How Can Google Earth Enhance Your Classroom?

How Can Google Earth Enhance Your Classroom? How to Create a Tour for Your Students Katie Braden and Joseph Herrera August 3, 2010 kbraden@rockwallisd.org jherrera@rockwallisd.org

Once on the home screen, you will begin by creating a folder to collect the places you want your students to see in Google Earth. To create the folder first click on my places.

After clicking on “My Places” move your mouse to the top menu and click add > folder

A window will pop up and give you fields to enter in your data. The first field will allow you to name your new folder. This will become the folder your students will use so name it appropriately. The first checkbox should be checked for you, it simply allows the folder to “open up” and allow students to click on individual spots in any order. The second checkbox simply changes the look of the checkboxes in your folder to a button style. Both checkbox or button in your folder will preform the same functions. We will explain the description field in the next slide.

You may add descriptionin this field. It can serve as an preview of the lesson, or activate background knowledge, or simply remind students of discussion of previous classes. It also works well as a “homepage” that contains the student’s instructions. Student can click on this description to fall back on to remind themselves of the instructions or goals to accomplish.

For this example, I inserted the student’s instructions as a reminder to them of their goals. Students can click on the “Moon landing site” folder to bring up the description that you entered.

Use the “fly to” field to search for landmarks. I used Apollo 11 to find the first stop in the tour.

Once you have entered your search click the magnify glass and Google will “fly” you to that point. Once here use the slide bar on the right to zoom in closer before we add in our first place mark.

Once you have zoomed in, look to the top of the screen. Click on the yellow thumb tack to add placemark. A pop up window will appear to enter in your information.

In the “name” field type in what you would like to name this spot. You can add additional information in the description field if necessary. In this example I included information such as Crew, Landing Date and Name of the landing site because I wanted my students to include the information in their matrix.

If needed, move the window to the side and you can move the thumb tack around. The “Style, Color” tab allows you to change the color of the lettering of your placemark and thumbtack. It will allow you to adjust how easily one can see though the lettering and thumbtack. The “View” tab will adjust how the area of your placemark will show. This option is best left at default, as any document save your work before making any changes. The “Altitude” tab allows the thumbtack to be adjusted in relation to the ground. This option is best left to default settings which is “clamp to ground”.

Once you click Ok a yellow thumb tack will appear with the description you gave.

Now when students click on the thumb tack they will see the information you typed into the fields.

When the students click on the camera icon a pop up window will show. From this window they can click on the link “fly into this high-resolution photo” to see it in more detail.

Here is the LRRR the students are to find. Once they click on the red dot a pop up window will give them information on the device.

Most of the information in Google Maps have imbedded web links that will give much more information in greater detail. In this example the students will also click on the picture which will open a Windows Explorer window where they can copy the picture and paste it to their matrix.

Of course it will help the students if they have already authenticated before this point. At this point the student can right click to copy and paste.

Again use “fly to” and enter in Apollo 12 . Repeat the same steps as with the first stop.

Once done click tour to make blue.

Click File > Save > Save Place As ..

Under File Name enter the name of your project.

Now that your file is complete, you can highlight it in blue and it will open up your tour stops.

When expanded, students can click on the tour folder the description you entered will show up in a pop up window.

If you click again on the project folder, it will expand and show the place marks you created. This is where the students can click in order OR in a order they choose. (However you choose to have your students to proceed.)

How Can Google Earth Enhance Your Classroom?