Randy's Blog

Google Earth
Tech Toolbox 2
Randall Cook

The audience that I will target is fellow teachers and students at the secondary level.

1. What is it? Google Earth is an interactive mapping application. This virtual application allows people to explore the whole earth with satellite imagery to locate natural and man-made landmarks and other location-specific data points. It is interactive in that people can chart their own points of interest and share them with others, mark routes, plot areas, figure distances and overlay other images onto the application. For some locations, it offers 3D representations to show differences in topography. People have the ability to show only the information that they want. For example, they might want to see a major route between two cities, but they can also identify restaurants and motels as well. The user can also plot distances and find the Web sites of the motels along the way.
2. Who’s doing it? Many teachers are using Google Earth as a virtual globetrotting device to take students anywhere around the world to study geographical information, historical locations, or places of interest in the news.
3. How does it work? Google Earth can be downloaded off the internet for free. Users can find locations by either entering addresses, names of places, keywords or latitude and longitude coordinates. It also has the ability to zoom in and out which changes the features that you can see. As you zoom farther in, the user is able to see more features such as street names. It can also view the same location from any direction. Google Earth also uses Sketchup, a 3D modeling program that can be used by architects and graphic designers.
4. Why is it significant? The biggest benefit for teachers and students is that it’s free. Teachers are able to use Google Earth to globetrot their classroom around the world using an easy and interactive technology. This technology would be a great resource in studying geography, history, science, design, as well as a whole host of subjects.
5. What are the downsides? The quality of the resolution of the satellite data is not the same for every location. There is also a concern from some people that there is a US bias since there is very high resolution imagery for many parts of the country as opposed to other countries. Privacy issues are a concern to some people, as well. In addition, Google Earth uses a tremendous amount of memory, bandwidth and graphics. Older computers or those with a slow connection with have problems handling this.
6. Where is it going? This technology will most undoubtedly become ever more advanced. The high-resolution imagery will cover more and more locations around the globe. Many online communities of users have been created around Google Earth. Many of these users develop content for locations that can be shared by other users. For example, many geographic and historical points have descriptive notations created by users. As this technology develops, teachers will be able to give students assignments and share those assignments with others.
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning? Students are able to travel around the world without ever leaving their classroom. They can be hovering over the terrain of Sahara Dessert and a few minutes are over a rain forest in South America. They can compare how the city of New York is laid out compared to London? All of these applications give the student a better understanding of how the people of these places live and use the environment.
8. Demonstration link for your viewing:
http://screencast.com/t/ODZmNTIwODEt

References
undefined. (October 2006). 7 things you should know about…Google Earth. In Educause: Learning initiative. Retrieved January 28, 2010, from http://www.net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7019.pdf.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized and You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.