Google Earth

As I said in one of my earlier posts, the reason why I am obsessed with new technology and how to utilize it in my teaching career is stemmed from the technology course I took at KU this past summer. Each class was filled with 3 hours of technological discovery, creating projects, and looking at my classmate's work as well. It was a busy 3 weeks, but completely worth it in my eyes.

In previous semesters, I have experimented with iMovie and such for projects. I was actually pretty proud of a video presentation I created and editted with three other classmates about Least Restrictive Environment, having never officially learned the basics of the program. In this summer course, I was able to go back to iMovie and learn more about the program, creating numerous videos about my selected curriculum unit: The Rainforest.

The last grade for this class was a 20-minute presentation over a technological program of my choice. I was lucky enough to have first pick, choosing Google Earth. As my roommate can tell you, I spent hours upon hours watching tutorial videos about the program, reading its blog, downloading layers from the blog, and creating my presentation. I could have spent 5 hours presenting this amazing program, but had to keep it down to my 20-minute maximum. To do this, I had my classmates discover areas on their own, showed them only a couple of the basics of the program (that alone could take an hour), and created an iMovie about Google Earth.

The amazing thing about this program is there are different "layers" available constantly for different uses. There was even a layer for the oil spill this past year! It tracked the progress of the area, showing how the oil spread. Google Earth allows for great instruction at any age. Obviously it is used to teach geography and math, but there are other subjects to teach as well. There is an option to go back in time to see an area in past years. This is a great history component of Google Earth. There was also a program where high school students were able to create their own 3-dimensional buildings for the program, integrating architecture and computer programing into the lesson.

I encourage all of you out there to have some fun with Google Earth. It's a free download, enjoyable, and is helpful for future traveling and directions if nothing else.

I can obviously talk forever about this program, but instead, I will leave you with the video I created for class.