How To Use World Wind In the Classroom

Integrating NASA World Wind into Power Point Presentations

Power Point, Key Point and other slide-show presentation tools are a valuable asset in lectures. World Wind can be a valuable tool to improve Power Point lectures simply in the fact that the program can be used to create stunning images to place in presentation. Also, since the program and imagery are open source, the images can be used freely without copyright issues. But World Wind can also be used in a more dynamic way than just an image production program. Just as a link on a web page can be used to direct World Wind to a location, a hyper link in Power Point can do the same function. By creating a World Wind URL in a Power Pont presentation, you can link these two powerful visualization tools together. You can bring more interactivity in the presentations, allowing student's questions to addressed visually and allowing the students themselves to explore the imagery and answer the questions. By getting the students more involved in the presentation process they will have more ownership over the information they have learned and will hopefully learn it on a deeper level than they would by just writing down and memorizing concepts.

This article gives a description of how to create a World Wind URL in a Power Point presentation, A few methods for execute the presentation in class and an example a Power Point presentation using World Wind Hyper links.

Step by Step guide to how to put URL's in your Power Point

1) Go to the location in World Wind that you want to link to your Power Point, set the camera to the view you want to view in World Wind. From the edit menu select the copy coordinates option (or press control C)

2) Now, move to Power Point. Right click on the image or text you want to make into the URL, select the hyperlink option at the bottom of the option bar.

3) In the Hyperlink dialogue, paste (control V) the coordinate URL you copied in World Wind.

4) Now when running the slide show, clicking on the image or text will direct World Wind to the desired location. When this happens NASA World Wind should pop in front of the power point slides show, occasionally it does not move to the front, staying in the background. To move it to the front press the windows key to bring up the task bar on bottom where you can select World Wind

note: Besides the basic coordinates that the "copy coordinates" option supplies you with can be supplemented with other commands to change the layer (layer=) or other characteristics. I have not fully explored this aspect but you can control many of World Wind's options through URL's

note: I have found that rather than hyperlinking text or pictures in the Power Point, I like to create a (go to world wind button", which contains the hyperlink. In my Power Points I use this icon.

Executing a Power Point-World Wind Presentation.

Before World Wind version 1.4 the only way to execute a Power Point- World Wind presentation was to have World Wind and Power Point opened separately. When clicking on a World Wind URL in Power point, World Wind Usually will come to the front and will focus on the location the URL specified. If World Wind stays in the background, then pressing the windows key (for a PC) will bring up the bottom task bar and world wind can be selected. Once you have finished looking at World Wind you can go back to Power Point by clicking on the correct task bar icon. The same tips in Using NASA World Wind to Make lectures more Interactive apply here, in particular opening the program before starting the presentations and viewing the area before-hand to create an image cache.

A new way of executing the presentation is to display the Power Point Presentation using the World Wind Web Browser. Here is a step by step procedure for running your Power Point and World Wind together

1) Once the power point is ready save it as a web document. It will be saved as a .wht file. Save this document on the web somewhere or place it on your computer (my documents or such)

2) Open World Wind, go to the view menu and select the web browser and make it visible.

3) Put in the web address of your web page Power Point file. If you placed it on the computer, enter in c:(pathname to file)

4) Now your Power Point should show on half of your screen, World Wind on the other half. I like to set my split screen left/right. I turn off the outline portion on the .Wht file to give more space to display the slides. If you click on your url's in the .mht file, World Wind should focus on the proper point.

5) In class I move the screen divided back and forth as I move from Power Point to World Wind. Say I have some introductory concepts on the Power Point, I move the boundary over so that the Power Point takes up most of the screen, when I click on a URL to show an example, I move the screen boundary back so World Wind takes up most of the screen.