DESIGNING AND CREATING EARTH SCIENCE LESSONS WITH GOOGLE EARTH - A TEACHERS MANUAL

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (EAR-0426260), the authors created and field tested a manual for educators to use in the development of Google Earth (GE) based classroom lessons. Designed to help novice GE users interested in getting a lesson up and running in a short time, it includes suggested lesson types and topics, an interactive lesson planner, and detailed, illustrated instructions for embedding links and images in placemarks, and for draping images (such as maps) over the land surface. There are also links to useful free software, and tips on where and how to host and link to images and documents from within a project. An appendix reviews downloading, installing, and navigating GE. Field testing involved 10 novice GE “developers” invited by the authors and charged with creating a lesson that contained links, images, and overlays in GE. 5 experienced “mentors” selected from a group of educators who had previously contributed to the DLESE sponsored NY State Landscape Regions in Google Earth project were on hand to help the developers if they needed it. After final editing the manual is available on the web and as a .pdf document here: http://www.stevekluge.com/projects/dlesege/dlesegemanual/manual.html , and printed copies will be available at the conference, too.