Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

 Google announced the newest version of Google Earth 5.0 today.  Google Earth now has an ocean.  You can view “much more detailed bathymetric map (the ocean floor), so you can actually drop below the surface and explore the nooks and crannies of the seafloor in 3D. While you’re there you can explore thousands of data points including videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expeditions, and much more.”

Other new features:

• Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the “clock” icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so.

• Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.

• 3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting “Mars” from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of other interesting features.

Google Earth 5.0

Guess I know what I will be doing with my free time the next few days!!!

I’ve been so busy hosting family this past weekend that I haven’t had a chance to finish my blog post about Google Teacher Academy.

First of all, I must thank Cristin Frodella from Google and the folks from Cue (Mark Wagner and Mike Lawrence), WestEd and all the returning GCTs for hosting this year’s Google Teacher Academy. It was truly a honor to be selected to represent Oregon and private school teachers everywhere at the academy.

I will blog about the new features of the Google tools that were shared …but for now I am just processing the experience.

Another huge thank you goes out to Sallie Hill and Brian Mull for starting the wikis that allowed us “out-of-towners” to virtually meet and make plans to get together. Meeting these fabulous teachers face-to-face made all the difference in my Google Teacher Academy experience. Our local tour guide, the PodPirate himself, organized get togethers the night before the academy (see photo above), that evening and a tour to Monterey Bay Aquarium the next day for those still in town (photos). Having the social time to meet and share ideas with the other GCTs was SO valuable that I recommended that next year’s Academy should encourage it!!!

I was already pretty familiar with many of the Google tools but the critical piece that I was missing was how easy it was to SHARE with others what you make with the tools. Cheryl Davis and Kathleen Ferenz are working on a cool project for the upcoming elections. Did you know that you can take an ENTIRE TAB from you iGoogle home page that you designed with widgets and RSS feeds and SHARE IT with your friends and colleagues???

I had seen Jerome Burg’s Google Lit Trips before and wanted to dive deeper into how he organizes these projects in the classroom but there was just too much to learn so I will explore more on my own.

Try Google 411 by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411). Its’ Google new service that allows you to call from your cell phone and ask questions and look for businesses based on zipcode and if your cell phone has Internet, it will also provide maps. http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html#utm_source=us-et-more&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=GOOG-411

Oh, there is so much more … EVEN MORE!

So, for now I am energize to plan how I will use all these great tools of Google in my classroom and begin working on some professional development for teachers at our school and in my area.

Meanwhile, check out the Google Almanac – created by Google Certified Teachers.

Years ago when I taught 4th grade I participated in a classroom exchange called “Postcard Geography”.  My students eagerly awaited postcards that we exchanged with schools all across the US.  We created a large bulletin board with a map of the US and  pinned the postcards next to the city is came from.  It was fun to read about the area around the school and we often referred to our postcards as we studied the regions of the US.

This summer I was searching the Internet for collaborative projects and I came across the Postcard Geography project again.  I considered doing the project with my 7th & 8th grade computer classes.  I figured with all the online resources at our fingertips, the project would be a lot different than the past.  Little did I know ….

Welcome to the 21st Century!  We received our first postcard last week and the students immediately went to the  Internet and Google Maps to located the town.  As they were zooming in on the small town in Texas, it dawned on me that we could “pin” the location on the maps in Google Earth.  So we switched to Google Earth and found the exact location of the school.  As I read the postcard aloud to the class they zoomed out to locate neighboring cities that were mentioned, commented on the amount of trees by the school and the layout of the town.  We calculated distance to the Gulf of Mexico and followed a river near the city that emptied into the Gulf.

One student suggested that we write the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of our school on our postcards so other schools can find out exactly where we are located.  I opened up the discussion to the students of how they wanted to participate in the project.  Everyone agreed that they still wanted to send the postcards the old fashioned way but also create a digital postcard that could be emailed.  There were lots of ideas of making a movie, taking photos around town and embedding them onto a map, designing original postcards, and making a narrative slide show.

The enthusiasm was endless.  I felt like I just presented an idea to the class and they took hold and went with it.  None of the students realized how many geography skills they reviewed during the Google Earth activity (and in computer class – gasp!) or how many computer skills they suggested for upcoming projects.  I will allow the students to choose how the class will send “digital postcards” to the other school but I also have plans for using Google Earth to create a virtual field trip to “visit” some of the school and teach them how to read a GPS device.

I really enjoyed participating in the Postcard project the first time around but this time around the technology makes this project more authentic and real.

I overheard two students discussing the Texas school while they were viewing the map on Google Earth …

Student 1:  Look how many tennis courts they have at their school.

Student 2:  Well, the weather is nice in Texas (compared to the rain in Oregon) so they probably go outside more.

Student 1:  Yeah, but it gets real hot there.  Good thing they aren’t too far away from the Gulf.

You would swear they were talking about a place they had visited before.  They gathered all this information from looking at a satellite map.  I can’t wait until we receive news from some schools in Australia, Taiwan and Spain.