Goooooogle Earth!!!!!!!!!!

A few weeks ago in my Social Studies Seminar my professor praised Google Earth. Directly after class I downloaded it on my computer and was intrigued. I immediately looked up my house, the college, all the places I have stayed on vacation, my friends' homes, and gosh everything even our elementary school! Lets just say I played and I loved it! I decided to use Google Earth in a unit lesson on Greece and Rome, I thought it would be a great way to show relative location by first looking at our school, then Greece and the following day of study Rome. My professor loved my lesson and I can't wait to implement it in the schools.

Earlier this evening I was just browsing other blogs and came across Rob Lucas' blog which questioned the effectiveness of programs like Google Earth. I had similar thoughts when I first looked at it in class, like how effective would it be in the classroom? would students really understand what it was showing? but then after I found myself completely intrigued for more than an hour I knew it would be "cool" and I think that student's could learn not only relative geography but students can even see the topography of areas, and understand the natural resources surrounding the studied location. (like rivers-water, forests-lumber, etc) I'm glad that someone else sees how Google Earth stands out above others as a interesting and possibly great learning tool in the classroom!