Google Earth and Google Tour Builder

I'll be honest, Google Earth and Google Tour Builder are two areas of Google that I do not feel exceptionally strong in. After fully immersing myself in the two this week, I now see the positive implications that both could have in the classroom. Both have different strengths, in my opinion, but are valuable and teachable in their own ways. Let's take a look at both...

Google Earth
If you're like me and feel like you need a beginners guide to how to even get started with Google Earth, click HERE. This short tutorial video really helped me understand the ins and outs of the program. The biggest takeaway I had from using Google Earth is that you really need to just play around with it for a short amount of time before you try to do any specific tasks. I had to click around and explore for about 7-10 minutes before I felt comfortable completing what I was truly trying to do. Because of this, I believe that the same would be true for my students using it in class. They're going to need some extra time to just play around and explore the program before completing assignments within it. This was an important "ah-ha" moment for me, as a teacher! In terms of teaching with Google Earth, I think one of the most powerful teaching tools it offers is the 3D models it allows students to understand. With a flat map in a textbook, students are only able to visualize so much. Google Earth really breaks that dilemma wide open and lets them have a much more detailed and accurate portrayal of the world in which they live. Personally, I see this as more of a TEACHER tool for teaching my students about specific areas of the world or pointing them to this tool to find specific information, but he possibilities are truly endless with this. Just in case you need a place to start from, click HERE to see how others are using Google Earth in their classrooms already! The video below is on the would be a great anticipatory set for introducing this tool to your students. 

Google Tour Builder

Google Tour Builder is a little more straight forward, if you ask me. I had very little experience with this tool prior to this week's exploration, so if you need a quick rundown on how to get started, I found THIS short video quite helpful. What I love the most about this tour is it's simplicity. Adding the locations for your tour is a breeze and all the other information that can be added is laid out in a format that is easy to follow and easy to accomplish. Google has done a great job of making this tool exceptionally user friendly! This tool, in my opinion, would be much easier for students to use to complete tasks. For example, it would be relatively simple for students to create their own tour over a specific region in Social Studies class, or over the settings and locations they read about in a novel in English class. I see this tool as much more of a STUDENT tool rather than a teacher too, and that is why I think it is even more powerful. The assessments that students could complete by creating an interactive tour of their learning is a pretty powerful tool! Below is a screenshot of a Google Tour over one of the novels in my students' current literature circles, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. 

The complete tour, which can be accessed by clicking HERE, includes maps, street view images, still photos, and videos about each of the locations in the novel. This would be such a cool way for students to tell their own stories or to map the stories that others have created!

Overall, I think both of these tools have a lot of potential and would be excellent additions to any classroom. It was refreshing to see how many teachers outside of social studies and geography are using these tools in a meaningful way. Google is for EVERYONE, people!!!