Google Earth

Google Earth is an exciting and great interactive tool for everyone!  Being able to travel, without leaving your chair, and zoom in to any part of the world you like, including the ocean floor and space exploration, on the click of a mouse button is truly amazing technology.  Talk about "big brother", you never know who is watching do you?  I went on a tour to my mother's home and after zooming in, here she was, at the time the images were taken, standing bent over at her letter box doing some gardening.  All you can see is her backside as she is bending over :-). 

I then went on a tour to Iceland to see whether there were any updated pictures of the impact from the recent volcanic eruption but unfortunately there were none.  However, there are updated images of the impact from the earthquake in Chile.  Therefore, Google Earth provides important information that would be very useful to students studying natural disasters and their impacts.  Also students could see for themselves first hand the effects of forest and jungle clearing and global warming in different countries.  Furthermore Google Earth gives students a clearer picture of exactly where particular countries, cities and landforms are on earth.  Through Google Earth layers students can also study the economics and demographics of chosen areas and "view tectonic plate-shift evidence by examining whole continents, mountain ranges and areas of volcanic activity" (Google for Educators, 2010) making it a really useful tool for geography and geology. 

There are endless possible applications of Google Earth in the classroom for enhancing and making learning experiences come alive in all subject areas.  Google Earth displays placemarks on important landmarks where students can learn valuable information pertaining to those landmarks and surrounding area.  Students can also set up their own tours by placemarking different areas, and adding their own pictures if desired.  Using this feature, I believe students could work in groups, acting as tour guides, and record their own customised tours to present to other students in their class so they could take the tour.  Furthermore, they could set up their own trivia quiz of "where is" of well-known landmarks in the world or their community, giving a brief description first and then longitude and latitude last.  The first team to correctly answer asks the next question and so on. 

A lot of students may be too young to remember "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego" but Google Earth could put a whole new spin on this game.  Students could place Carmen Sandiego anywhere in the world and have another team discover his whereabouts through clues and descriptions.  Could be a bit of fun.  Anyway these are just my thoughts. 

References

Google.com (2010).  Google Earth.  Retrieved from http://www.google.com/educators/p_earth.html