Google Earth

Today I took some time to download and play around with Google Earth. When I say "some time" I really mean like hours because it is so captivating! I had heard of it before, but I had never really taken the time to explore it myself. It took me a while to get used to navigating at an efficient pace but the tip boxes that the program provides makes this a LOT easier. Some friends and I played around finding our houses and going to cities we'd never dream of going to. We also found you can go to Mars, the moon, the sky and underwater! There are options to make buildings 3-D and many articles, videos and links that accompany certain cities, buildings etc. with even more additional information.


After I spent some time looking around at Google Earth, I began comptemplating ways in which I could put this to use in my classroom. The first thought that popped into my mind was using it in a TESOL classroom (TESOL is my minor). We have been discussing ways in which you can get your students to open up and connect with one another and one of the methods we discussed was talking about the student's home region. Google Earth would be a great visual tool to assist this sort of forum. One of the options of Google Earth is to add a placemark and if you placemarked every student's location, you could easily compare and contrast the areas they live in as well as get a close up view of their neighborhoods. I believe this would be a wonderful way to open up and help facilitate discussion.



One of the first places I wanted to "travel" to was Santander, Spain where I studied abroad and looked at all the sights that I saw everyday. As an aspiring Spanish teacher, I can definitely see myself using this as a tool to display Spanish speaking countries, cities and even neighborhoods to my students which would be impossible without this type of technology. I found the university I attended while I was there which contained a link with a picture and additional information. In some cities there is also an option to do a "Historical view" which lets you take a peek into the past with the click of your mouse. These types of features present endless opportunities to teachers of every subject.


I encourage everyone to take a peek at and download Google Earth whether you're a (future) teacher or not. It's something fun and interesting to do while you're online and certainly more educational than Facebook!