Learn Marble
Introduction
Marble, the desktop globe, is a virtual globe and world atlas, which can be utilized to learn more about the Earth. With the ability to pan and zoom, click on a label to open a corresponding Wikipedia article, and view the globe and maps with various projections, Marble is a welcome addition to Edubuntu’s educational packages
ICT Competency
Subject (Geography) resource creation.
Educational application and relevance
Atlas is an essential resource for a Geography teacher. An atlas is required to learn political geography as well as physical geography. Marble is a digital atlas. It can be used to understand and analyse map information of the Earth. Lessons can be created using different maps from Marble to understand certain concepts in geography.
Version
Marble Virtual Globe Version 1.8.3 (stable release) (Marble is also available on the Windows and Macintosh operating systems)
Configuration
This tool has no specific configuration requirements
Overview of Features
Marble is an virtual atlas, it has many digital maps of the Earth. These maps provide information about physical geography of the Earth, including topography, rainfall, climate etc. It also has ‘historical’ maps which give the information about the Earth at various points in time in the past, relating to political regimes at that time
Other similar applications
- Other free digital atlas applications include K Geography
- Non free digital atlas includes https://www.google.com/earth (Google), Bhuvan http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/bhuvan_links.php (ISRO).
Development and community help
- User manual for Marble is available on http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdeedu/marble and https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kdeedu/marble/index.html
- Community support is available on https://marble.kde.org/support.php
Working with the application
Functionalities
Marble is part of the Ubuntu distribution. This can be opened from Applications → Education → Marble.
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| Step 1 - Once Marble is open you will see a window like this. On left side of your desktop you can see "Map View". | Step 2 -Under Map View you should select "projection" type. Here you will see different projection types. You can choose needed. After this, Below the projection type, there will be option called " Celestial Body, Under this you have to choose " Moon or Earth view. |
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| Step 3- On the left side you will see many maps one below the other. Selecting any of them, will open it fully on the right side.
You can use your mouse to move the Earth in all ways – top to bottom and bottom to top, right to left and left to right. You can click on the map at any place to expand it – this is ‘drilling down’ the map. You can also use the scale bar at the right to increase/reduce the map size and change its orientation. |
Step 4 - For Example : Open the “Temperature July” map.
You can study the temperature patterns across the Earth during July on this map. Colour conventions have been used to suggest the temperature during this month. Open each of the maps available in the application. |
File formats for creation
Saving the file
Marble does not have its own file format, which you can create, edit and save. However you can export images of the maps you are working on. See ‘export and publishing files’ section
Export and publishing files
You can create an image file from Marble through the File – Export option.
Advanced features
Installation
| Method of installation | Steps |
|---|---|
| From Ubuntu software Centre | Application - Ubuntu Software Centre - search box select and type Marble- and click on Install. |
| From Terminal | Steps |
| From the web | Steps |
| Web based registration | Steps |
The application on mobiles and tablets
Marble is not available on mobiles and tablets. There are apps for Android, for physical and political geography of the Earth
Ideas for resource creation
You can create information for analysing in select topics in Geography. Students can explore the maps for different topics such as
- Rainfall patterns in July and December in India (corresponding to South west and North East monsoons), rain shadow regions, and explore causes for different rainfall patterns.
- Latitudes and longitudes, the role of each and differences between the two.