The last presentation that I gave at MACUL back in 2006 was a dud. I’ll admit it. I was trying to help empower educators with a sense that they could control their own professional development on a daily basis by networking via the Internet on forums, blogs, and what not. It ended up turning into a session that was more like “look at my nifty site, isn’t it great?!”Needless to say, the reviews were not great.
Which is why this year I’ve tried to focus my presentation on what teachers want. Specifically, little tools and tricks that they can take back and use in the classroom the very next week. Since Google Earth (GE) has become synonymous with the idea of a “digital globe” in the classroom, I thought other educators’ experiences with is. I haven’t talked with a teacher or administrator yet that hasn’t seen how powerful GE is. I hear about how great it was to find their houses, places of work, and their favorite restaurant. Some teachers even have their students mapping out and navigating their local community. However, Google’s digital globe is capable of so much more. So I decided to put together a presentation that would give teachers from every subject area a few simple ideas to get them started exploring how the application could be used in Science, Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts. There are even applications for using Google Earth in other areas of education like Music, Visual Arts, and more. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, and how to use all of Google Earth’s bells and whistles.
In fact, there are others with the same idea, as Norm Hoekstra will be presenting on Google Earth as well, and I know that GE will be talked about in other “Best of the Web” presentations throughout the conference. In case you can’t make any of them, or you’re interested in finding just more than where you live, try checking out Sundials around the world or find out how superdelegates will be voting using an interactive Google Earth map.
Image: ‘The Great Sushi Race3‘
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