Go Places with Google Earth

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Go Places with Google Earth


Featuring tips from Kathy Henderson, 1st Grade Teacher, Mt. Healthy Elementary, BCSC

COVID-19 may be keeping all of us at home. However, thanks to technology, field trips, immersive learning, and authentic learning experiences do not have to be out of the question. For nearly 19 years, Google Earth has been know as the "world's most detailed globe." Collections of satellite images, aerial photography, panoramic photos, and GIS data combine to provide Google Earth users with views of the world from many detailed angles-from space to the street level. Throughout its years, Google Earth has served as a "consumption" tool where users could consume, or learn, information through visuals and written text. However, new features available within Google Earth now provide students (and teachers) with the ability to create!

Think Google Earth is just for social studies teachers? Think again. This new creative suite in Google Earth, titled "My Projects" provides ways for all subject areas and grade levels to create virtual field trips, interactive lessons, scavenger hunts, and paths for cultural immersion. More importantly, the creative tools within Google Earth provide opportunities for students to become explorers, storytellers, cartographers, critical thinkers, data analysts, or global citizens. 

The creative suite in Google Earth, "My Projects," allows users to create projects that save directly to Google Drive and can be viewed in a presentation style format with interactive elements. Users can add pins to the interactive globe, draw shapes, create lines connecting places, incorporate multimedia such as video, audio, or text, and present the project in a step-by-step story-like format known as "presentation mode."

Why:

This powerful tool can provide learners with a highly engaging, worldly experience despite the confines of social distancing at home. Virtual tours and exploration through Google Earth can bring outside, foreign locations to life for our students. Google Earth's "My Projects" features can support exciting, more profound learning experiences in many ways:

  • Boost engagement

    • Virtual exploration of the world can provide students with relevant, authentic information that brings subjects, quite literally, to life (provide options for recruiting interest).

  • Provide options in representation of material

    • The features within Earth provide opportunities for written, audio, visual, and video information to support learner variability and understanding across languages.

  • Provide students with creative choices to showcase understanding

    • Research shows engaging learners in higher-order, more in-depth critical thinking tasks yields heightened mastery of topics. More importantly, higher-order thinking also produces students who are better contributors to the fast-paced, ever-changing world that relies on using information rather than memorizing facts. Through the My Projects feature, students can creatively demonstrate understanding, provide hypothesis, analyze trends in history or data, or explore theories. Rather than consume information, this new feature powers learners with the tools to be creators of information rather than passive consumers.

  • Cultural Responsiveness: 

    • Google Earth provides students with windows into other cultures and experiences. Through Earth, students are also empowered with the tools and resources to explore their own culture and see themselves reflected in their coursework. 


How:

Ready to create? Check out the lesson ideas below or scroll further video and written guides.

Lesson Ideas:

  • Primary Grades:
  • Art:
    • Explore historical art museums
    • Research and tell the stories of famous artists and art movements
    • Visit locations or landscapes featured in famous paintings
  • Music
    • Tell the stories of famous musicians or musical periods through time
    • Trace the origin of musical instruments around the world
  • PE / Health
    • Study popular games, sports, and exercises around the world
    • Record and compare or contrast health stats for various cities, countries, and locations worldwide
  • Social Studies / History
    • Identify famous places, events, and battles in history
    • Improve mapping and geography skills with interactive Google Earth scavenger hunts
    • Showcase understanding using My Projects as a presentation tool
    • Tell a "day in the life" project of famous individuals in history
    • Visit countries of study
    • Compare the diverse government and economic systems worldwide
  • Math
    • Compare currencies and exchange rates on a global scale with various "markers" on an Earth Project
    • Create an interactive place-based math problem scavenger hunt by incorporating geometry, rate of change, distance, time, proportions, and other concepts into a teacher or student-created Project
    • Bring data and statistics to a more visual, interactive level
    • Tell the story of famous mathematicians or the origin of mathematical innovations throughout history
  • Science
    • Present information related to prominent scientists, inventors, and experiments
    • Travel through different biomes and environments (and planets!)
    • Create a digital, interactive worksheet with location-based questions on the globe
    • Compare and contrast data in a visual presentation mode
    • Share hypotheses and information in an interactive presentation
  • English / Language Arts
  • Foreign Language
    • Study the cultures of different regions
    • Trace the origin of popular holidays and traditions
    • Visit landmarks and countries featured in units of study
    • Compare and contrast dialects from different regions
    • Study the flags of various locations
    • Trace the origin of particular words and dialects
  • Family and Consumer Sciences
    • Study and showcase the diverse cuisine, cooking styles, and ingredients worldwide




Have an idea you would like to share? We would like to hear your ideas! 
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Additional Google Earth lesson ideas:

Image courtesy of Artem Beliaikin
CAST, "UDL: Universal Design for Learning Guidelines", The UDL Guidelines (website), accessed April 22, 2020.
http://udlguidelines.cast.org/


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