Street Viewin the classroom

Google Street View provides a way for students to discover and explore the world around them from within their own classroom. The Street View cars have driven over 10 million kilometers in almost 70 countries, and mounted the same cameras on tricycles, on snow machines, on boats, in backpacks and even on camels in order to travel across the seven continents of the world.

Many of the best Street View images captured can be viewed in the Gallery collec-tions, but sharing specific images as part of a classroom exercise can be awkward due to the long URLs associated with these web-based location. Quick Response (QR) codes provide one easy method for students with mobile devices to easily find and Street View images.

Using QR Codes

(1) From your Android device open the Google Play store App.

(2) Search for “QR barcode scanner” and install the free app called “QR BARCODE SCANNER Code Reader”.

(3) Open the App and select the top option to “scan barcode” and find a QR to scan.

(4) The app uses the back-facing camera to scan. Hold your device so the view of the target QR code fits within non-greyed out box on the screen (the width of this is indi-cated by the red line). Positioning is correct when your device beeps.

(5) On the next screen select “Go to Website” and then use the Google Maps App (not a web browser) to open the link. This will take you directly to the Street View image in Google Mobile Maps.

Note: There are many QR or barcode scan-ner Apps available but this tutorial assumes the use of one called “QR Bar-code Scanner” on Android devices. It can be adapted for use with other Apps and/or mobile operating systems.

Street View

in the classroom

Using QR Codes

(1) On Google Maps navigate to a Street

View image you wish to share and set the

view in the position you want students to

see first.

(2) In the top left corner click on the three

dots to the right of the map pin icon and

location name of the location the image.

Select “Share or embed image” from the

options that appear.

(3) A white box will appear and “Share

Link” should have a blue line under it. If it

isn’t click on it, and a URL should appear in

a box below. Check the box labeled “Short

URL” to simplify this URL (This will create

less complex QR codes).

(4) Copy the URL by clicking and dragging

in the box to highlight the text in blue, then

right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) to “copy”

the text. Note: When first opened the text

might already be highlighted in which case

only the copy action is needed.

(5) Open:

http://www.qr-code-generator.com/ and paste the copied Street View URL into

the box label Website (URL)

(6) Click the green “create QR code” button

and a QR image will be generated on the

right-hand side.

(7) This QR code can be downloaded as a

jpeg (or vector graphics file types) or em-

bedded on webpages using the “Embed QR

code” option (which then displays some

iframe code).

These offer a range of possibilities for shar-

ing QR codes via Google Apps:

- Presentations and Drawings can be used

to import the .jpg image.

- Google Sites can be used to embed the

iframe code.