From the highest mountain to the deepest ocean and across the deserts – Google Earth

 I really liked this great (and long) infographic.

It was published by Our Amazing Planet . This large infographic features the highest and lowest places above sea level. It shows the heights at which airliners fly to the depths of the deepest parts of the ocean (Mariana Trench).

It was discussed on the Google Earth Blog in a post ”The Tallest Mountain to the Deepest Ocean Trench” (June 23, 2011) where they linked to the Google Earth locations for all of the places in the infographic.

If you have not been to the Google Earth Blog it is well worth visiting. There is information about google earth but also a lot of interesting and useful information can be found on all topics to do with our earth.

Another good recent post is Exploring the deserts with Google Earth.

Google Sightseeing is in the middle of “Desert Week 2011″, uncovering interesting tidbits from various deserts around the world.

There are some amazing images and they show that the deserts are not just flat sand.

Infographic Source: OurAmazingPlanet.com, Exploring the wonder and beauty of planet Earth through exclusive news, features and images.

Earth view – new imagery from Google maps

Google has just released Earth view – new imagery for Google Maps. The new view, available to all those that have installed Google Earth browser plugin, enables you to view Google Earth 3D imagery and more in Google Maps. To use Earth View in Google Maps simply click the “Earth” button next to the map, statellite, et buttons in the upper-right corner of Google Maps.

Basically Google Maps now supports a multi-dimensional exploration of the world in a similar way to Google Earth and you can also share the Google Maps Earth views just as you would share any other view in Google Maps. Likewise you can create placemarks whilst using the Earth View.

There are 36 places showcased. You can view them by clicking the “More places” link. Some of the 3D views that you can look at include the Reichstag,
the Taj Mahal, the Sydney Opera House,  the Leaning tower of Pisa, the Matterhorn, Table Mountain and an underwater, 3D view of the wreckage of the Titanic.

This might be useful for those students using Google maps as they will be able to view locations in 3D as well as use 3D imagery in any Google Maps tours.

It is worth playing around with Earth View for yourself to really get a feel for it or you can choose to watch the video below to learn more about it.

Interesting ways to use…. by Tom Barrett

Tom Barrett has been sharing his class ideas and tips about using various tools in GoogleDocs presentations for quite a while and I have been collecting them in my bookmarks. He has now put all of them together in his blog. The presentations are in easy to use in their Google docs format and he invites others to share ideas. They are worth looking at/using and, if you have some tips that have not been mentioned, think about contributing.

The latest one I found was Ten Interesting Ways* to Use Audio in your Classroom. We have been doing some work with audio and I recently listened to a discussion on music in the novel, so I am interested in exploring this area some more.

 The other presentations are listed below but don’t be surprised if the numbers have changed.

•  10 Interesting Ways To Use a Wiki in the Classroom
• 13 Interesting Ways To Use a Visualizer in the Classroom
• 27 Interesting Ways To Use Twitter in the Classroom
• 40 Interesting Ways To Use Wordle in the Classroom
• 40 Interesting Ways To Use Your Pocket Video Camera in the Classroom
• 21 Interesting Ways To Use Google Docs in the Classroom
• 24 Interesting Ways To Use Google Earth in the Classroom
• 23 Interesting Ways To Use a Nintendo DS in the Classroom
• 34 Interesting Ways To Use Search Engines in the Classroom
• 42 Interesting Ways To Use Your Interactive Whiteboard in the Classroom
• 5 Interesting Ways to Use Prezi in the Classroom
• 17 Interesting Ways to Use Voicethread in the Classroom

Still in the early stages are:

• 4 interesting ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom
• 3 interesting ways to support writing in the classroom
• 5 interesting ways to use an iPod touch in the classroom
• 4 interesting ways to use Nintendo Wii in the classroom
• and so far Zero interesting ways to use Google Wave in the classroom

Google Lit Trips

Another practical use for Google Earth has been found in these interesting lessons that utilize this application.  On the website named Google Lit Trips  you will find a list of lessons using various texts in which a virtual “trip” has been planned for use in describing events, settings, etc. of a story. 

2 interesting videos as an introduction to Google Lit Trips are presented by Kate Reavey (Peninsula College). Part 1

Part 2

 

This has the potential to be an excellent resource for teachers who are looking for ways to introduce literature in a different format into their classrooms.  The lessons seem good enough to be used with a class via a teacher’s computer that is hooked up to data projector or it could be used by students at individual computers.

site map

I had a look at the Lit Trips for Elizabeth Honey’s book Remote Man , Hana’s suitcase by Karen Levine and they also have one for Macbeth. 

  Looking at the above and, based on my knowledge of how reasonably user friendly Google tends to make the applications I have already used, it leads me to believe that creating your own lit trip would not prove to be too difficult a task.  There is a pdf “how-to” for creating your own lit trip ad it does not look to difficult. I have a small group of students working with me at the moment, reading e-books from DailyLit. One of the titles is Around the world in eighty days. I thought that this would make an interesting project for us to expand on the journey through the book whilst learning about creating something new with GoogleLitTrips. 

In general, this site seems to be an extremely valuable resource with downloadable materials complete with discussion questions and other class activities. I believe that this could be a great tool to help students visualize and learn about the places they encounter in various stories. 

To get started on your Lit Trip journey with characters from famous children’s novels you will have to :

• Download Google Earth
• Return to Google Lit Trips
• Click on one of the grade level links at the top of the page
• Find a Lit Trip that meets your interest 
• Start exploring

Historical changes recorded by Google Earth

As I was looking around for some digital images of the Beijing Olympic stadium, I came across this.

Under the heading “GoogleEarth adds historical photos” in the Time photogallery news. A small selection of photos were presented as a slide set and they showed some great examples of “then and now” 

With a vast trove of images from the past, the massive cartographic search tool lets users travel back in Earth’s  travel back in Earth’s time.

 I wanted some pictures of Olympic Stadiums. So here is what turned up in the slide show

Beijing Olympic Stadium-2005

 and next

Beijing Olympic Stadium 2008

The first photos in the slide set were of the Aral Sea; 1. as it looked in 1973, before the onset of desertification and 2. The Aral Sea in 2008. “Scientists estimate that over the last four decades, the sea’s surface area has shrunk by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%.”

The set here is worth looking through and I can see photographs such as these being useful in Geography. The students having the option to view, visually, any change in the earth, is much more powerful than just reading about the statistics. Changes to neighbourhoods, to different geographical features, changes in  land use and the like can be seen in these photographs.

After having a look at these, I am going to have a look through the images to see what other photos are available and make some time to talk with the geography teachers.

You will need to download Google Earth 5.0 at
http://earth.google.com

By default, Google Earth displays most up-to-date imagery available. You can view historical imagery so that you can see how places have changed over time.

There is a blog post , in Watts up with that, that offers explanation of how to  access historical imagery.