Teaching a thing or two

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Earth Education Coordinator

Rounding out our celebration of Geography Awareness Week, I’d like to point you to some Google Earth and Maps educational applications that recently caught my attention:

Here in the United States, Tim Hunter of the Advanced Technology Environmental Energy Center (ATEEC) brought together over a dozen educators to develop a virtual field trip that explores political and environmental issues in the Arctic. The purpose of this National Science Foundation-supported project is to explore fossil fuels, discuss sustainable sources of energy, and explore the Alaskan wilderness.

Across the pond in the UK, middle school geography teacher Noel Jenkins created a lesson plan that combines fiction with film-making and climatology. Acting as location scouts, students use Google Earth to find ideal spots for filming the movie version of Philip Pullman's book The Golden Compass. They need to read the text carefully, but the decision-making process is also based on how they interpret the landscape.





















And schools across the globe have joined forces to commemorate the 2007-2008 International Polar Year. In this initiative, environmental science, history, anthropology, and technology come together to immerse students in the world of geography. Check out which schools have launched virtual balloons to mark their participation.

We'll keep you posted on more educational resources as we hear about them. And be sure to visit the Google Earth for Educators page and the Google Earth Community for additional lesson plan ideas and discussion forums.

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Map of the day: My Maps for teaching Physics and Literature

Posted by Sowmya Subramanian, Engineering Manager, Google Maps

In my time spent combing through all of the amazing customized maps created by our users, I've been pleased to find many maps that illustrate the usefulness of My Maps in a classroom setting. For example, I recently found two great ones that illustrate how tools in the My Maps tab can be used by teachers in two very different subjects: Physics and Literature.

For one, check out this cool map created by a Physics teacher who has been teaching his 9th grade students about speed, velocity and displacement. In an effort to make the class more interesting, he had his students pair up and use map-making tools in the My Maps tab to plot out different bus routes in the area. Each route was labeled with the average time needed for a bus to make a complete loop and the average speed of the bus. Pretty cool, huh? You can read more about it on his blog .

And then there's an English teacher who got his students (and me!) hooked on a reading assignment by mapping out a novel's plot points. In the book Whirligig by Paul Fleischman, main character Brent travels to the four corners of the U.S. on a Greyhound bus. Tom used My Maps to plot out the character's entire route, highlighting key placemarks and engaging students along the way. And be sure to read more about the assignment on his blog.

Teachers, what are you waiting for? On your marks... get set... map!

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Sky in the classroom

Posted by Andrew Connolly, Google Visiting Faculty (University of Washington)

Google products can be useful in many classes, but today I want to point out how they can be useful in my favorite high school class: astronomy!

When I studied astronomy, the teachers used to bring a gigantic star map to class, point at the stars, and tell us all those great stories about them. I always wanted to see deeper into the sky and know more about it, but I had to wait for the annual trip to the observatory to actually do that, unfortunately. With Sky in Google Earth you can do all of that and much more now without even leaving the classroom. Just open Google Earth, click on the new "Sky" button, and you'll see the very sky above your location. Here are some tips on how to get an astronomical education:

- To see a particular object, just search for it in the search box (for example, try searching "Betelgeuse"). If you want to know more about a particular star, just select the "backyard astronomy" layer from the layer panel and click on a star to get more details.

- To see a giant cosmic explosion in space, search for "crab nebula" and fly 6,300 light years in a second. Click on the icon to learn more. And you can explore other Hubble pictures using the layers panel.

- To explore the planets as they move across the sky, double-click the "planets" layer on the left panel and then press play on the time slider on the top-right corner. If you want to explore, say, the moon or Mars, just click on either one of them to land in a map. It's almost like being there ...

- Go to HeyWhat'sThat to access a night sky overlay in Google Earth and see what your sky will look like tonight.

- With planets and asteroids moving through our own solar system, and with exploding stars and mysterious flashes of gamma ray radiation, there are always new things to see in the night sky. At voeventnet.org you can use Sky to find out whats new in the sky tonight and go and see for yourself.

- We also have special tours you can use: just click on the "User's guide to galaxies" or the "Life of a Star" tour on the layers panel, and then click on the star or galaxy icon to learn more. You can also create your own tour of Sky to share with friends or students, using the same tools in Google Earth. Here's a good tutorial.

Additionally, you can learn more about the planets through a new layer created by exoplanets.org, which will show you all of the stars with planetary systems that we currently know about. Download it from the Google Earth gallery.

It's our hope that Sky will help educate kids around the world on the wonders of space. We encourage you to share your feedback with us in the Sky forum.

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Viva la via!

Posted by Ryan Sturgell, Software Engineer

A few months ago we added a simple and fun way to interactively modify the directions created by Google Maps. You can drag the endpoints of your route to change where the route starts or stops. You can also drag the route itself to modify how you get to your destination. Perfect, right? Well, almost. Our users have told us that, while they love dragging their routes to use the roads they want, they don't like that we add a new destination at the spot they dragged: I want to go via the I-90 bridge, not stop on it! We wouldn't want to either. So we've tweaked this feature by adding a "via" point to the spot where you dragged, rather than a whole new destination:



This also improves our directions: No longer will we suggest you stop on the bridge during your trip. Viva la via!

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Google Maps comes to Switzerland

Posted by Giorgio Scherl, Product Manager Google Maps, Switzerland

Falling in love with Switzerland just got even easier. Those romantic lakeside hotels, world-famous chocolate shops, and winding roads through the Alps can now be discovered using Google Maps for Switzerland. The all-new Maps service, developed right here in Zurich, will help people in Switzerland find and enjoy the businesses and services around them. It also includes easy-to-use driving directions and trip-planning public transport information. We worked with Swiss content providers, ranging from Swiss doctors to the Public Transit Authority, to provide a comprehensive one-stop-shop of local information. The same information can also be accessed from Google Earth.

So whether you're taking public transportation in Zurich, planning a family ski trip, or looking for a special place to stay in Geneva, Google Maps can help.

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Google Transit trip planning in Europe

Posted by Christoph Oehler, Product Manager

We are very happy to announce the launch of Google Transit trip planner in Europe. For quite some time, Google Maps has featured transit stop icons with helpful information like lines serving a station and next departures for many cities. But now you can plan your entire journey using public transportation! So far we have information for the following places and transport companies:

- Traveline South East, UK
- SBB, Switzerland (train, ferries and long distance bus coverage)
- VBZ, Zurich, Switzerland
- Turin, Italy
- Florence, Italy

Try it yourself: type your start and end address in the "get directions" boxes. The default results are driving directions, but in the areas that we have transit routing coverage, you can simply click on the "Take Public Transit" link.

We believe this is an important step in encouraging people to use public transit. We're hoping folks will decide to leave the car at home if they can easily discover a transit stop next to a business as they're searching for it, or if they realise it's easy to take a train as they plot their journey from point A to point B. We're always looking to improve our coverage and work with more partners -- we'll keep you posted as more places and transport companies are added.

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Architect ideas with Project Spectrum

Posted by Tom Wyman, Market Development Manager

It's always incredible to witness even the youngest children mastering sophisticated web applications at lightning speed. Not long ago, I was wowed to learn that many children with autism have proven to be particularly adept at creating 3D models using Google SketchUp. Last week on the Official Google SketchUp Blog, we announced the creation of Project Spectrum, a program dedicated to connecting the autistic community with free software and learning materials.

Project Spectrum was dreamed up by the Google SketchUp team in partnership with the Boulder, Colorado chapter of the Autism Society of America, the Boulder Valley School District, and the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at University of Colorado. By connecting children with SketchUp tools and the know-how to use them, Project Spectrum makes it possible for kids with special abilities to create 3D models of anything from actual existing buildings to imagined dream homes. They can even show off their work in the 3D Warehouse, an online repository of 3D models in which users can publish the models they've created, as well as search and download models built by others. And what's even cooler, the best models in the 3D Warehouse are added to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth, giving every child the opportunity to share their hard work with the whole world!

The creators of Project Spectrum have put together a very cool video to showcase ways in which children with autism can take advantage of SketchUp. Check it out:





It's especially inspiring to learn about Project Spectrum's launch right in the middle of Geography Awareness Week. We hope people continue using our products in such fun, educational ways. If you are an educator who would like to use Google SketchUp in the classroom, please visit our SketchUp for Education page.

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