Google World Wonders

As a former Geography teacher, Google World Wonders sounded wonderful to me.  In the World Geography SOLs there are World Monuments which the students have to be able to identify--Taj Mahal, Big Ben, the Gateway Arch, etc. I knew that Google World Wonders utilized Google Earth street level imagery and I figured that this would be a terrific way to teach these monuments.  Well,  it is, but, I was disappointed to learn that the monuments which can be visited on a World Wonders virtual field trips are limited to a mere 173. This means that of the cultural monuments in the United States, for example,  the Golden Gate Bridge and Independence Hall are among the wonders included, but, the U.S. Capital building and the Gateway Arch are not. Neither is the Eiffel Tower.

With both the capital building and the Eiffel Tower, I found that if I clicked on the Maps icon in my Google Apps box, searched for these locations, and then switched to the street level view, they have some terrific views of those landmarks.  That being the case, why would a geography teacher, or any other teacher, use the World Wonders site rather than just using Google Maps?  I, for one, would certainly use both were I still in the classroom.

 What Google World Wonders has that a street level view elsewhere may not have would be "details"--that is some script giving a bit of  background information about the site. They also have "collections", put together by Google.  These collections might include historic photographs as well as current ones.  For example, you can compare Louis XIV's bedroom as it appeared in the 19th century with how it looks today. In addition you can look  through "user galleries" which is just what the name implies--pictures put together in an album, which some user has created for others to view. Quite often these galleries will include comments from the user as well as details about where the photograph came from, etc. Finally, you can create your own collections--that is, you can gather various items available at Google World Wonders into an album of your own--organize them, add comments, and then show them, or make them available to your students. However, you cannot add photos or other items from outside the project (except for YouTube videos--which you can add--so I guess you could put photos into a YouTube video and add that--once you take care of the filtering issues.)

Here is what someone else had to say about the educational use of World Wonders:

"The World Wonders Project offers an Education page dedicated to assisting educators in history and geography topics. Teacher guides are available for primary school and secondary school. These guides include activity sheets, lesson plans, and presentations. Beyond the obvious use of the free guides, the resources, pictures, historical content and 360 degree view are easy to use and are organized for quick accessibility in the classroom.... The most developed program is secondary school history and geography topics. History topics include: Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annuziata, Liverpool, Palace of Versailles, Florence, and Independence Hall. Geography topics include: Ogasawara Islands, Dorset and East Devon Coast, and Paris. Each topic includes teaching activity sheets, lesson plans, and presentations."

Etec602.wikispaces.com,. 'Etec602 - Google World Wonders Project'. N. p., 2015. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.

Again, if I were in the classroom, I'd certainly ALSO use Google Maps or Google Earth to bring a street level view of World Monuments to my Geography students.  In addition to Social Studies applications, Google World Wonders might be useful for literature, science (World Wonders includes some nice underwater shots), and even math (angles on the Eiffel Towers, math problems involving the Leaning Tower of  Pisa, etc.) What can you come up with?

Building a Google Earth Tour the Easier Way

In my last post I introduced Google Earth Tours and stated that in a future posting I would give you information on how to build a Google Earth Tour the "Easy Way"--as explained by Tim Stahmer.  I'm going to change that a bit.  I used "Maps Engine Lite" and a spread sheet to create a KML file, as Mr. Stahmer suggested and found that it was indeed pretty easy.  However, I then tried "Tour Builder with Google"  and found it to be easier yet.

Although it is the "beta" version and is labelled an "experiment," I found that Tour Builder worked very smoothly, was self explanatory and intuitive to the point where I really find it unnecessary to explain it in any great detail here.  I'll just give you a brief overview and link to a sample I made which pertains to the Geography SOL on the monuments of Latin America .

To build your own tour simply follow this link and sign in with your Google account.  Of course, if you don't have a Google account you'll have to create one (remember that next year you will have a Google account through ACPS).  After logging in, you might want to click on either "View a Tour" to see a sample--or perhaps you'd rather click on "gallery" and choose a sample to view from a list of Tours.

Eventually, you'll want to click on "create a tour" and start building your own.  After naming your tour and naming yourself as the author you are then sent to an introduction page.  There you'll want to describe what your tour will be about, perhaps you'll want to add a photo to this cover page.  These tasks are so easily accomplished that there is no need for me to describe them.

The next step is to add the locations you want on your tour.  You simply click  on "add location" and begin to type in a name...with all of the locations on my sample tour,  it automatically completed the location before I finished it.  I tried my location--"Modest Town, Virginia" and it handled that just fine.  In a window on the right I flew there in just seconds and viewed clear satellite images of all my neighbors' houses.  You can adjust this view using controls which appear when you run your mouse over the image.  When you get things adjusted to a view you like, you can lock that view in so that it is what the student sees as they take the tour--although they will be able to pause the tour and experiment with the controls.  For example, by moving the little statue type figure on to the image, they can see what the "ground level" view looks like for that location.  By going under "advanced options" and clicking on "show historical imagery" one can even add a slide bar allowing the viewer to see satellite images from earlier years (the earliest I found was 1931).  This could be really useful in a lot of ways.  For example for a science teacher who wants to teach about the changing shoreline.

It is easy to add up to 25 copyright free images (per location) from Wikipedia or other sources.  It is easy to add links to articles about the location.  It is easy to add videos --however, it is not so easy to add a video that actually works with our filters.

After you click on "done editing" a "share" button appears which gives you a web address which you pass on to those to whom you wish to grant access to your tour.  The address is long and complicated--so it would be best to either shorten it, or post a link to a site students can just click on (I'd be happy to work with you on that). A simple URL shortener is http://goo.gl/ - simply paste the long URL into the box on this site, click "Shorten URL" and a shortened URL is automatically created.  Portaportal is one good site for sharing bookmarks.

In summary, Google Tour Builder is user friendly and an extremely useful tool.  I would think a geography teacher would want to make tours taking the students to the sol listed monuments on each region of the world.  I;m not sure I can come up with any immediate applications for math teachers, but I can think of them for almost every other subject area.  I can also see engaging students by having them build their own tours.

Google Earth Tours

This post, like my other recent posts, is based on a session from the Virginia Google Apps for Education Summit held the weekend of March 8-9, 2014.  This particular post is a commentary on a session by Tim Stahmer, from Fairfax County Public Schools.  The title of his session was Building Google Earth Tours the Easy Way. But, before we can get to that information, you have to be familiar with Google Tours. A Google Earth Tour is a presentation which plays in Google Earth. That is, the viewer "flies" around from one spot to another--either self guided, or by allowing it to play by itself. The tour can be paused at any time so the viewer can click on a particular location and view the information in the pop-up box about that location. Information may include a brief description, images, videos, links, etc. The viewer can also zoom in, switch to "street level view" change the angle--you know, all the cool stuff Google Earth is so good at.

I'd suggest that when you finish reading this post you go to Google Lit Trips, find a work of literature you are familiar with, and take a tour.

At the elementary level I clicked on the title Make Way for Ducklings. A webpage appeared in which there was hypertext in the upper right which said “View in Your Browser” - I clicked on it and viewed it in Google Chrome.  When I wanted a tour for A Walk Down Cannery Row I first had to fill out a survey. Then, I was taken to this site, and, from a link in the upper right side of the page, I downloaded a kmz file which, when clicked, opened in Google Earth. If you don't have Google Earth on your computer, you'll need to download it first.  Once it opened, I hovered my mouse over a folder--and a label popped up which said “play”  When I clicked on it, the tour began.  

I’m writing this in the CHS Media Center, and as Mrs. Merritt clicked on Chasing Lincoln’s Killer in Internet Explorer a window popped up allowing her to save or open the file, so the behavior might vary depending on your browser, but you ought to be able to figure it out.

I haven’t been able to find anywhere where Google has a sortable archive of tours--if you are aware of one, please send Larry the link.  However, I wanted to see if I could find a tour based on medieval Europe.  So, I just did an advanced search on medieval Europe and came up with a tour of locations relevant to the crusades.   To do an advanced search for tours at google.com click on "settings" (or the "tools" icon) chose "advanced search", then choose "file type KMZ")

Here are a few sites that have links to various Google Earth Tours:

• Sample Google Earth Tours
• America: A Narrative History

These two sites provide information on using Google Earth, such as lessons and how to use the controls. Both also have a variety of tours:

1. Google Earth for Educators
2. Google Earth Lessons

Next week we'll continue this discussion with information on how to build your own Google Earth Tour.