Journal # 7: Gooooogle Earth

Google Earth is the coolest thing to happen to cartography since they found out the earth was round! It is such an interesting tool that you could get lost for hours in. What Google Earth is, is a program that lets you explore the entire globe in a 3 dimensional way. You can use your mouse to view the entire globe, then zoom in and out of the maps and take closer looks at the earth from a view as if you were a bird! The photos come from an actual satellite camera, so it’s the real deal! The discussion I read was about using Google Earth to teach math in middle school classrooms. The person posting talks about how they used place marks, created paths, and measured with the rulers on Google Earth in order to teach mathematic skills. They talked about measuring someone’s house to a famous city, like Paris, and figuring out how many miles it was. Also, the poster writes about how Google Earth can be implemented to teach geography (obviously) and even branched off on more creative lessons where their 8th grade students played the role of the Coast Guard and had to conduct search and rescue operations! It wasn’t just geography, but science, because the teacher gave them wind conditions, ocean currents, and other parameters to devise a search plan. The students are learning without it seeming boring, and the teachers continue to be more and more creative!