Google Earth Lessons

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Where We Are From
Description Goals and Objectives Grade Level: 5-10
This is a three part lesson and can be either Math oriented or Geography/Social Science oriented depending on your goals.

Essentially what this lesson is about is plotting human migrations and using math to define characteristics of the movement. Feel free to modify this lesson to meet your specific needs!

1. In the set-up, students are assigned to find out the name and city of their place of birth.

2a. The next day, or during the next lesson, the student uses Google Earth to find A) their school, B) the city or hospital where they were born. The student then creates an overlay using the provided arrow graphics to point from their place of birth to the school's location.

2b. The student then measures the distance from their place of birth to the school and places that information in the overlay description, then saves the kmz file to turn in to the teacher.

3a. The student also enters the distance into a class data file such as a poster, on the chalkboard, an on-line database (not included in the lesson files) or into an Excel spreadsheet. The students then perform calculations on the data collected.

3b. The teacher then compiles the placemarks into a single folder which can be used to create a graphic representation of the origins of everyone int he class (or school). The

PLEASE REFER TO THE TEACHER PAGE FOR THIS LESSON
  • The student will use measurement tools to calculate distance between two points.
  • The student will create an image overlay in Google Earth.
  • The student will calculate Mean, Median and Mode for a set of data.
  • The student will compare and contrast subsets of data to infer causality and relationships.
  • The student will calculate percentages given subsets of numeric data.
 Content Areas Type:
Math
Statistics
Technology
Social Science
Demographics 		Student Controlled
Duration
1 hour -2 hours
Skills Addressed File Resources Available Related Topics & Resources
Measurement.
Multi-step operations.
Critical thinking.

PLEASE REFER TO THE TEACHER PAGE FOR THIS LESSON

Availabe resources include Flash Movies, worksheets, web pages, etc.

 This lesson can be used for a number of cross-curricular purposes. The basic Google Earth Skills can be used in a wide variety of activities, while math concepts in relation to human activity provide others.
Assessment
Completed and accurate placemark generation.
Accuracy on the lesson worksheet.
Unit assessment tool(optional-not included)
Notes about the Lesson Non-Digital Materials Needed Digital Materials Needed
It is my hope that we can get several data-sets contributed by teachers who use this lesson. It would be neat for the kids to see how their school/class compares to other classes from around the world.

PLEASE REFER TO THE TEACHER PAGE FOR THIS LESSON		 Whiteboard, Posterboard or large graph paper.
Pencils, markers or pens.
(Optional) Calculators		 Computer capable of running Google Earth.
(Optional) Color Printer, Web server or other way of sharing or displaying class overlay results.
Created By: David Date: 20:10:32 2006-3-28

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