GoogleEarth reflection

The GoogleEarth tours I looked at were Amy's Lit Tour through Pride and Prejudice, Nina's Tour of Dances of the World, and Megan's Lewis and Clark Tour.

After doing this assignment, I am a huge fan of GoogleEarth. This is way more fun than listening to a lecture or watching a Powerpoint. With GoogleEarth tours, you can incorporate pictures, videos, internet links, math with the measuring tool, and of course geography. I think students will love "traveling" to different places around the world...it makes it more real to them. If you wanted to make this an even more authentic experience, you could display the tour on an overhead projector so the whole class can do the tour together...then you could even bring food, music, and decorations of the culture that you are visiting. I can see students really having a blast with this. Also, because it is so interactive, I think students will remember the material better because they are doing it, seeing it, and often hearing it.

The biggest drawback I see to GoogleEarth is the time it takes to create a good tour. However, I feel like it's worth it for the creativity and variety you get out of it...I feel like the longer I did it, the more fun and meaningful activities I came up with. Plus, I got a lot better using GoogleEarth the longer I played around with it, so I think I would quickly become efficient using it. Plus, it's fun to do! I wouldn't use it ALL the time, because, like anything, it just wouldn't as cool after using it a ton of times. But using it several times a year would be very beneficial for learning.