Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Google Earth

The only word that comes to mind...insane!! I am blown away by what can be discovered using google earth. When this first came out, I used it to search for my house, was amazed that it could do it then simply forgot about the program. I was actually almost not going to load the newest version because I had the opinion that I had seen it and used it. Gosh am I glad I did download it, it is incredible.

I think I am glued to the 'space' section. You could create lessons utilising google earth and an interactive whiteboard purely on the moon. Students get a better visual of how the moon looks and can be involved in finding out facts about it. Google Earth includes data, pictures and even clips of stars, planets and constellations.

Most commonly known is Google Earth's ability to find a location. If you want to see a view of your house, type in your address and Google Earth will take you there. It will take you anywhere in the world and show you famous locations and give you valuable facts. If the students have international school pen-pals, we could research and view where their international friends are from.

Davidson Hall (2010) summed up the use of Google Earth within the classroom perfectly. He stated "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, D 2010, 'Teachers speak out', Google for Educators Discovery Educator Network, www.google.com/educators/p_earth.html

No comments:

Post a Comment