Google Earth

Hi Alison,
I'm sorry I'm a day late. I checked out google earth on my computer and tired a few different locations out. Now I've never used google earth before and it seemed cool but I wasn't sure where to go with it. I googled kmz files and found all these cool files from google earth that give you views of all sorts of fantastic stuff. I looked at the following kmz files:

1. golden gate bridge
2. statue of liberty
3. large V of geese
4. cairo pyramids
5. herbert volcano

I choose the first two because they are places that I have never been and would like to see some day. The large V of geese was great because I talk about that in my classroom how birds fly in a V formation to reduce wind resistance and therefore save energy. The cairo pyramids I took a look at and appreciated through the computer because although I would love to see them I don't like to travel enough to go to Egypt in order to make that happen. And the herbert volcano was just an impressive site. I saw some beautiful patterns of nature with the aerial views that google provides. I just love nature.

I found a couple other interesting leads which I took a look at. Google sightseeing (http://googlesightseeing.com) was a cool sight because each new day google takes you on a sightseeing tour of different places around the world. Another website worth mentioning was http://www.googleearthcoolplaces.com and this is a site where users upload a cool place they found through google earth. The website organizes and keeps track of all of them.

I checked into lesson plans for using google earth in the classroom. The only idea that I have (and still have) is to use google earth to show students poverish conditions in a 3rd world country, where sanitation is very poor and water is contaminated leading to all sorts of diseases. I have pictures of this for my classroom but to pull it up on google earth would have a greater impact.

I found a couple of good sites for google earth use in the classroom. I used scoopler, a real time search engine, which I am really liking :)

http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2610 a list of 23 different ways to use google earth in the classroom

http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2009/06/great-video-of-ideas-for-using-google-earth-in-the-classroom.html a blog by a guy named ollie bray who posts a video of himself explaining what he does with google earth in the classroom.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ this has become a favorite of mine. Mr. Byrne is nothing short of a genius in his compilation of ideas for using technology, not the least of which is google earth.