Google Earth and the Interactive Classroom
Virtual Globes and Maps Enable an Interdisciplinary Approach
Mar 31, 2009
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map, and geographic information program. It displays satellite images of the Earth’s surface. Depending on the location, users can see images of varying resolution from a bird’s eye view. Locations with better satellite images allow the user to see a house straight down or at a slanted angle. While most of the Earth’s surface is only available in 2D, some parts are available in 3D.
The opportunities in the classroom are endless. With the touch of an interactive whiteboard, a teacher can show the students the exact location of a site anywhere on Earth. While there are many amazing features on Google Earth – Google Sky, Google Ocean, and historical imagery are of particular use in academic settings.
The Interdisciplinary Approach
- A language arts unit on comparing and evaluating literature brings in the science connection by focusing the theme of reading selections on polar climates and global warming. Turn on the interactive whiteboard, and suddenly the geography connection comes to life. Students are zooming in on icebergs in the Bering Sea. Not exciting enough? Touch the screen and flip the view over with Google Sky. Now the students are looking at the constellations over Unalaska, Alaska.
- A unit on critical thinking and problem solving touches on social studies themes: Civil War, slavery, and the two world wars. Pick up a whiteboard marker and trace the route of the Trail of Tears. Use Google Earth’s historical imagery to study early stages of a place. There’s a country-wide dataset covering the United States in the late 1980's and 1990's. The historical imagery time slider makes time travel a virtual reality.
- Google Ocean zooms below the surface of the ocean, taking a classroom of kids to the world of Jacques Cousteau. Views of shipwrecks and marine life all come to life with the help of leading scientists and oceanographers. With Google Sky’s partnership with the Space Telescopic Science Institute in Baltimore, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope, the sky’s not the limit. Imagine the themes that can be explored in new and inventive ways.
All it takes for a teacher to bring the classroom into the 21st century is a whiteboard and a little creativity and motivation. Google Earth is continually adding imagery for new places, new dates, and new concepts. Students and teachers can trace connections across the globe, into the ocean, and through the sky. From language arts to geometrical observations of constellations.The interdisciplinary classroom is only a touch away.
