Google Earth

You can always go to Google.com, click More at the top, and when you get to Google’s main page click on the Earth link. It is free and easy to download.  Kids LOVE Google Earth.

Here are some links that are useful:

Main Google Earth page: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html

Google Earth User Guide is here.

When studying Latitude and Longitude, there is this cool website:  confluence.org

You can follow the journey of famous explorers, using Google Earth, and here is a PowerPoint that I put together that sums up what you can download with kmz files:   Explorers Voyages.

Here is the homepage of the teacher who is making, gathering up, and hosting the Explorer files.

http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/wtsexplorerweb/index.html

A few files that I did not make, but use in class are here ( you should copy and paste the URL into your browser):

U.S. and Canadian Capitols:      www.optixart.com/Google_Earth/34013-Capitols.kmz

Great Wall of China:      www.wondersoftheworld.tv/…/Great%20Wall%20of%20China%20(China).kmz

Worst Oil Spills in History:      earth.tryse.net/Oil_Spill.kmz

The LitTrips page has maps of character journeys and book settings. It is amazing. Beryl Reid has 2 collections featured there by a link on the right: Author Homes and Literary Landmarks

http://www.googlelittrips.org/

How did they do that?????

KML intro: http://code.google.com/apis/kml/faq.html#whatiskml and  http://code.google.com/apis/kml/

Making a KML – Tutorial http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html

Making KMZ files http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmzarchives.html

Submitting to Google http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlSearch.html

Writing HTML code in the Descriptions of Placemarks:

Great Layers we played with in class:

David Rumsey Historical Maps Collection website: http://www.davidrumsey.com/

Just for enormous fun, and ideas for places to “go” with students: http://googlesightseeing.com/ (“Why bother seeing the world for real?”)

Google Art Project! (see museums around the world) http://www.googleartproject.com/

Help on making tours can be found here:

http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=148174

Organizing your “Places”? Help can be found here.

Google Earth Ocean Layer is amazing. More here: http://earth.google.com/ocean/showcase/#explore-oceans

Visiting Sky, Moon, and Mars

Beryl Reid gathered up some Google Earth stuff for the Social Studies page. It can be found at this link.  She also has some links off the Hajjar website and they are here.

Educator sites and lesson plans

Google Geo Educator page: http://www.google.com/educators/geo.html

You can put a “Rocket Garden” just like the one outside the Kennedy Space Center, next to any address and then you can see how big the rockets are in comparison to a building (like the John Hancock Tower). There is a model of the Space Shuttle as part of it.

On the same website, you can type in your address and see a model of the solar system, with your address as the sun. That way you can understand the scale of the solar system through the relative distances.

The website is here:
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/education/fun-stuff#apollo

A very interesting collection of Google Earth stuff:
http://googleearthgoods.pbworks.com

Ideas for an elementary level class:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgdwkz9w_66dvcqqbrh

This is where many GE Lesson plans are posted, by a teacher:
http://gelessons.com/

Math lessons using Google Earth: http://www.realworldmath.org/Real_World_Math/Lessons.html

Google Earth Users- Many many tips here: http://googlearthusersguide.blogspot.com/

A terrific collection of Google Earth tutorials, and lesson files for students.
http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dherring/ge/googleearth.htm

The NOAA has a document with Google Earth introduction and materials for educators.

Other

There is some very interesting stuff on the Google Earth blog, if you poke around there. For example, here is a posting about aerial kite photography that was submitted to Google and used by them, on Earth.  And there is another post about the space shuttle and how you can download a layer with a photo of it, and photos taken from it.

Satellite imagery and useful tools to use with the Google Earth “More” layer
http://www.geoeye.com/GeoEye101/

Google Earth Gallery: http://www.google.com/gadgets/directory?synd=earth&preview=on&cat=featured

Google Earth forum community

SketchUp Stuff

Bonnie Roskes is a Sketchup expert who has a blog and many teacher materials (see next 2 links):

http://3dvinci.blogspot.com/

This is the amazing site for SketchUp teacher materials:  http://3dvinci.net/teacherguide/

Google 3d warehouse is here: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

At BMHS, they are modeling Billerica. Here is more on the project: http://billerica3d.teachers.billerica.k12.ma.us/

Beryl Reid got the project going. She is the former Hajjar/Parker Technology Teacher. Her collection of SketchUp models is here.  She is a Google Super-modeler.  Beryl and this project were recently featured on the Official Google SketchUp blog! She is also a Google Certified teacher.

Manuals for Sketchup can be downloaded from this website:

http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36213

Augmented Reality websites:

ARSights.com

The Summer Tech Camp page about AR

AR Greeting cards

Video hosting websites:

http://vimeo.com/

schooltube.com

teachertube.com

**