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Tours from the field

Some lessons are tour lessons: a virtual tour of a place, written to work before the tour exists. Until one is added, the lesson says its tour is forthcoming. If you filmed or photographed the place yourself and logged it in My Field Log, you can put that capture into the lesson.

Who can do this: the platform owner, the course's own instructor, or the school's admin (on any course of the school that is not owner-only). The capture has to be in a Field Log project you are on.

Before you start: the permission note

Each stop (leg) in a Field Log project has a permission note: what permission covers filming there, in your own words. "Public viewpoint, no permission needed" is a perfectly good note; so is "Site manager agreed by email on October 2." Add it when you create the leg, in the leg's Use in a lesson panel, or in your route import file. A capture on a leg with no permission note cannot be used. Do not put anyone's phone number or email in it.

360 photos

When you log a photo, tick This is a 360 photo if it is a full 360 picture (the wide 2:1 image a 360 camera saves). For a photo you already logged, tick 360 beside it in the Captures list. A 360 photo opens in the lesson as a view the learner can look around in: drag it, or click it and use the arrow keys, with plus and minus to zoom. A View as a flat image link under it opens the file itself.

The 360 view needs a link to the image file itself (one ending in .jpg, for example). A Google Drive link shows the photo flat, in Drive's own preview. If the site holding the file does not allow other sites to read it, the lesson shows the photo flat and says so. Nothing is uploaded here either way.

Adding the tour

  1. Open the project in My Field Log, go to Legs, and open Use in a lesson on the stop.
  2. Pick the lesson. If the stop's notes link to a lesson (a path like /yourname/your-course/lesson/its-slug), that one is picked for you. Only empty tour lessons you may fill are listed.
  3. Pick the capture. Captures that cannot be used are grayed out with the reason. A 360 photo is marked 360.
  4. Check the credit, which shows under the tour as plain text, for example "Photo by Jordan Lee at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Lawrence, Indiana, October 2026." Edit it if someone else on the crew took it (up to 400 characters).
  5. Confirm the people in the frame by ticking No identifiable person appears in this capture, or each one has consent recorded on it. Consent in the Field Log is logged for the subject you named; this covers anyone else who can be recognized, a passer-by or a child included. Without the tick, the tour is not added and you are told why.
  6. Press Confirm. The tour is on the lesson straight away; nobody has to approve it.

What can never be used

The server refuses, and tells you why, when:

  • the subject declined (never published, whatever else is true);
  • the capture involves a minor and the consent is anything but written (a parent or guardian's yes);
  • it is not a photo or video;
  • it has no https link to where the file lives (media is link only: nothing is uploaded here);
  • the link cannot be shown in a lesson: link one file (a Google Drive file, a YouTube or Vimeo video, or an image or video file), not a folder, a channel, or an audio file;
  • its stop has no permission note;
  • the people in the frame were not confirmed (step 5).

Checked again on every view

A tour is not approved once and forgotten. Every time the lesson opens, the same rules run again against the capture as it stands. If a subject's consent is changed to declined, the permission note is removed, the capture's link changes, or the capture is deleted, the tour comes off the lesson at once and the lesson goes back to saying its tour is forthcoming.

While a tour is showing, the lesson's title drops "(360 tour, forthcoming)" and the opening paragraph that says the tour is not here yet is hidden, because neither is true any more. The same cleaned title shows in the course page, offline downloads and course search.

Seeing, fixing and removing tours

Teach, Tours (/teach/tours, linked from the top of Teach) lists every tour lesson in your courses: Empty, Shown, from the field (with its credit and the link's site), Hidden (with the reason), or Has its own tour link. On each tour:

  • Check link asks the link's site, once, whether it still answers, and shows the answer under the button. It names the site the link ended up on when that is a different one: open it to check that it is the file and not a sign-in page. Nothing is saved, and nothing is checked on a schedule.
  • Edit credit fixes the credit in place (up to 400 characters). Save puts it on the lesson; Cancel leaves it as it was.
  • Attestation not recorded marks a tour added before step 5 existed. It stays on the lesson. Open the capture, check who is in it, and press Attest to confirm the same sentence.
  • Remove tour empties the slot again; the capture stays in your Field Log.

Learners cannot send you a tour to add. That would be a request list, which this app does not keep.

Video tutorial scriptnot written yet

Nobody has written the narration for this one yet. It is listed here so the gap is visible rather than forgotten; an invented script would read as approved copy.