Google+Earth

Google Earth Scratch Pad: Teachers and students can add ideas about how to use Google Earth in the classroom.

Google Earth could be used to: 1. Create placemarks with pictures, video and audio clips of famous poems that could be listened to by students. Student could draw a picture about the poem the listened to. 2. Zoom in on where a studnet lives and have them identify various objects and their colors on the satellite image, such as houses, roads, trees, and cars. 3. Students can identify their home, and another location in the neighboorhood (e.g. store, hospital, friend's house) and be asked to give simple directions on how to get home. 4. Create a tour of the alphabet using the first letter of famous places around the city (e.g. Atlanta) so students would know where these places are in relation to where they live. You could mix up the placemarks and have students put them in alphabetical order. 5. Use the line and path tools to draw shapes around objects (e.g. lakes, streams, parks, buildings) and ask students to describe their shape, color, and function. 7. Create placemarks with various pictures of animals (e.g. whale, panda, lion) and associate them with a particular location. Later, show them a layer with the placemarks scattered around the globe and have students point out where they belong. 8. Create placemarks and embed videos with contemporary issues and be able to associate features of a place from the video to the satellite image. They could look at a video on the Kentucky Derby and identify the same features on the satellite image. 9. Create placemarks and add pictures about different social groups and different cultures. Have students identify the particular culture and where they live, such as various Indian reservations around the United States. 10. Create placemarks of various places (e.g. stores, schools) with people engaged in different activities (eating diner, buy groceries) and have students talk about how they should behave in these places and during different situations.
 * Pre-School (Grades Pre-K)**

1. Turn on the boarders layer in GE and have students recognize various states, provinces, and countires. 2. Create a placemark about life at home (e.g. birthday, wedding, anniverary). Have students write about life at home and then upload the information and a picture of their home into different placemarks. Students can see where other students live and what their life at home is like. 3. Identify important figures in the community (e.g. fireman, policeman, doctors, nurses, heros). Have them come to school to talk about their jobs and where they work. Record the interview, upload it to YouTube and then geocode each interview into placemarks that relate the job to where they work in the local community. 4. Create a series of placemarks that recognize traditions in America and where they originated. You can use overlays (e.g. lines, arrows or import other symbols) or code a "fly to" command to connect the placemarks. 5. Use the weather layer data to track rainfall over a period of time and then use this data to explain the importance of water to animals, plants and humans. 6. Create placemarks about our Presidents that explain where they were born. Include a picture of their home and explain important aspects of their lives. You could use the animation (Movie Maker) tools to fly around from placemark to placemark in order of their presidency, creating a timeline. 7. Create a map of people who explored America. Use the line tool to trace their path across America (or another country) and create placemarks along the line to explain important events. 8. Use the GE globle to explore distances between places (e.g. distance between student home and school, size of states, distance across oceans). Stiudents can convert distances between standard and metric units. 9. Create placemarks with pictures of monies from around the globe and associate them with the country and information about its monitory system. You could scrable the placemarks and have students match the placemarks with the country. 10. Explain what the different colors represent on the globe, add the grid overlay which shows latitude and longitude and then have students identify and count a particular object (e.g. houses, buildings, lakes) within a set of coordinates. Students can employ addition, substraction, and other math priciples by comparing one region to another. Transfer data to Excel and create a graph to compare regions. 11. Use the polygon tool to create different 2 dimensional shapes and then compare them to natural shapes (e.g. lakes, mountain ranges, rivers, golf courses).
 * Lower School (Grades 1-5)**

1. Create a layer about American poets. Students can each study a particular American poet, where they lived, and historical events that may have influenced their lives and their poetry. Student could then create a placemark on what "American" ideas are represented in each poet's work through various elements, such as metaphore, simile, and paradox. Students could podcast a poem by their author and embed it into the placemark, so that viewers could listen to the poem. Students could then study the geography related to poetry in American. Students could also number the placemarks use the path tool to create a time line of American Poetry in Google Earth. 2. Create a layer about historical figures. Students could study recent historical events and interview people who lived througth them in order to appreciate and understand on a more personal level both the triumphs and difficulties faced by America and its people. A placemark could be created about each event. Pictures, text and a podcast (or even a video) of the interview could be included in the placemark. Each layer could concentrate on a them in U.S. History, such as the changing role of Women from the 1950's. U.S. History and Civic classed from various parts of the country could combine their interviews into one layer. Students from all participating schools could benefit from each school's interviews and placemarks. Students may get a better understanding of where events took place in relation to each other. 3. Students could create placemarks of key events that took place during a historical battle, such as the Civil War. The measuring tools in Google Earth could then be used to study the distances between various historical battles and use this information to understand the difficulties of communication and supply lines during battles. 4. Create a layer of U.S. Presidents accomplishments and failures. Create placemarks of key causes to the success or failure of these accomplishemnts and attach the placemarks using the path tool, or code. Teachers could coordinate this project with LS Project #6 and MS students could be responsible for presenting their information to the LS class as an enrichment activity. 5. Students could create a series of placemarks that explain how a law is created. These placemarks could be tied to the buildings in Washington, DC where each step of the process takes place. Annimation tools (MovieMaker) could be used to create a tour of the process. 6. Google Earth could be used to locate major physical and human features of the world, such as oceans, mountain ranges, natural landmarks and major cities of the world. 7. Create a layer that demonstrates the historical migration of humans and also current migration patterns of various ethnic groups. Placemarks that discuss various "push" and "pull" factors of migration could be created and overlays of arrows or other symbols could be used to show how they affected migration patterns. 8. Use the United Nation's Atlas of Our Changing World to show students how humans are alterning our environment. 9. Students could use one of the network links from the United States Geology Survey, to collect data (such as stream flow) about a particular place over a period of time. The data could be saved into a spreadsheet and then students could be tasked with completing basic statistics, such as mean, median and mode of the data set and then use these statistics to make perdictions. 10. Have students use the Sketchup tools in GE to create 3D shapes and calculate their volumes, areas and perimeters. Students could explore the similarities and difference among these shapes and objects in the real world. Students could also look at depressed areas in their city and explore the shapes of building that could possibly be built on the land and what would be the best purpose for these structures.
 * Middle School (Grades 6-8)**

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 * Upper School (Grades 9-12)**

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 * Advanced Placement (College)**