I worked with Mrs. Sester's class this week at Elda and used Google Earth with the Smart Board. The students loved it! We were studying landforms. Google Earth was a great application for this. We flew to many different areas in the world to look at islands, peninsulas, mountains, valleys, rivers and flood plains. It was really interesting to see all the different terrain across the earth! We flew to Nepal and checked out Mount Everest, Egypt and the Nile river, the Hawaiian Islands and the volcanoes, and Antarctica with the ice caps. We also looked at Florida as a peninsula, the Rocky mountains, and the ocean floor of the Atlantic along the United States coast. The students were really able to see where the ocean floor dropped off from the coast! We discussed underwater terrain and how it relates to terrain above water . Students gained map skills by looking at the differences of the topographic maps of mountains, rivers and plains. Students also were able to see an areal view of Ross as we flew over Elda!
The most interesting thing we found were the flood plains around the Nile river in Egypt. From high above you can see what looks like a huge river in the middle of the dessert. However, as you zoom in closer you can see where the actual river runs through and that the rest of the green area surrounding it is actually planting fields for crops. It illustrates how much water rivers provide to communities and sparked discussions about river flooding and why people tend to live near natural water sources. Everyone in the classroom learned something new that day and had a great experience utilizing technology for education!
If anyone is interested in working with me to provide a lesson using Google Earth to your class let me know! For more information about Google Earth, visit:
http://earth.google.com/
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