing all that I have done and have nothing to show for my years as an Honors Scholar. Last but most certainly not least, I would like to thank Sean Askay from Google for taking the time to answer all of my questions, even the ones I did not ask. Sean has never met me in person, but we have talked to each other over the phone and e-mail to discuss Google Earth and Spreadsheet Mapper on two separate occasions. It is because of his generosity that my final Google Earth file has fulfilled and even surpassed my wildest dreams.
1 Chapter 1
Introduction
Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) is free, downloadable software offered by Google in which people can explore the Earth through satellite imagery. Because Google Earth is easily accessible, educators are able to use this tool as a resource to teach students in the classroom. The tool adds a spatial perspective that helps students with geography and has several different possibilities for classroom integration. Many examples exist as to how Google Earth can be used in education, most obviously in geography and Earth science classes. Other school subjects, such as physics (Aguiar & Souza, 2009) and literature (Castiglione & Engelhardt, 2009), use Google Earth for educational purposes. The most common method of navigation within a pre-existing Google Earth file is in a linear fashion. But a Google Earth file can be coded to be as dynamic as a web page, navigating the globe in a more “choose your own adventure” structure. “Choose your own adventure” is a form of literature which has multiple endings (Siddle & Platts, 2009). In a “choose your own adventure” Google Earth tour, it is the person playing the tour who controls which destinations to go to as opposed to following along in a linear fashion. Each choice the user takes will lead the user to a different end outcome. This thesis challenges the standard linear structure of Google Earth tours used in education and presents a nonlinear educational tour on ocean currents through the use of an additional Google tool called Spreadsheet Mapper.
Classroom Uses One interesting way to use Google Earth comes from Aguiar and Souza (2009), who describe using the tool with physics classes. Aguiar and Souza (2009) take the photos of Google Earth and look for boats in higher-quality sections of the tool, such as cities close to busy waterways. Google’s pictures improve in quality the closer one gets to cities, which is crucial to Aguiar and Souza’s (2009) student assignment. The boats found on Google Earth can have their acceleration and speed calculated by students by looking at the waves that the boats create. While unconventional, this is a unique pairing between physics and Google Earth.
2 Even Adam and Mowers (2007) find unique ways to use Google Earth as an educational tool for elementary schools, such as learning about the location of U.S. states compared with Google Earth. When students learn about the location of states, Google Earth helps to add a personal perspective and give students a sense of where they are in the world. A teacher can start in the student’s hometown and zoom out to show the state, which is more helpful than showing a student on a standard two-dimensional paper map. Google Earth adds a geographic perspective to learning, which Adam and Mowers (2007) say can be used for anything from basic counting to history and literature. Wilson et al. (2009) also discuss the implementation of Google Earth in an elementary school setting, although they address the topic of environmental inquiry. Using imagery from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) layer of Google Earth, students analyzed before and after pictures of rivers and cities to uncover the negative impacts of overpopulation and urbanization on certain areas of the globe. Their studies also found that the use of Google Earth added interest to the topic for students who were not as involved in other classroom activities, citing two C-average students in the class receiving grades above 90% on the Google Earth assignments. While Google Earth is being embraced by K-12 teachers, there may be some disadvantages to using this software. In his article Google Earth as a (Not Just) Geography Education Tool, Patterson (2007) raises several positive and negative points about implementing Google Earth in the classroom. Google Earth is a form of Geographical Information System, in which points are plotted on a map. Patterson sees the potential benefits of using a program such as Google Earth to teach geography and the Earth sciences in which a geographical visual aid would be helpful. However, Patterson also addresses the potential negatives that can be encountered with Google Earth, which mostly relate to a lack of technology on the school’s part. If a teacher does not have a sufficient bandwidth, it may take time for pictures to load up, leaving students distracted. Also, the accuracy of some information can be questionable from Internet sources and other Google Earth placemarks. However, this can be overlooked if a teacher makes his or her own Google Earth placemarks, which is easy to do. Using placemarks created by reliable sources such as NASA is also another option. Patterson concludes his remarks by saying the benefits of Google Earth far outweigh its small setbacks.
3 One of the most prevalent examples of utilizing Google Earth in the classroom is the site Google Lit Trips (http://www.googlelittrips.org/). In their paper entitled “Google Maps & Google Earth in the Classroom,” Castiglione and Engelhardt (2009) describe Google Lit Trips as “a site… that experiments with teaching literature through maps.” (p.4) The tours provided on the site are based on fiction books that most students have to read in English class, such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. This form of education adds depth to a classroom discussion in which a map is used to show where certain book events occurred.
Current Out-Of-Class Examples Google Earth has the potential to create nonlinear tours. Pennsylvania Civil War Trails is a website established by the Pennsylvania Tourism Office to promote tourism in the state of Pennsylvania and also educate people about Pennsylvania’s Historic Civil War sites (Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development, 2010). The site has several Civil War locations in Pennsylvania plotted out on Google Earth for people to explore with panoramic photos that let users step into the photographs. Each placemark has information on the area in question and also provides links to other Civil War sites that are related or close by. A nonlinear structure for the Civil War website allows users to create their own tour and decide what they would like to see. Although all the stops on this tour are not linked together, some provide links to similar websites. It is Pennsylvania’s hope that these Google Earth Civil War Trails will inspire people to visit their historic cities (Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development, 2010). There exist other Google Earth tours not created for educational purposes but for raising awareness of some topic. Poonpol and Keen write for Google’s Lat-Long blog (http://google- latlong.blogspot.com/), which discusses in depth some topics of Google Earth. In October 2009, the Lat-Long blog started a collection of videos known as “Google Earth Heroes,” in which various activist groups use Google Earth to spread their message. One of the first showcased groups is Appalachian Voices (http://appvoices.org/), which uses the tool to show what the Coal Mining Industry is doing to the Appalachian Mountains.
4 Why Physical Oceanography? I will be using Google Earth technology to create an educational tour in the field of physical oceanography, specifically ocean currents. I have chosen the study of the oceans because I feel it is a topic that is not stressed enough in today’s world. One of the fundamental principles of oceanography is that only 5% of the ocean has been explored (Ocean Literacy 2006), and it is estimated that less than 1% is protected through conservation efforts (Protect Planet Ocean, 2010). We do not know enough about this part of the Earth’s system, and yet it has a big impact on our lives. One of the issues that is currently not being addressed enough is the issue of garbage patches in our oceans. For years, humans have been dumping their waste and garbage into the ocean, but what effects does that have on the environment? My Google Earth tour focuses on ocean currents and is based on some of the content found in Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano’s (2009) Flotsametrics and the Floating World. The tour addresses two of the Essential Principles of Ocean Literacy (2006), specifically (#1) the Earth has one big ocean with many features, and (#6) the ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.
Why Choose Your Own Adventure? Education and Google Gaming The need for a nonlinear tour structure in teaching oceanographic concepts is important because of the depth that it adds to the learning experience. In A gaming frame of mind: digital contexts and academic implications, Abrams (2009) follows the lives of three high school students and how their outside use of video games helped them to gain an interest in their school subjects. Although the students discussed in Abrams’ study are described as academically struggling in English and math, they relate to their subjects through the video games they play outside of class. For example, one of the students describes in detail how he was able to pass an English exam not because of studying the material but instead because he encountered the words on his exam through his gaming experiences. Abrams (2009) concludes her research by saying that gaming helped the three students gain an interest in what they were learning while also allowing them to better retain the information covered in class. While this study separates classroom learning and gaming, it is important to note that gaming was still used by the students to retain knowledge and develop a broader understanding of the material, which is an important point when creating educational games.
5 Creating a nonlinear Google Earth tour allows for a more immersive experience into the subject by changing the learning experience into a gaming experience. Annetta et al. (2010) say that today’s teachers need to realize that the next generation spends more time playing video games than they do on school subjects and in order to adapt to this gaming must be used to teach. Their study, which consisted of creating a CSI-style game to teach Biological Science concepts, found that students are more immersed in learning if it is turned into a gaming experience. Their study followed 131 high school biology students taught by the same teacher of which most said they played videogames ten hours per day and three said they didn’t play video games at all (which was the same amount of students who were unable to complete the assignment in the class period). Overall, the students in the study found the learning experience fun, and were able to retain a lot of the information from the lesson. Annetta et al. (2010) also state in their introduction that their game satisfied four concepts of learning through video games, mainly that students desire immediate responses, being connected, and social interaction while learning through their own trial-and-error experiences. While this study was on a multiplayer educational game and my tour is more of a text-based adventure, the idea of students learning through experience and getting immediate responses are two things that this type of game has in common with what I created.
6 Chapter 2
Anatomy of Google Earth and Spreadsheet Mapper
Anatomy of Google Earth Google Earth is an application which showcases the Earth in several ways. A map of the Earth is created with satellite imagery and used as a starting point for users, who navigate the globe by using the left-hand sidebar (Figure 2-1). Users can fly to any location on the globe by simply typing the name of the location in the “Fly To” box of the Search section, which can even find local businesses and get directions, similar to Google Maps. The Layers section of Google Earth allows users to utilize various pre-existing layers in Google Earth which contain a wealth of information from organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Geographic Society. This section is organized by topics that range from 3D Buildings to Oceans and Weather. In addition to using preexisting Google Earth placemarks and flying to different areas of the globe, users can add their own locations to the Places section of the application by clicking the “Add Placemark” button from the top menu bar, symbolized by the yellow pushpin.
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Figure Figure 2 placemarks. usednew to add top isthe pushpin yellowat Earth varioustoolbar layers. The in Google the
8 When a user clicks the “Add Placemark” button, a “New Placemark” dialogue window appears that is similar to Figure 2-2. From here a user can add detail to the placemark by typing in the provided fields (“Name” and “Description”). The Name field gives the placemark a name that appears next to the placemark icon under the Places section on Google Earth. The color and size of this text can be modified in the “Style, Color” tab of the Edit Placemark menu. The Description Tab contains the Description field where a user can type additional information about a specific location. The information that is stored in the Description Field appears in the placemark balloon when the placemark icon is clicked. Any text that appears here can be modified by using HTML Tags (described in further detail in the HTML, Tags, and Google Earth section). The “View” tab of the “Edit Placemark” window contains information on how Google Earth will display the placemark. This includes the latitude and longitude, the distance from the Earth, the orientation of the Earth, and the angle at which the placemark is viewed. The “Altitude” tab determines how high above the Earth the placemark is. The physical location of the placemark can also be changed by clicking and dragging the placemark icon anywhere on the globe. The default placemark, as seen in Figure 2-2, is a yellow pushpin, which can be changed by clicking on the similar-looking icon in the Edit Placemark box. Google has several icons to choose from and also allows anyone to create their own custom icons. Once all of the changes are made to a placemark, the user must click “OK” in the lower right corner of the box to save any changes they made to the placemark. After multiple placemarks are created, they can be saved as either a KML file or a KMZ archive.
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Figure 2-2: The Edit Placemark window (above) allows the user to modify the placemark code. The placemark balloon (below) displays the placemark name in bold and description content in plain text.
10 Google Earth files are saved as KML files, which contain all of the formatting for a custom tour. KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, a programming language that uses tags much like HTML (Wernecke, 2009). The difference between the KML and KMZ file formats is what type of information the file contains. A KML file only contains information concerning the location and description of placemarks. This is the default save file for Google Earth, and can be opened in a text editor such as Notepad or TextPad to view the HTML formatting that goes into the Google Earth file. While a KMZ archive cannot be opened in a text editor, it is a zip file that contains a KML file and any other additional files which Google Earth will need in order to display information correctly in the placemark (Wernecke 2010, p. 41). For example, if a Google Earth file contains images that are saved on the computer and not on an Internet server, the images will not load on a different computer. A KMZ archive is a zip file that contains not only a KML file (saved as “doc.kml”) but also any additional images that are added to a placemark. Because it is a zip file, KMZ archives take up less space than a usual KML file and are recommended to e-mail larger Google Earth files.
HTML, Tags, and Google Earth While anyone can easily create and save their own simple Google Earth KML/KMZ documents, the software has the capability of displaying the content of description balloons in a more complex format. KML uses HTML tags to help modify text within placemarks, such as the tag that is used to bold text and the
tag that is used to create a line break. Certain HTML tags also contain attributes, which are values in tags that further define them (Wernecke 2009, p. 81). For example, the tag has an href attribute which places a link in an HTML file and a target attribute which determines where the link will load (if set to “new,” the link will open in a new window). Google Earth does not need to be installed on a computer to create a KML file, which can be created with a simple text editor such as TextPad or Notepad. This coding is mostly preset when one creates a file in Google Earth, but much more can be done with the program by looking at the way it is coded. As an example, each Google Earth placemark has its own default setup for an application window. This window always has a link at the bottom of the Balloon Placemark that gives directions “To Here” or “From Here” (Figure 2-2). The problem with directions is that some placemarks may not be located in places where one would be able to get driving directions to them, such as in the middle of the ocean or at the top of a
11 volcano. To take this code out of the file, one must look at the coding for the placemark (Brown, 2006). I have used three books to help me look into this matter, in particular the popular KML Handbook (Wernecke, 2009) which helps with writing code for KML files. The other books, I utilized to learn additional code, are Hacking Google Maps and Google Earth (Brown, 2006) and Beginning Google Maps Mashups With Mapplets, KML, and GeoRSS: From Novice To Professional (Udell, 2009).
Spreadsheet Mapper and Developing Dynamic KML Google Earth uses HTML tags for modifying text within placemarks, in addition to having its own KML-specific coding structure full of features, which are tags with many attributes in common (Wernecke, 2009, p. 40). While several features can be changed in a placemark, such as the image used or the balloon’s background color, physically creating placemarks in Google Earth offers only a small number of these customized options to its users. For example, placemarks in Google Earth have the ability to link to other placemarks by using code similar to creating a link to a website. This type of link has the option of either opening a balloon, flying to a specific point’s location, or opening a balloon and flying to its location on the globe. However, to fly from placemark to placemark requires that each placemark has a unique id, something that Google Earth does not provide placemarks by default when creating a KML file. The Google tool Spreadsheet Mapper provides a solution to the challenge of linking within a placemark to another placemark in creating a “choose your own adventure” tour. Spreadsheet Mapper is a spreadsheet file designed by Google Earth Outreach that attempts to simplify the placemark creation process. Spreadsheet Mapper provides six default templates for users to implement in their tours that are fully customizable to the skilled KML editor (http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_spreadsheet.html). In order to access Spreadsheet Mapper, a Google account is required. The file is saved as a “Google Spreadsheet” online in the Google Docs application and the user follows instructions in the main spreadsheet to set up a network link between Google Earth and the spreadsheet. A network link is used in Google Earth to create a Google Earth document that contains real-world content from an online source (Wernecke 2009, p. 147). One reason why a network link would be used in a Google Earth file is because it contains a lot of information. Whereas a KML file with 40 placemarks may be 25KB or larger, a network link only saves the text that links to the file posted on an
12 Internet server. In the case of the Spreadsheet Mapper, a network link is used to compile the rows of placemark data in the spreadsheet into KML that can be read by Google Earth. Table 2-1 displays a list of attributes contained in the
Spreadsheet Mapper templates can be helpful to people who do not know how to code very well in HTML, because someone needs only to fill out the template fields in Spreadsheet Mapper to turn the information into a KML file. The only fields that are required to create a placemark are “Latitude,” “Longitude,” and “Template #.” Each placemark then has its own specific fields that are created by the Spreadsheet Mapper’s developer. This means that the person who creates the Spreadsheet Mapper Template has the ability to eliminate a majority of the coding that would otherwise be required. For example, in Spreadsheet Mapper a user may only be required to copy and paste the URL of an image into the spreadsheet to add it to the tour whereas someone not using Spreadsheet Mapper would have to type out the HTML code to insert the image which would include other attributes, such as its alignment and size, all of which the template takes into account. This concept is illustrated in Figure 2-3, which shows that a user of Spreadsheet Mapper would not have to know as much about coding to get the same quality product out of Google Earth.
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The text that appears in row13 in(above) Spreadsheet Mapper will turn into a formatted KMLdocument
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14 Customizing Spreadsheet Mapper Each Spreadsheet Mapper template requires at a minimum the information outlined in Table 2-2. Once these variables are modified for the new template, each template’s unique attributes can be created. Unique attributes come in the form of Static Variables and Unique Variables. Static Variables are used in the template to provide default images and settings to what will appear on each placemark with that template design. An example of this is the Balloon Width or Photo Width Variables used in the first and third templates. Unique Variables, in contrast, are fields which contain varying information depending on what content a placemark has. For example, while a template may have a static text color, the text that is that color will be unique to every placemark that is created. While Unique Variables are the only things that a Spreadsheet Mapper user will see in the Placemark Data Section, the Static Variables help to flesh out the placemarks and give default values to certain attributes.
15 Table 2-2: Attributes required for every Spreadsheet Mapper Template. Variable Description Template Name The unique ID of the