Today Google launched their infamous Street View here in the UK, covering 25 UK cities including Bristol (but not Gloucester or Cheltenham).
Google today announced the launch of Street View for 25 cities in the UK, allowing users to view and navigate 360 degree street-level imagery for places including Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester, Oxford and many more (full list below).
Street View was first launched in May 2007 and is hugely popular worldwide with imagery available in the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy and from today the UK and Netherlands. It is also available in Google Earth and on Google Maps for Mobile.
In areas where Street View is available, you can access street-level imagery by zooming into the lowest level on Google Maps, or by dragging the orange “Pegman” icon on the left-hand side of the map onto a blue highlighted street. You can check out a restaurant before arriving, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, get a helping hand with geography homework, or just explore and get to know your town better.
So if you are ever going to a conference or an event, Google Street View allows you to see what the place looks like from the street (hence street view).
Still thinking about the possible learning activites which could use this function of Google. If you have any ideas, please post a comment (or two).
Educational use, apart from going – that’s my Mum’s House, that’s where I lived in London for a year, that sort of thing?
Surely it’s only going to enhance geographers studying urban things – they can classify the businesses in a road from their classroom;
give a better view to foundation studies students to help them navigate or recall journeys;
relive historical events as they walk down roads like protest marches;
bring to life anywhere you read about in literature (think of the way that Peter Ackroyd writes about London then walk his streets, my wife used to refer to an A to Z whilst reading him);
bring a new dimension to geolocation things, like some of the things Futurelab have been playing with;
the OU have been doing quite a bit with virtual field trips e.g. where some students have physical accessibility issues
what a resource if you are studying architecture or town planning
I don’t think it’s going to take people a lot of time to come up with things; can’t think of a physics use for me yet and you need to call me back when they’ve done West Cornwall….
Thanks Andy, some great ideas there.
http://twitpic.com/29iyu – As you can see from this screenshot, Google’s number plate blurring isn’t working all the time!