Teaching Geoscience Concepts with Google Earth

Julia Baldwin

University of Montana

This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process.

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This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process.

This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

This page first made public: Jul 14, 2008

Summary

This is an activity that was developed for a teacher development program to introduce the various ways Google Earth could be used to explore geoscience concepts.

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Context

Audience

Geoscience course for pre-service and inservice K-8 teachers.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Basic computer skills. Basic familiarity with Google Earth.

How the activity is situated in the course

This is a stand-alone exercise.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

Learning how Google Earth can be used to explore Geoscience concepts.
Earthquakes and seismology
Volcanic Landforms
Glacial geomorphology

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

analysis of datasets, formulating hypotheses, using computer visualizations

Other skills goals for this activity

computer and software skills.

Description of the activity/assignment

This is an introduction to Google Earth that was developed for a K-8 Geoscience teacher development workshop. Students must first download and install Google Earth (GE). They then explore three different geoscience topics including earthquakes, volcanoes, and glacial landforms.