My brother called me from Los Angeles the other day to talk about our family reunion this summer. It is going to be at my house, here in Pelham, but he has never been here. As we talked about the big upcoming party, he asked about hotels and rental cars in the area, as well as information about the train to Manhattan. So, what did he do? He google-earthed me. He took a look at my house from space and commented that my yard looked large enough for a party. Then he asked me if it was creapy to live next to a cemetary. Afterwards, he got all the info he needed on hotels, cars and the distance from my house to the train. All of this through Google Earth.
Well, my first impression when I heard about it was that I felt "spied" on. When I went to the site myself, it was cool. I loved finding out all the things I could do. But when it was done to me, I felt a little strange about it. It's just too much information!
My second impression of the Google Community or the tours etc, is that although it is cool looking and fun to play with, I'm not sure it is all that useful. Yes, I could think of something to do, like take my students on a virtual trip of Madrid. But then again, I could do that from pictures in a book as well. A science teacher could compare land forms, like the article said, but I think he could do that from a book as well. I certainly don't think this is a bad website, I just think that it is incredibly fancy technology with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research, that isn't all that useful to the regular Joe, besides for amusement.
What it is probably most useful for is what people are putting on top of it. As the article said, people have put sex offenders addresses on it, or other felons. I have a student whose father works for the FAA who said his Dad is working on a program that puts the weather on top of all the maps. That way you can fly around and check out the weather all over the country. Kind of reminds me of the weather segment of the nightly news. Except it is in your home!
This technology is fun, it's interesting and has lots of possibilities. But as I have said with other technologies I have recently discovered, it is just a tool. It is one of many things we use on a daily basis to get our jobs done. It should never be the only tool used.
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I love technologies that can be used inside and beyond the classroom. This is a great anecdote.
I think that we are still figuring out how it can support learning. Michele's link to The Holocaust Museum use of Google Earth to illustrate the Darfur Crisis is very interesting. Here is the link: http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/projects/darfur/
I agree. It's a tool.
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