Google earth is a rather excellent tool in connecting students with places all over the world. Not only do you get a physical sense in where these places exist within the earth, you can tap into a street view camera and see how a city looks right down to it's residential housing.
Using the different layers also revealed earthquake zones, nature trails, locations of interest, and places to eat and drink. It is also possible to see how the landscape has changed through time. The ability to create a sight seeing tour seems like a great assignment to under take. Flickr can also be used to incorporate photos into the virtual tour. Students can use photos of their homes or work to create a day by day itinerary of their journeys, if they wanted too.
On a more technical note, I had some rather annoying problems occur. On initial usage of the street view tool everything was fine and I had some good street views of the surrounding buildings. After a while, the street view tool stopped working. It could be a technical issue with my computer or a user issue since this really was my first look at google earth. Aside from this, Google earth is an excellent geographical introduction to places outside of your own backyard.
References
Aldred, S (2009) An introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 11, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 managing elearning.
Google (2009) Google Earth. Retrieved December 10, 2009, from http://earth.google.com/intl/en/index.html
Wood, J (2009) Google earth in the classroom. Retriveved December 10, 2009 from http://joewoodonline.pbworks.com/Google+Earth+in+the+Classroom
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Hi Kat,
ReplyDeletethis is not an unusual occurrence you mention either. My mentor teacher explained to me that the problem is exacerbated when you are using EQ computers using Google Earth because they are slower than a home computer due to the filters. She tries to over come the issue by using google earth after lunch so that she can download it during lunchtime and then she always has a backup plan in case it freezes.
It is such an awesome tool though that I think even with these difficulties it is worth using.
Cheers,
Sharon
Hi Kat and Sharon
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting your comments, as currently I have not been attached to a school I was unaware of the issues of downloading something as simple as goolge earth.
How can issues like this be solved if we want to educate the children in the most up-to-date ICT's?
Till next time
Donna