Well, as we wrap up our Social Studies unit on mapping and landforms, students are completing projects using Google Earth which will see them visit some of the landforms and bodies of water we have studied. Why Google Earth? Check out our tours and you will see how far we have come using technology. What a great application for sharing knowledge about the world we live in … and a useful tool the next time you are planning a trip or doing research about anything global.
This is the process we went through … with some help from Mr. Utecht (our “tech” coach) along the way (thanks!):
1) First, we read books about landforms and bodies of water. We made choices about what we wanted to focus on, read carefully so we understood important information, and wrote down what we wanted to remember.
2) Then, we got together with a partner and made choices about what we wanted to study in more detail, as well as looking for examples of various landforms and bodies of water in an atlas.
3) Next, we used Google Earth to locate some of our examples. We created a folder to save our sites in, and then put placemarks where our examples were located around the world. We wanted to make sure that we stopped at a few continents during our tour.
4) Then, we used Wikipedia to find a few interesting facts about our sites.
5) Because we were going to be recording our voices, we had to write a short script and then practice it.
5) Finally, we recorded and saved our tour!
You will need Google Earth to view our tours. If you don’t have it, click here for a free download of Google Earth. To view our tours, click on a link below and download the file. Then, open up Google Earth and enjoy! You will find the file that you have downloaded in the Temporary Places folder. Please feel free to leave comments … the students would love your feedback!
Our Tours:
allie-and-mickey-around-the-world
cindy-and-lorien-around-the-world
jessica-and-inez-around-the-world
wiveca-and-anna-trip-around-the-world
5 more to come next week … stay tuned!
Tags: Google earth, landforms
Hey Kids These are fantastic. I’ll come back to see the other five next week
Mark
Hi Everyone is Room 210. I’m a teacher in Switzerland. Our Grade 4 students have just made a similar Google Earth Tour. At the moment it is posted on our intranet, but the network manager of the school has just ordered a new server so soon it can be posted there for everyone else to share. When that happens I’ll send you a link so you can see what our students have made. Most of what they have done is about Switzerland, but part of the tour goes to other places such as the Gobi Desert, Mt Everest and K2.
Good job on the tours. I learned a lot about these places.
[...] visit Mr. Jessee’s class blog and download Google Earth tours. This time the students created video tours using Google Earth and take you to landforms around the world. Of course the trip starts off from school and then you’re swept away learning about [...]
Great work! How did you upload the videos they recorded? Which program did you use?
Thanks for the feedback! We used the recording option within Google earth actually, which made a .kmz file. At the top of the screen, there is a button that looks like a camera and says “record a tour”. These were then uploaded to the blog fairly easily.
Mr.Jessee, this is a fantastic way to teach your students not just about landforms, but also about technology usage and team work and blogging and, and and! Great work. As a fellow teacher I have a few questions for you. How long did it take for you to get everything completed from the first lesson onward? Did your students already know about google earth or did you take time to teach them how to use it? How did you evaluate your students? Do you have a rubric you could forward? Thanks so much
I love the videos!!!
Did you make them or find them?
P.S.How is Morgan?
Back to Gayle’s question … this took a while, and I am planning to do it a bit differently next year. But, all in all, about 4 weeks including basic research, some written work, and then the scripts. Lots of support from our tech department was needed. The students had heard of Google Earth, but didn’t really know how to use it effectively, so some time for exploration, as well as some structured lessons. Assessment was through a set of questions which i developed, and students had to choose the right tool to find the answer - atlas, internet, OR Google Earth. It went well, and really showed me where their skills were at in all areas. Anecdotal notes were taken based on the final questionnaire results. Hope this helps!