| Google Earth is an amazing tool that provides satellite images of any place on earth! Users get to experience "descending" from space to any point on the earth. All images are three dimensional. Users can view land forms such as mountain ranges, volcanoes, and tectonic plates. Teachers can create virtual tours to take their students on, or assign students to create their own virtual trips. The program allows users to save locations and trips to their hard drive for use at any time. Or, trips can be posted for other users to view from anywhere in the world. Once you create |  |
| a placemark, you can send it to anyone you want or just save it for
future use. Placemarks can be customized. I marked my
house and customized the placemark with a picture of my house. I read where
one teacher put his students' pictures in the country of their families'
origins. Video's from United Streaming can also be added to any
location to provide the viewer with even more information. Still
another teacher, had his 5th grade students re-create the paths explorers
followed. I can also imagine it being used to accompany fictional
works in literature. Our 6th grade reading series provides many
opportunities for teachers to utilize both United Streaming and Google
Earth. Some of our students just finished reading about the
Aztecs. What a cool way to make it real for them. Take some of
the videos I see our teachers using and integrate them into Google Earth.
Teachers can give their students the opportunity to see a 3-D image of exactly where the
Aztecs lived and where
the Spaniards came from before they arrived in Tenochtitlan. Or, how
about taking them on a virtual trip to see the Great Wall, another story in
our reading series. The possibilities are endless!
I have collected many useful sites. Some will help those wanting to learn how to use Google Earth and others for those who know how to use it and now want ideas for how to use it for their educational advantage. |
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