Thursday, August 13, 2009

What is Google Earth...

Hei (hi in Norwegian).

Well, their website states that Google Earth lets you 'fly' anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery. You can look at maps and terrain (great for Geography). You can even zoom in on 3D buildings! Basically you can see everywhere from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.

It also goes on to add that if you download the Google Earth function (that you pay for versus the free one) you can view historical imagery from around the globe plus the ocean floor and surface data from marine experts as well as get simplified touring features with audio and voice recording.

You can even experience the Apollo landing with Google Earth!

WOW!! What an incredible resource to have access to in the classroom. Suddenly subjects like geography, history and marine studies would come to life. In Geography, classes could look at rock formations and place locations while learning about longitude and latitude. In History, the class could look at where wars occurred and the terrain they had to cross. In Marine studies, the class could use the more advanced Google Earth feature to look at the many different levels in the ocean. The ideas are really endless with such an easy to download function.

In hindsight I think this would have really engaged my students in our previous Underwater World unit of work and taken our learning to a whole new level. I will definitely be incorporating it into our multi cultural unit this term as our Gingerbread Man travels the globe.

And to make the learning and awareness of the capabilities of Google Earth more well known as well as real and relevant to them: the class could type in addresses for schools that they might have sister programs with, all their previous and current addresses, all their friends and family members addresses from all around the World etc...

Ha det (bye in Norwegian).

References:

Google. (2009). Google Earth. Retrieved August 13, 2009, from
http://earth.google.com/

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