Several months ago I was sitting in the lounge room with my amazed father, looking at an aeriel picture followed by a street view picture of my brother's house in New Zealand on Google Earth! It really is an amazing experience to 'have' a view of the world in the palm of your hands and to be able to visit just about anywhere with the click and scroll of a mouse. At this point we could actually question the need for a physical globe in the class room with the accessibility of Google Earth but we must consider that an actual 'physical' model of the globe is important to assist learners kinesthetically, particularly with the interactive globes that are available today - to see is one thing, to touch and feel is another.
The teaching opportunities with Google Earth are quite limitless when you think about how it can compliment the learning of history, geography, science, main stream literacy, social and environmental studies and global connectivity. Let's take a subject topic like renewable energy for example with a focus on wind farms... the class has just learnt about wind power generation, seen images of wind turbines, studied the basic science behind the operational aspects, explored the advantages and disadvantages of this form of power generation but they haven't yet seen a wind farm nor have they seen global positioning of such. Here's where Google Earth can make a big difference as a learning tool in the classroom! The learners can use Google Earth to locate and 'tour' previously selected wind farms on the globe and 'see' for themselves, making the learning 'real' to them.
In preparing this posting and using Google Earth to visually visit a wind farm in South Australia my children were instantly drawn to the screen asking questions like: "Dad, what are you doing?" "Can I have a look?" Whilst I was learning and exploring the many avenues of Google Earth they stayed by my side - there's certainly no issue with engagement and this led to the exploration of other things so distraction is something to watch for! I found it interesting and somewhat disappointing to discover that my children have not yet experienced learning with Google Earth in their classroom environments - it's something that I will definitely be utilising where appropriate as a future learning manager.
What we did together is make a tour of the Starfish Hill Wind Farm in South Australia using the recording tool on Google Earth. I couldn't really work out how to share it in this posting and gave up after several attempts. However I do have the map coordinates of the site if you are interested in viewing and giving the recording option a go: 35°34'18.28" S 138°09'39.47" E
The real beauty about Google Earth is that it allows you to be there without actually 'being there' and I wish that when I attended primary and secondary studies that the technology was available for us to electronically visit places for the day like Rome for example rather than just reading about it!
Interestingly, the Google Earth tool bar has some great application options which include measuring, recording (both voice and tour), exploring the sky, moon or mars, viewing maps, printing, sharing or emailing places, changing the time of day and lighting aspect on the earth, adding a place mark or path, viewing historical imagery, overlaying imagery and there's more but I'm really at infant stages in my exploration thus far so there may yet be a sequel - stay posted!
The Google Earth Education Community have a great website which assists in learning more about the application of Google Earth in education including tutorials, please feel free to peruse at your leisure...
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