Many people are gearing up the end of summer break and the start of school. In fact, our daughters will be heading out for their first day of school in a few hours, as will thousands of others from Kindergarten to College.
Google Earth is not only a great tool for geography – it is a tool for tying all kinds of information to location. When you first load GE you have a wealth of information available at your fingertips. Thousands of aerial and satellite photos, dozens of layers of information: city names, country borders, airport locations, road maps, National Geographic content, volcanoes, and more. Since Google Earth is an intuitive and fun tool, I believe you could use it as a visualization and educational tool for almost any subject. Once students prepare their own content, GE can be used to present their work – or even share their work with the world.
You can even use Google Earth to see places quoted in Shakespeare or the path of Lewis and Clark:
For other great uses of Google Earth in the classroom, check out this post from Frank a few years ago, or the great list of ideas from Lucas Van de paer.
If you’re heading off to a new university this fall, you can check to see if Google has released Street View imagery for that school yet so you can explore the campus. The Official Google Blog has a list of other great ways to use Google products to help with your studies this year.
If you’re heading back to school soon, we wish you great success in the upcoming year!
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
This software Google Earth is better when it is LIVE. Can you do that?
Apart from the technical difficulties, no, a live GE won’t be better at all. First of all, just switch on the cloud layer and see – considerable area of the Earth surface would be covered with clouds. Half of the Earth would be in darkness (so-so, the light pollution would show the cities and roads). Current GE is stitched together of many-many patches chosen from the better quality satellite images (trying to avoid clouds and, of course, night), The best resolution images even aerial photos.
And what should Google have to do to make it live, moving, real time? Dense network of low orbit satellites (geostationary orbit would not give enough resolution), to create a mosaic of a real time, living Earth?