For Educators

Need ideas? Check out these suggested activities that use Google Earth, Maps, and SketchUp to bring conservation and environmental themes alive for your students.

Here are some other ideas for using Google Earth and Google Maps in your classroom: 

• Art History
  • Search for photos and user-created maps showing famous museums like the Louvre in Paris.
• Biology & Ecology
  
  • Track routes of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Forest. See the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee blog here.
  • Create a short quiz like this one.
• Environmental Science & Climatology
  
  • Have students check Alaska's global warming problems. See how the Sierra Club used Google Earth to depict this problem here.
  • See how Google and the United Nations Environment Programme teamed up to use collaborative MyMaps for the International Cleanup Weekend Initiative.
  • Use this Google Maps Mashup to locate and learn about recent earthquakes around the world.
  • Celebrate the 2007-2008 International Polar Year and add your classroom's plans to this global map.
• Geology
  
  • Find images, links, and descriptions, with information about thousands of volcanoes around the globe, thanks to organizations like the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.
• Global Awareness
  
  • Study the Crisis in Darfur with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's unprecedented project.
• History:
  
  • Explore Tutankhamun's Tomb.
  • Take a virtual tour of the 21 California Missions.
Literature & Humanities

• Bring class or contemporary tales to life with Google LitTrips.
  
• Have your students scout film shoot locations like this teacher did with The Golden Compass.
Math

• Explore distance, velocity, and wave properties of tsunamis.
• Physics
  
  • Learn how one teacher used Google Maps with his 9th grade class to teach speed, velocity and displacement.

Lesson Plan Suggestions By and For Teachers

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