I remember when I was at school you needed an imagination. My geography teacher, for example, used explain concepts, ideas and places to us in a way that I didn’t really get. I’m a visual learner, I need to see things. That’s why I love Google Earth so much. It’s a great tool for teaching in almost any subject, as we’re going to find out below. Read on to find out how you can (virtually) fly across the earth, find the distance between two places to the nearest centimetre, and zoom in on important places in History!

Lots of people are developing ‘layers’ or additional content for Google Earth. Here are some of my favourites:

• 3D-mapping of London
• History Illustrated – all the battles of WWII
• Tools for viewing Google Earth in an educational context
• Globe glider (makes global browing easier)
• GoogleEarthHacks.com (overlays and links to major recent events around the world)

Noel Jenkins, an Geography AST, has an excellent introductory guide to Google Earth over at JuicyGeography.co.uk. There is also a detailed (but rather confusingly organized) page on Google Earth at geographypages.co.uk. The Google Earth Blog has some useful tips as well.

Perhaps one of the most important things to do is bookmark places you will use often (e.g. your school or important landmarks to use in teaching). Here’s how to do that:

1. In the Google Earth browser, use your mouse to rotate and double-click to zoom in (you can also right-click, hold and drag or use your mouse wheel). Use the buttons at the bottom to rotate the view. (hint: in the Layers box in the bottom left-hand corner, put a tick next to Google Earth Community so that more place names show up)

2. Once you’ve found the location you’d like to bookmark, go to Add/Placemark.

(you can also do this by clicking on the pin icon at the bottom of your screen)

3. In the box that pops-up, give your placemark an easy-to-remember name, and press OK.

4. Your new shortcut now shows up in Places on the left-hand side of the Google Earth window.

5. Add other placemarks and then find out the distance between them using the measuring tool (Tools/Measure)

6. Navigate to the first location (use placemarks if you’ve added some already) and left-click on the exact location you want to measure from.

7. Navigate to the second location and left-click on where you want to measure to.

8. The Measure box shows the distance, by default in miles. But you can change this, even to centimetres! :d

(I read recently of a teacher who used Google Earth with his class to find out how far the ingredients on an average pizza had travelled. It worked out at over 80,000 miles!) :o

To make navigating around the world a little easier when you’re doing it freestyle (i.e. not using placemarks), go to View/Overview Map, which will bring up a small 2D map of the world in the top right-hand corner. Use the crosshairs to get to the general area you want to explore…

I believe Google Earth can be an extremely powerful teaching and learning tool used properly, especially in the hands of Humanities teachers. Give it a try and use it with a class next week! :d