Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Google Earth Homework...Cool!

Mr. Fisch had a fascinating article on his Fischbowl blog called “A Google Earth Odyssey.” Have you ever read the book, The Odyssey? Well it is about the Trojan War and Greek and Sparta battling a long time ago, and then the journey that one of the main characters went through on his way home. Mrs. Smith talks about how she has assigned her freshman class a project using the technology of Google Earth. They were supposed to plot out their own “Odyssey” using places in the world they have been to. I thought this would be really cool, especially for me, because I have been in lots of places, mostly the United States and around Europe. It would be neat to share with your class where you’ve been in the world. Kids could relate to one another. Having gone to some of the same places, they could tell stories and share picture and just indulge in conversation and make connections. With all the new technology improvements and upgrades, classes and teachers can make school a much more productive and enjoyable learning environment. Remember when audio tapes got replaced with CDs, which are now being taken over by digital mp3s. Desktops with Laptops. CD players with iPods. Books with online texts. Classrooms will be dominated by computers and technology allowing the modern student a larger variety of learning capabilities. I used a computer classroom the other day; they were really, really cool. Even now, classrooms have projectors, screens, computers, and they are getting more every day.

Have you ever used it? Google Earth is amazing and a pleasure to use. I thoroughly enjoy fiddling around with. It’s a 3D visualization of the world put together using a collection of satellite images. I love locating my house and my school and my friend’s houses. Using it for a school assignment just blew me away. I was like, totally awesome! I’m glad for Mrs. Smith’s class that they get to use them. I can not wait until the day of our Google Earth assignment comes from Mrs. Comp (I spelled it right this time). A totally new generation of students are growing up right now, using technology more widely in the classroom than ever before. I think it’s to everybody’s, including my, advantage. I love all these new ideas!

1 comment:

Aaron H. said...

This sounds like a cool project. Instead of your average project we get to use a computer and the project its self sounds cool. Making a map of where you have been and seeing is some of your classmates have been there to. sounds like a good project.