Friday, February 5, 2010
Google Earth: A Whole New World
Despite our initial frustrations with Google Earth crashing our system, the Google Earth program packed a positive punch with our students that will leave a lasting impression on how they view the world.
We are currently investigating how maps connect us to people and places as an International Baccalaureate unit of study. As a techie, I of course wanted to bring in Google Earth because it looks cool and it has a wow factor. It certainly would motivate my students. For this reason alone, I decided to use the program.
But my students taught me that the costs of using the program (having it crash several times, having my laptop crash, and eventually having to get a new laptop) did not overshadow the benefits. Here are the Google Earth features and a sample of the corresponding concepts and skills they learned:
• Day/night feature: The Earth’s rotation causes day and night and that when it is daytime where we live, it is nighttime in some other parts of the world.
• Zoom feature: A map provides a birds-eye view of a place through the zoom feature.
• Fly-to and street view features: We can connect with people through maps by flying to student neighborhoods and neighborhoods of people in Tokyo, Japan
• Weather feature: The weather is different in different locations. Our weather in Alexandria is similar to the weather in Tokyo because we are at a similar latitude, yet different because we are at a different longitude.
My students have never mastered this content with the depth of understanding and level of interest before than they did through using Google Earth.
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