I chose to read about Google Earth, because I had always heard about it but never really gone on the site to see what it can do or what it was about. Once I read the post titled Cross-Cultural uses of Google Earth by Thomas Petra, it gave me a better understanding of the uses and benefits on education. Google Earth is a interactive online tool that allows anyone to "visualize, explore, and understand information on a fully interactive 3D globe or 2D browser based maps."(Google Website). Once on Google Earth you can go anywhere in the world or the universe! It is a great tool to use with younger grades, because it give them the opportunity to act as if they were actually there. You are able to explore anywhere in the world, which is a great learning tool for research projects on Geography.
This tool allows students to learn and enjoy a lesson plan. As Petra mentioned in his post there are many ways of using Google Earth. He chose to use it for his math class and developed several lesson plans around it. While working on one of his math lesson plans, his students asked, "What does this have to do with math?". He loved that comment, as do I, because students are enjoying what they are doing without knowing that they are doing math. I personally was never good at math, just because I didn't understand it. But with a tool like this it makes it fun and interesting for a student. The benefit from doing math on an interactive online tool is that the student is learning math and also learning to navigate online while using online resources.
Thomas Petra ended his post by asking if anybody had any ideas that he could use in the classroom with math or any subject. A guy replied that students could run numbers on a population and generate an example using Goggle Earth of what that population would look like 10 or 20 years from now. Thomas liked the ideas and decided that he could have students do something similar, but instead of population use contagious outbreaks. Somebody else said they didn't use math but they did use science. Thomas suggested that something could be done with his lesson plan about tracking typhoons, the science department can add a new perspective to it!
I never thought about using a tool like Google Earth for math, what a creative teacher. The obvious use is geography, but it seems that you could use it in many subjects areas from literature (where the author was from or the locale of the story) to social studies (how geography affects communities) to history (how geography played into a battle win or loss).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ro what a creative way to incorporate a cool program like Google earth into the classroom environment. I am definitely not a math person and having math taught through an interactive program like Google earth would have caught my attention more during math class.
ReplyDeleteThank you Cindy. Like you I had always heard about Google earth. I just thought it is an online tool that help everyone to gain a better access to geograghical information in the world. It was interesting to know that using Google earth could be a way to increase students' interests in learning math.I want to use a tool like this in my class to make math fun and interesting for my students.
ReplyDeleteGreat information Cindy! I had no idea how to use this tool within the classroom. How great to be able to enhance lesson plans. I would love to use this tool within my classroom in the future.
ReplyDeleteI've never even heard of GoogleEarth and now I'd really like to learn more about how to use it in class. If it can be used for math, then I'm sure it can be used for the sciences...
ReplyDeleteCindy great way to explain how Google Earth can be used as a math tool. I like how you said that it is so fun that kids don't know that they are learning math, an interesting spin on how to educate.
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