Presentation

Session activities

• Open Google earth kml file generated from the Google maps portion
• Play with controls in Google Earth
• Open Google Earth file. Brainstorm what can we do with this?
• Use Google Earth resources to find interesting Google Earth files for use in class.
• Tick the following layers:
  • Terrain
  • Geographic Web
  • Roads
  • 3D Buildings
  • Borders
  • Populated Places
• Search for a 3D building in Google Earth. (Hint: Have a look at Paris.)

• Place a placemark on your house / your school:
  • Find your house in Google Earth.
  • Click on the new Placemark icon or press Ctrl+N.
  • Move the placemark so that it is over your house.
  • Give the placemark a name.
  • Click on OK.
• Write a description for your placemark.
• Change the icon of your placemark.
• Change the view of your placemark by changing the tilt. To save the view with your placemark - right click over the placemark and click on 'Snapshot View'.

Using Google Earth

• When in Google Earth, you will first see a globe. You can click and use your mouse to spin the globe.
• Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels and get the driving directions.

Right hand side controls

• Click and hold the N. Rotating around the circle changes your orientation (students will find this especially fun or frustrating if they are not aware how they changed it in the first place.)
• The four arrows in the look joystick (has the eye in the middle) moves the globe within the frame (look around). 
• The four arrows in the move joystick moves you around the globe. Clicking the top arrow moves your view towards the North Pole.
• Moving the slider towards the positive (+) brings you closer to the surface of the Earth. The negative (-) brings you further away.

Left hand side controls

• Search bar: Typing a location into the search bar will fly you to that location.

• Places: There are two types of places: your places and temporary places. When you open a kml file, it will be necessary to save it to your places. When you create placemarks in Google Earth, it is saved in a folder in your places. Save and share your favorites.
  
• Layers: Add or remove layers that show terrain, names of roads, geographic boundaries, etc.

Placemarks

• New map pins
• Create a smoke signal where messages are left. (A video with more information is found here.)
• Add an image into the placemark by using the following code. Enter it into the description box. The letters between the quotations ("  ") are to be changed for the URL of the picture (keep clicking the picture until it exists on its own page or right-click and look at the properties to get the URL.)
  

Layers

• KML are google earth landmarks

• KMZ are zipped KML's
• Famous people
  

Latitude and longitude

• When in Google Earth, find you latitude and longitude below your view (along the bottom)
• Eye alt (also along the bottom) provides your elevation height at your particular view

  YouTube Video

Embedding a Google Earth player

Google Earth 5.0

Track historical changes

• Use the slider to view changes in locations over time.
  
• Track global changes near or far. View changes in your community, suburban sprawl, melting ice caps, rainforest depletion, erosion, etc.
• This feature can be found under the clock in the toolbar.
  

Google Moon

• Visit tours of the landing sites (narrated by Apollo astronauts)
• View 3D models of landed spacecraft
• Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts' footprints
• Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions

Google Ocean

• New ocean layer: Go below the surface down to the ocean floor (where else can you see the Mariana Trench?) Bring to life the landscape of the ocean floor as not seen before. Content from leading marine experts, the BBC, and National Geographic bring additional 3D images such as the Titanic and other shipwrecks. Learn about conservation issues and marine species.
• To access this feature, click on Ocean in the Layers area of the left sidebar. Explore the ocean depths by choosing the different features or view the State of the Ocean layer for other features and information. 
• View a detailed map of the ocean floor.
  

Tours

• Create your place marks and record as a tour. Add audio or narration as part of your tour. Share with friends.
  
• Capture your journey with Google Earth in real-time, even without the use of placemarks
• Save tours and trips in your places to view again.
• The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.
• You can interact with earth as the tour is playing. You can also pause the tour to interact more in that area.
  
• Press the "Record a Tour" button in the toolbar. This will bring up the tour recording controls.
  
  
  1. Record/Stop button
  2. Audio button
  3. Current time in tour
  4. Cancel tour recording button
  
  Hit the record button to start recording, and move through Earth as you would before. When finished, stop the recording by hitting the record button again. Click the save button in the controls and the tour is saved in the sidebar panel. Try using advanced features: 1. Use the microphone to record narration during the tour 2. Record the use of the historical imagery or other tools (these tools will need to be turned on before playback to work) 3. Create tours from KML layers. Highlight a folder or path and choose play tour 
  

• Try these tours:
  

1. Explore these tours using your browser
   
2. Jimmy Buffett's Hawaii Tour
3. History of Lake Tahoe Tour
4. U.N.E.P Historical Imagery Tour

• Creating a tour tutorial
• Embedding your tour by creating a gadget
  

Visit Mars

• View the surface of the red planet using a resource that provides information all in one place.
• Images and information from NASA and the Mars Rover are spectacular.
  

Google Sky

• Switch to sky in the top toolbar. Navigating in Sky is the same as navigating in Earth. Use the same joysticks and controls on the right side of your screen.
• Choose specific locations to explore through the use of the search box.
• You will find lots of layers including Backyard Astronomy (what you expect to see in your backyard) under the Sky Database in the layers.
• Use the date and time slider in the upper left-hand corner to see how your sky view will change throughout a specific time frame. This is perfect for watching the orbit of the planets.

Google Earth 5.0 resources

Saving folders in Google Earth

1. Any opened work from a network drive will begin life in the Temporary Places folder.
2. Find the main folder for your work, all of your placemarks should be below it in a list. Select it.
3. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
4. Click “Save to My Places”.
5. The folder moves up and out of Temporary Places.
6. Find the main folder for your work again. Select it.
7. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
8. Click “Save as…” or “Save place as…”
9. Navigate to your network folder.
10. Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.
11. Save.
12. If saving over the top of previous work allow it to replace the older file.

Putting KMZ files together

1. Add a new folder to the Google Earth on the computer you use [Add/Folder]. Call it something like "class project". Now this folder will be in your Places menu. Then as the students send you their kmz files and you open them, they'll open into your Temporary Places folder in your Google Earth (which is in Places).  Next drag each one you get from the Temporary Places to your "class project" folder in your Google Earth.  Continue this process until you get all the student files into this folder.  You can just do this as they come in, you don't have to do it all at once. Then you can save your "class project" folder by clicking on it and [Save/Save Place As] out as a single Google Earth kmz file to your desktop. Then centralize the file by putting it in a place where all the students can grab it (like in the files area of a Google Site) and when they open the file it will have all the locations they have contributed.
2. If your students can collaborate on a Google Map, they can all make the place marks together and then those can be saved as "View in Google Earth" and be collected all at once.  This would require a Google Account for each of them.

Custom Placemarks

1. To determine the Google Earth Icon URLs, open Google Earth, create a new placemark, and in the window that appears click the thumbtack icon in the upper right of the window.
2. This will allow you to change the icon and when you do it puts the URL in the text field at the top. For instance: http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/shapes/coffee.png
3. By copying this URL you have access to all the professional looking (but somewhat limited) Google placemark icons.
   

Ideas for using Google Earth

• KML factbook
  
• Great Math ideas
• Teaching Math with Google Earth
  
• X-treme Geometry
  
• Browse the Google Earth gallery for layers to use in the classroom or as a resource
• View this site for some great examples
  
• Use for "Where I went for summer vacation."
• Connect to literature being used by following the story line (A Tale of Two Cities, Grapes of Wrath, etc.)
• Make the world smaller (pen pals, family members, where my dogs came from)
  
• Planning a field trip? Visit in google earth first.
• Create a landform tour and have students find three examples of a specific landform on earth.
• Embed media in Google Earth - example: a biome tour
• Visit locations from the past and present - view places students may never be
  
• Find distances that are tough to measure by using the line and path measurement tools
• Zoom in slowly and reflect on what you see, feel, notice...
• Play 10 questions until they guess the Google Earth spot you have picked out
• Use Geogreetings to spell letters using Google Earth imagery
  
• Create a poster with a Google Earth picture and text using Big Huge Labs
  
• Find plenty of KML file data to view statistics, news events, etc.
• Find artistic structure in the architecture of a city.
• Studying Shakespeare? View the Globe Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. View all the places referenced in Shaespeare's plays using this layer: 155428-shakespeare.kmz
• Bring the Civil War to life: Civil_War_by_Campaign.kmz
• Create an autobiography.
  
• Plan a trip somewhere else in the world. After getting the driving directions, click play.
• Next time they research a famous person, use Google Earth to show the information (where they lived, went to school...)
• Teach inquiry by zooming in down to the street view. The class must come up with where it is by asking important concise questions. Zoom out as needed.
• View historic places (The Globe Theatre, Ancient Rome...)
• Use panoramic photos from Gigapan.  Under the picture you can click on "View in Google Earth"
• Experience literature differently using Google Lit Trips
• Wikipedia has a layer of information in Google earth.
• What would happen if sea levels rise? Use the google map here.
• Play Ships and command your own fleet
• Drive your car in Google Earth
  
• Dig a hole through the earth
  
• Worldwide Panorama - click on download placemarks file
• Elementary Lesson Plans
• Google Earth virtual voyages
  
• Google Earth Science activities
• Postcard geography
• The 21 steps story
  
• http://earth.wildsanctuary.com/
• Monster Milk truck plug in for windows
• Google Earth plug in Driving Simulator
  
• Use the First Person Camera.
  
• Flight Simulator directions
  
• Teaching with Google Earth (science) and Science activities
• Geocaching
• Globetracker - click on the google earth file at the top of the page
• http://mapalist.com/ Create a survey with google docs that collects zip codes and quickly publish on map a list. This site also creates a kml file to use.
• Sea seek
• Find files for layers here: http://www.gearthblog.com/
• Can also use scribble maps for annotating
• Use the CIA World Factbook to create layers
• Google Earth games
• Use a spreadsheet to generate your placemarks. check out the you tube video
• Check out this lesson recreating Bangladesh floods
  

Uses in Science (STEM)

• Glacial vs. stream valleys
• Glacial landforms
• Landscape regions of NY
• Shorelines processes such as wave refraction, long shore drift and associated landforms
• Igneous processes such as volcanoes and flows
• Impact craters and suspected impact craters
• Plate tectonics
• Erosion systems and cycles
• Fluvial processes – erosion and deposition
• Structural Geology
• Topographic maps
• Planetary features
• Ocean currents
• Atmospheric circulation patterns

Uses in Math (STEM)

• The height of buildings
• The length of a river
• The width of the Grand Canyon
• The distance between the shoreline and the continental shelf at different points of any continent
• Length and width of each of the Great Lakes
• Estimate the land area lost to Amazon deforestation
• Calculate the volume of the Great Pyramids
• The height of buildings
• The length of a river
• The width of the Grand Canyon The distance between the shoreline and the continental shelf at different points of any continent

Where to find Google Earth layers

1. Go to www.google.com, click on ADVANCED SEARCH and under File Format choose KMZ before searching. KMZ=Keyhole Markup Zipped, this is the "language" that GE accepts. After you find a KMZ, double-click and it will open in GE under Temporary Files.  When you close GE, you will be asked if you would like to keep your "Temporary FIle", if you click yes, that KMZ will forever be in your GE unless you delete it.~~Cindy Lane, USA
2. Google Earth Hacks
   

KML circle generator

Issues teaching with Google Earth

Sometimes there are bandwidth issues when everyone is creating in Google Earth.

Recommendations: 

• Turn off 3D buildings.
  
• Lower the terrain quality in the PREFERENCES menu choice.
  
• Have students work in pairs and share computers or have students work on something related while the other half of the class works in Google Earth.
  

Resources

Google Earth Pro

1. Your name (key contact person)
2. Organization / Institution
3. A brief description of the Institution / Organization
4. Full mailing address
5. Telephone number
6. User name (complete email address that will be assigned to the license key)
7. Institution’s web address
8. Your Institution’s Tax ID (if applicable)
9. Your Institution’s 501©3 number (US only, if applicable)
10. A description of the intended application including grade level(s), discipline(s) or subject.
11. What features in Google Earth Pro are important to you and how do you wish to use them in your classroom.
12. Number of computers you are requesting to download this software on.
13. Prior license key information.

PLEASE NOTE: Applicants are required to download the free, 7-day trial version of Google Earth Pro at http://earth.google.com/ before applying. Please be sure to include your Google Earth trial account user name and license key above.