GOOGLE EARTH

Google Earth lets the viewer fly anywhere on Earth view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean, sunset around the world, tour distant cities with StreeView (Google Earth, 2009). Goggle Earth (Google Earth) also describes it “like a video game and a search engine rolled into one, Earth is basically a 3D model of the entire planet that lets you grab, spin and zoom down into any place on Earth". Davidson (cited in Goggle Earth, 2009) quotes “Teacher and students will travel the real earth of explorations, migrations, heroes and history and share new instruction growing on the planet itself.”

There are many features of Google Earth 5.0:

• explore rich geographical content
• save your toured places
• share with others
• obtain Historical imagery from around the globe
• obtain Ocean floor and surface data from marine experts
• alternatively acquire touring with audio and voice recording (Goggle Earth).

I love Google Earth; I have never experience anything similar. The features and information you can obtain and do are endless, from showing students the universe to a street: students could learn longitude and latitude, view historical events, view a certain place. I think it great engaging technology tool, I would have to say so far one of my favourite. It creates higher order and creative thinking and assign with Oliver’s framework: “Clean up Australia Day” could be the task and the resources are Google Earth and students are to map out the area they are going to clean up. Google Earth can be applied to all age levels plus all subjects, K-12 literature to environment science, it could be even utilised in tertiary level. Google Earth (2009) listed a several ways it could be applied in a learning environment; I have also included these links in my blog. Here are a few:

• “Art History - Search for photos and user-created maps showing famous museums like the Louvre in Paris. louvre - Google Maps
• Environmental Science & Climatology - Have students check Alaska's global warming problems. See how the Sierra Club used Google Earth to depict this problem. Explore the Arctic with Google Earth- Chill the Drills - Sierra Club
• Math - Explore distance, velocity, and wave properties of tsunamis
• Literature - Bring class or contemporary tales to life with Google LitTrips”.

Goggle Earth can cater to all learning styles via:

• Active and reflective learners – students are looking at the map and negative as doing so. - reflective learners they are able to stop on their accord when navigating, hence thinking about the new information they are learning.
• Sensing and intuitive learners – for sensors learners Google Earth is connecting to the real world instantly hence catering for them straight away. Also LM could offer facts and problem-solving activity to do via Google Earth example working out the distance from town to the next - intuitive learners by minimising repetition, memorisation and routine calculations.
• Visual and verbal learners – for visual is right there - verbal learners by allowing open discussion.
• Sequential and global learner – for sequential learning by offering the learning experience in linear steps where each step follows logically from the previous one - global learners giving students the big picture of what is going to taught and relating to what the students may already know (Felder & Solman, n.d; JCU, 2008).