Using Google Earth in the Primary Classroom

Some Practical Ideas?

Graeme EyreAnglo European School, 18th November 2009

Using Google Earth in the Classroom: Some Practical Ideas

Identify Places Zoom into places being studied in Geography or History. Find out where places are that are mentioned in literature. By zooming from the school to these locations it allows pupils to begin to gain a relative sense of place.

Local Tour Create a tour of the local area. This could be for ‘a new pupil’ or to send to a partner school. Pupils could embed pictures and descriptions about different places. This could take place on a variety of scales National, Local, or even the immediate area around the school.

Change in the Local Area Children can use the historical imagery feature to look at how the area around their homes and school has changed in their lifetime.

Overlay OS Maps Ordnance Survey maps can be overlaid on Google Earth to allow pupils to compare the differences in different types of maps and satellite imagery.

Ancient Rome The ancient Rome layer can be used when looking at Ancient Rome to get a 3D look at some of the key buildings.

Measuring Distance The onscreen ruler can be used to help pupils answer the question, how far is it to ______?

Night and Day Use the time slider to explore the difference between night and day and how that varies across the globe.

Google Sky, Moon, and Mars These additional features of Google Earth may be useful for Science Projects.

Decision Making Google Earth can be used to help pupils make decisions about their local area. E.g. where would the best site be for a new housing estate, school, rubbish dump, etc.

Pre-Trip Before taking a trip look at and explore the area using Google Earth.

News When looking at the day or the week’s current events Google Earth can be used to pin point their locations.

Creating a Placemark in Google Earth 5

1. Go to the location that you want to mark. You should go to the best Zoom level for that feature and roughly have that place in the centre of the window.

2. Click on the ‘Add Placemark’ Button or on the menu go to Add>Placemark.

In the box that appears (shown to the right) you can give the place mark a name. You can also type in a description – this will appear when you click on the placemark.

If you click on the Yellow Pushpin (the default icon)You can then change the icon that will be displayed on theMap to something more appropriate.

Before you click OK you can also drag the placemark location to fine tune the position.

3. Once you click ‘OK’ your place mark has been created and should appear in the ‘My Places ‘ section on the left hand side of the window.

4. Your placemark will be available for the duration of your Google Earth Session. To save it for future use right click on the placemark and save it in a location of your choice. This is useful for saving placemarks for pupils to use. In addition you can also create folders and save folders of placemarks all at once.

Looking at Change over Time in Google Earth

The amount of different images you have available will depend on the region you are looking at.

1. Open Google Earth.

2. Zoom to your chosen destination.

3. Click on the ‘show historical imagery button’ ( )

4. You can then use the slider to move between different dates.

The best area that I have found to explore this is The Bird’s Nest Stadium In China. Type ‘National Stadium, Beijing in the search box.