Google Education Team Heads to Alaska

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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 9/22/2008 10:42:00 AM

Google’s Geo Education Team is trekking to the great outdoors—specifically Alaska—to meet with students and teachers to help them put online mapping tool Google Earth to good use in the classroom.

The crew is blogging about their adventures, which began this month, as they stop off in Nome, Kotzebue, and Barrow, the northernmost populated spot in continental North America. At Barrow High School, part of Apple’s 1-to-1 program that provides students with their own laptop, freshmen and sophomores worked with the team. Students learned about GPS technology by using Google Earth and also spent some time soaring through the virtual sky with the site’s flight simulator.

Sure, many who surf the Web are familiar with Google Earth and Google Maps—especially those who’ve followed the aftermath of hurricane Gustav. But other lesser-known tools include Google Sky, which lets students type in their location and capture a nighttime image of the starlit canvas above them, and SketchUp, which allows everyone from budding architects to artists build, share, and adapt 3D models on their computers.

So you're an educator in the Lower 48? While you may not get a visit from Google, the Geo Education team hasn't forgotten about you. The group has set up a Web site offering lesson plans, along with a discussion group to serve up some ways to tie these technologies into their classrooms.