Geographic Storytelling Resources for K-12 Teachers
Many stories include places: stories of holidays, stories of adventure, stories of science. Maps are a great way to share stories, but often technology can be a barrier because making maps can be pretty awkward. Especially if you’re not comfortable writing code, or have a ready steady hand.
Thankfully there is a free technology which allows us to fly around the globe from the comfort of our classrooms. This page is dedicated to resources supporting teachers using Google Earth
Many of the resources below were NOT produced by Sparkgeo, but instead by other talented geospatial specialists and educators, we have moved copies of these onto our servers to ensure the links still work, but some will depend on external services still working (hopefully they will 🙂
Technologies We’ll Use:
And seeing as this is a website, you probably have the 2nd one already…
Google Earth Training & Support
In this list the focus is on environmental issues. These are more ‘awareness’ driven than considering pure science.
Environmental Awareness
In this list the focus is on environmental issues. These are more ‘awareness’ driven than considering pure science.
Literature
In this list the focus is on Literature. Most of these examples come from the excellent Google Lit Trips You can find MANY more Lit Trips on their site.
Science & Math
This focuses on items that could be pulled into Science and math classes.
- Realtime Earthquakes (USGS)
- Chilean earthquakes (USGS)
- Underwater Data
- 2011 Tsunami Heights
- “Juicy Geography” lessons
- Teaching Science with Google Earth
- “Real World Math” Lessons
- Mazes & Labyrinths (from Real World Math)
- Google Earth (& Skiing !!) Math Project
History
In this list the focus is on history.
I hope this list of resources proves useful to the education community. Google Earth is a great tool for learning from, it can be a textbook or field trip available to every kid who has a computer and access to the web.