Google-earth

Using Google Earth

Google Earth is a great application for Social Studies teachers to use with their classes, such as a comparison between local community and national or even global community [| Communities.kmz], demonstration of cardinal directions and geographic relationships, and even investigation of natural resources and their exploitation. Google Earth can also allow you to view important landmarks in an area and then give resources to research those landmarks.

Science teachers will find some very interesting activities for their classes as well. It can be used to provide a visual example for landforms [| everest.kmz] or at a higher level, you can compare the geographic terrain in two places that may be separated by thousands of miles, then research the cultures of those places and discuss how the geographic features may have contributed to their cultures. You can follow the track of historic tornadoes and discuss how the terrain may have affected the tornado. You can view realtime weather radar, and even track hurricanes.


 * Navigating in Google Earth**

Google Earth has a pretty simple navigation scheme. The first thing to use is the search field in the upper left portion of the window. Type a city and state in the **Fly to** field then click the button with a magnifying glass on it. The Google Earth viewer frame will zoom in to the place you typed.

There are some view controls in the upper right portion of the **Google Earth viewer** frame. There is a compass that tells you where North is in relation to your current view. You can click on the **N** and drag it around the circle to change the orientation of the map. There is a slider to the right of the compass. It may not be visible until you move your mouse over it, so slowly move your mouse right from the compass and and the slider will appear when the mouse moves over it. You can zoom into the viewing area more, or zoom out from that area by moving that slider up or down. There is another slider above the compass in your window. That slider will change the tilt of your view. You can keep looking straight down to the area, or tilt the map flat by dragging the slider from left to right. Many areas have a three dimensional view when you tilt the map flat.

Back on the left side of the window, there is a **Places** section. That is where you keep placemarks that you have saved. You can click the box next to a place to turn on the placemark and then double-click the name to zoom in to it. The placemark has a text bubble with information. Different placemarks will have different information. Some will have photos, web links, or perhaps even video.


 * Educational Activities**

You can demonstrate geographic vocabulary such as with mountains, canyons [| grandcanyon.kmz], peninsulas [| Peninsulas.kmz], isthmuses [| isthmus.kmz], archipelagos [| archipelago.kmz], etc[| Ecuadorvolcano.kmz][| Glacier.kmz]. You can create an activity like that by creating a placemark. 1. Open Google Earth and use the search bar to find an example of the geographic terrain that you are demonstrating. You may need to do some Internet research to find a good example, then search for that place in Google Earth. 2. When you have located and are viewing a site that you want to save, change the orientation to view the site the way you want. 3. Then click on Add and placemark. That will add a placemark to the site you are viewing and save the orientation as a part of the placemark. 4. A pop up window will open to put in details about the placemark. You will want to change the name to something that will remind you what the placemark is showing, either the name of the place or the vocabulary word. 5. In the details field, you can type a description, paste a link or even add a picture or embed video from some Internet video sites. This would be a great spot to type the definition of the vocabulary word.

You can also group several placemarks in one folder to show several examples of that vocabulary word or to look for similarities between different areas. 1. Right-click on the My Places folder and choose Add, then folder. You can name the folder something that represents the entire contents of the folder. 2. Then locate a site that you want to save. 3. Click on the folder that you want the placemark in and click on Add then placemark. 4. Follow all of the directions for creating a placemark and click OK. Your placemark will be inside the folder that you selected.

If you want to put an existing placemark in the folder or your placemark is accidently added to to wrong place, then click on the title of your placemark and drag it to the name of the folder. That will place the placemark on the folder. Repeat those directions for each place that you want in the folder. You can also drag each item of the folder up or down to change the order they are in.

There are a lot of other options that you can explore. You can create placemarks with an image layer over the Google Earth layer so that a historic map can be compared to current geographic features, or a chart can be used to illustrate growth or population in an area.


 * Resources for Google Earth Activities**

The Google Earth discussion group is a great resource for activities. The link is http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0.

Information for advanced Google Earth activities

Google Earth 4 User guide http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/

Adding Paper models to show 3-D buildings http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-earth-paper-models.html


 * Recommendations from training classes**