What on Earth?

Today in class, I listened and participated in a presentation about Google Earth given by Jeff and Wayde. Google Earth to me, is a program that encourages you to discover and explore the world and learn a great deal about the Earth’s geography. Google Earth allows you to see and view the real life and current satellite pictures of places anywhere in the world. This include; your own house: including clear vision of your street, the cars on your street and even people that where on your street when the picture was taken (street view). When you think about it, it seems almost like an invasion of privacy, that there is actually satellite cameras that take pictures of the world and everything within the world every 5 minutes! To be honest, I myself would feel a little uneasy to know that a picture of me is on Google Earth with me standing outside my house or at a park or even at a University.

In the class presentation, we were shown some pictures that were taken off people via the satellite camera…this kinda threw me off a little, to know that everyday people going about there own business were on Google Earth. Some of these pictures may be viewed by complete randoms and may at times be inappropriate! If you are showing places to children on Google Earth in a classroom situation, do you really want them to unexpectedly come across an inappropriate picture? Click this link, and you will know what I am talking about.

Even though, Google Earth may be seen to invade privacy, the likelihood of someone seeing a picture of you in quite low and I do understand that inappropriate pictures are rare, because the program automatically updates every 5 minutes. I think you just have to take precautions when using Google Earth with children. Although you have to take precautions with any program you use with children anyway.

In order for someone to see you on Google Earth, they would actually have to know where you are in that point in time and go to that specific location. That is; maybe you call up your friend and say I’m standing outside my house right now…look up my address on Google Earth and see if you can see me! How weird, scary, cool and interesting is that!

Although with Google Earth there is the matter of privacy, I believe it is a very educational resource that can greatly enhance students learning. It can especially teach them about the geographical aspects of their country, state or city and encourage them to learn more about particular places and landmarks that are important. Using Google Earth, students are able to experience and view the satellite imagery of many buildings and houses, and students are also given the chance to explore the galaxies (Google Sky), which I found out about in the presentation today. I consider Google Earth to have great educational purposes, as it will teach children about the world in which we live and will familiarise them with their own surroundings.

Google Earth is a program that I have experimented with before, however the class presentation today enabled me to learn more and has encouraged me to continue to use the program for myself, and that I will do! Google Earth is something that I may attempt to use in my teaching career as I think it is a great way to show children to real thing…not photographs, postcards, or drawings…but the actual object, landmark or building shown to the children at its present time.