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Google Earth

Google Earth, Google's satellite imagery-based mapping product puts the whole world on a student's computer. It enables users to "fly" from space to street level to find geographic information and explore places around the world. Like a video game and a search engine rolled into one, Earth is basically a 3D model of the entire planet that lets you grab, spin and zoom down into any place on Earth. Now, with Google Earth 4.3, you can tour distant cities with Google StreetView, view photo-realistic 3D buildings, and even show your students sunset around the world with the new Sunlight feature.

From literature to environmental science, Google Earth can help you bring a world of information alive for your students. You can use Google Earth demos to get your students excited about geography, and use different Google Earth layers to study economics, demographics, and transportation in specific contexts. For instance:

• you can use real-time coordinates to demonstrate distance calculations and verify the results using our measurement tools;
  
• view tectonic plate-shift evidence by examining whole continents, mountain ranges and areas of volcanic activity;
  
• study impact craters, dry lake beds and other major land forms. 

Students can also use Google Earth to explore topics like the progress of human civilization, the growth of cities, the impact of civilization on the natural environment, and the impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Using Google SketchUp and historic overlays, students can recreate entire ancient cities. The only limit to Google Earth's classroom uses is your imagination.

Don't limit your imagination to our lonely planet, though, launch your student's imagination with Sky in Google Earth. And if you prefer to explore the night sky from your browser, you can now try Google Sky on the web. Whether you stargaze, explore Hubble telescope images, or check out current astronomical events, you'll capture the wonder of the universe without leaving your classroom.

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

• Biology: Track routes of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Forest. See the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee blog here.
• Ecology: Create a short quiz like this one.
• Environmental Science: Have students check Alaska's global warming problems. See how the Sierra Club used Google Earth to depict this problem here.
• 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.
• Humanities: Have your students scout film shoot locations like this teacher did with The Golden Compass.
• Literature: Bring class or contemporary tales to life with Google LitTrips.
• Math: Explore distance, velocity, and wave properties of tsunamis.
  

Found or developed a lesson using Google Earth? Share it with your fellow teachers!

Teachers speak out

It has been a long time since a technology application got the eye-popping reaction from teachers that Google Earth gets. Inserting videos into PowerPoint was the last comparable roar. Which makes perfect sense. With Google Earth, the earth itself becomes a video. It spins and twirls with an interactive terrain, astonishingly detailed. Kids zoom in on the arena of the Coliseum or the Louisiana river delta. I watched sixth grade California public school teacher Ray Hernandez's students insert a video on the American Revolution from unitedstreaming onto the site at Bunker Hill . Dennis Wong's 5th graders overlaid their photos onto their family country of origin and created a truly relevant flying world tour. Both exercises created savable files, an incredibly important feature. Ray's kids' work can be shared on the Internet with his Discovery Educator Network nationwide. Mr. Wong's work remains safely accessible only on his hard drive for use all year in his room. Google Earth enables teachers and communities to easily create tremendous collections of work integrating video, 3D buildings, photos, podcasts, or NPR stories . Teacher and students will travel the real earth of explorations, migrations, heroes and history and share new instruction growing on the planet itself.

Hall Davidson
Director, Discovery Educator Network