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Google Tools You've Probably Never Heard of Before

Some of the highlights that you might really like and want to use in class:

Smarty Pins

Google Maps have a wide range of uses outside of simply finding directions. One extension of Maps is the game Smarty Pins. This is a fun activity for an individual student or the entire class to practice research skills and find locations on a map to match the clues given.

To use Smarty Pins, do the following:

• Go to the website at: smartypins.withgoogle.com

• Choose a category if you want to limit the questions to specific topics, or click "Start a new game" for a variety of questions.

• The game will now begin and a clue will be given.

• Students may already know the answer, or you can have them do some Google research to find the answer.

• When ready, the user drags and drops the marker on what they believe is the correct map location.

• The game then tells you how far off from the correct location your are, and subtracts those miles from your score.

• When you run out of miles, the game ends.

Tour Builder

Google's Tour Builder let's you tell a story with maps! Built on Google Maps, this tool allows you to put together a sequence of locations from anywhere on Earth. For each location, you can add content including:

• The address of the location.

• The Google Maps view of the location (overhead, Street View, etc.)

• A name for the location.

• A slideshow of images and videos.

• A start date and end date.

• A detailed description (including links).

• After all of the locations have been put in Tour Builder, you can share the final product with others who can "play the tour" to visit each location and view the content connected to each.

This can be a fun and different way to tell a story, explain events from history, explore geography, visit the sites from a book, and more. Tour Builder can be accessed at: https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com

Tour Creator

In the original Hipster Google post, I shared about Google Tour Builder, which lets students tell stories through annotated locations on a map. Since then we now have Google Tour Creator, which expands on this idea by letting students tell stories through 360 photos from around the world

Students can add 360 images from Google Street View, or their own 360 degree camera, or with the Cardboard Camera app for their phone. For each location, you can also add descriptions, points of interest, image overlays, audio narration, and more. The final product can be viewed with VR goggles, on a phone, or on a regular computer. Website - https://vr.google.com/tourcreator/

Tour Creator gives students an easy to use, but powerful, tool to tell a story, explore a historical event, or explain a concept. To learn more about this tool, see my detailed blog post "360 Degree Learning with Google Tour Creator".

Google Earth Online

In the past Google Earth was a downloadable program that you could only run on a PC or a Mac. Now Google Earth is available online in your web browser. This means you can use it on any device including Chromebooks, PC's, Macs, Android phones, iPhones, and iPads.

Google Earth provides you and your students with a full 3D model of the entire world. You can explore any location on the planet, learn about each location, and even take pre-made tours through the Voyager feature. Google Earth can be accessed online at: https://earth.google.com

Google Earth Engine Timelapse

Not only can maps help us find where we are going, they can also help show us where we have been. Google has been collecting satellite imagery of the world for decades. With their amazing Timelapse site from Google Earth Engine, you can see how our world has changed from 1984 to the present.

• Simply go to the Timelapse site at: https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse

• Search for a location, or choose one of the suggested locations at the bottom of the screen.

• You will now see an animation showing the changing satellite images from 1984 through the present.

This is a powerful way to see the impact people have on our world, the development of cities, changes to rivers, glaciers, and other natural formations, and more.

Google Maps Planets and Moons

Google Maps is not just limited to Earth. Using imagery from NASA and the European Space Agency, Google has also created digital versions of many of our solar system's planets and moons, including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Pluto, and more. You can zoom in and out, spin the planets and moons around, and explore many marked features.

To access the planets and moons you can start at the regular Google Maps and simply zoom back and back until you go into space. Or you can go directly there: https://www.google.com/maps/space/

Google Arts & Culture

Google Arts & Culture is a website from the Google Cultural Institute dedicated to collecting and sharing art, photographs, and primary source documents from all over the world and throughout history. Items are organized by themes, artists, mediums, movements, historical events, historical people, places around the world, stories of the day, and more.

With Google Arts & Culture students can get closer to works of art and historical artifacts than they ever could in a museum. The digital items were scanned or photographed by Google using an ultra-high resolution camera so you can see every brush stroke, letter, or detail. Some of the collections even feature 360-degree videos and photos to immerse you in the experience. This is a fantastic site for students studying art, culture, history, geography, and more. The site can be accessed at: www.google.com/culturalinstitute

Science Journal

Analyzing data is a skill all students need to develop. We want our students to be able to collect data, look for patterns, make predictions, and draw conclusions. Better yet, if the data can be real-world data, collected by the students themselves, it will have more meaning and relevance.

One great tool to help accomplish this is Google's Science Journal app. Science Journal is a mobile app that runs on Android devices, iOS devices, and newer Chromebooks that can run Android apps. The app uses the sensors built into your device to collect real-world data. Student can:

• Collect data with sensors for light, sounds, motion, direction, magnetism, barametric pressure, and more (depending on the device).

• Take notes to go along with the data collected.

• Export the data as a CSV file to open in Google Sheets (or other programs) for additional analysis, charts, and graphs.

In addition to the apps, Google also provides a collection of activities and lessons to use with Science Journal!