Google Earth

http://www.google.com/educators/geo.html


Google Earth! I was somewhat familiar with this website. My daughter uses Google Sketchup often as well. So to be honest I thought it would be about mapping and geography at best. I took my time and looked around. One of the first things I did was locate the Crown Point Bridge from my area. I looked at the images that were attached to it and then started to follow the road to my house. I was disappointed my house was a white blur. That being said, all in all I was really amazed by the wealth of information that could be used by educators. This is truly a huge resource for the classroom. I went into "classroom ideas" and found Google your "Ancestor's Journey" was one of the first activities that caught my eye. I was able to locate this going through Google Lit Trips. I checked out a section about an Alaskan Field trip for over a half hour. I was impressed with all the images and information that went along with it. I then visited "earthquakes" and learned that yesterday there was an earthquake near Altamont, New York with a magnitude of 2.6. The topics are endless and I spent several hours, over several days looking through this site. It's addicting to say the least.
I can see Google Earth being used my classroom. Since my first love is history. I think I would like to use Google Earth to locate historical sites of interest during a lesson plan. For instance the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It would be great to locate the path they took and explore sites mentioned in their journals. I also noticed a "classroom idea" on exploration that included early explorers to the New World. I think the possibilities are endless.
One aspect of Google Earth that is a little scary is being able to locate people by their addresses. I don't think this is a particular good feature for this site. There are too many child predators on line that as educators and parents we need to remind our children and students about internet safety and do not give out any personal information such as your address. As I can see it is way to easy to find out where people live by a few strokes of the keyboard.