Google Earth

There are many things that I love: good food, my family, and nice cars to name a few. Although I love many things, I do not use the word lightly. That being said, I feel very comfortable saying that I love Google Earth. What's to love about it you may ask? What's not to love about it? Google Earth provides you with a detailed map of the whole world, and it's easy to spend a couple of hours 'flying' around the world with the easy to use controls. Google Earth has got a lot of the same features as Google Maps, but there are also some differences.

Similarities Both give you a map of the world, driving directions, are customizable, and have got a lot of cool 'extras'.

Differences Google Earths map is MUCH more detailed and manipulatable, and once it gets your driving directions, it will even give you a step by step tour of the route. It's easier to upload pictures and put them onto Google Maps, and you can't create a personalized map and put it on the web with Google Earth. I was able to upload my pictures onto Google Earth, but had trouble actually seeing them on the map. After doing some more research, I found that if you want to put actually put your pictures on the map, you have to join the 'Community', and the pictures might not be up for a few weeks or a few months. While this is fine if you simply want to contribute to Google Earth, if you are looking to use the program as part of a class, you will have to do a fair amount of advanced planning (i.e this program is not ideally suited to use in a lot of classrooms).

Examples of Use There are a lot of different uses for Google Earth, and I've put links to them on the right side of the page under 'Google Earth links'. The site 'Google Earth Lessons' has a great variety of different in-class uses, 'Google Earth youtube video' shows you a video on youtube where a journalist talks about the multimedia uses of GE, and 'Google Earth Blog' talks about using GE in the classroom and gives a variety of uses for various subjects.