Google Earth

I haven't really used Google Earth much before. I've downloaded it, had a quick play with it and then kinda forgot about it, and went ahead and used Google Maps.

Well, it is pretty cool, but I don't know that it is way cooler than Google Maps, I mean, the street view is awesome, which Google Maps doesn't have, but then Google Earth seems to have more businesses listed for the area.


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Here is a place I've stayed when visiting family o/s.

Maybe this betrays a lack of imagination - either because I've come down with the 'dreaded lurgi', or because I don't have enough imagination - but I can't readily see how I can use this technology in my given field - teaching information literacy to students.

I guess you could have them evaluate the information given in a street view, but for a foreign country like this one where all the landmarks are in Chinese characters, I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about it.

I can see this working for some other disciplines and subjects - creative writing (write about this scene/town), or some sort of group project where additional information about a region is posted up by the students (photos of local landmarks, business descriptions, school descriptions).

Just in closing, the one thing I thought was pretty cool in Google Earth were that some of the buildings were 3-D. As in, when you moved the map in any direction the building's perspective would move according to that direction. Not entirely sure, but it must be some functionality that some businesses can purchase since in the area of the above image, on Google Earth there are about 6 that have this 3-D perspective function that can be turned on or off.