USING GOOGLE EARTH FOR K-12 EDUCATION: A COLLABORATION BETWEEN GOOGLE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

The first time people use Google Earth their initial instinct is usually to fly to their home town and try to find their house. Although at a casual glance this might suggest that Google Earth is little more than some sort of quirky map, this is far from the truth. The fact that users want to see their house or town from a different perspective emphasizes that Google Earth actually offers a new and powerful medium for people to view the world. However, this power is only fully unlocked by combining Google Earth with the capabilities of Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to generate user-created and unique content that can form the basis for stories and lessons told with the backdrop of an interactive model of the Earth.

Since 2006, educators from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) have worked in collaboration with Google to promote use, understanding and knowledge of Google Earth and KML in K-12 schools across the state of Alaska. Their activities have included running workshops for teachers (of all technical abilities), visits to students in rural classrooms to provide hands-on tuition, and the development of lesson plans in combination with teachers in the community. The goal is to foster an understanding of how these tools work and to generate ideas of how they might enhance learning in the classroom. In this case, Alaska offers an excellent testing ground for methods that could be employed in other states or countries.