Designing and Creating Earth Science Lessons with Google Earth

Designing and Creating Earth Science Lessons with Google EarthTM

Steve Kluge - Fox Lane HS, Bedford, NY and Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY
Drew Patrick - Fox Lane HS, Bedford, NY
Eric Fermann - Eastchester HS, Eastchester, NY
Contact the authors at steve.kluge@gmail.com

The intent of this project is to provide teachers with little Google EarthTM experience the information and
ideas that will enable them to develop high quality, good looking lessons using the Google EarthTM
geospatial tool. During the winter of 2006 - 2007, the manual was field tested by a group of Earth Science
teachers under the guidance of several experienced mentors.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to the following educators for their contributions as field testers of this manual:
Martha Calaban
Nicole LaDue
Eric Cohen
Karen Manning
Robert Dedrick
Sue Mitchell
Mark Dineen
Bob Mozer
Kevin Finerghty
Tracy Varaili
Jessica Floridia
Bethany Weisberger
Kathleen Gavin
Kristin Woodell

Use Permissions
This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (EAR-0426260).
All screenshots and images courtesy of Google Earth™ mapping service.
The user of this manual is granted the right, without any fee or cost, to access and use this manual for any
non-profit training, research, or educational purpose and not for any direct or indirect commercial purpose
or advantage. Any copyright notices contained in this manual shall remain intact and unaltered and shall be
affixed to any subsequent reproduction of materials from this manual. To reproduce or adapt the Google
images for any purpose outside of this publication you must obtain explicit written permission from Google.
The user must include an appropriate citation crediting the source of all or any portion of this manual as
follows:
"The source of this material is the Digital Library for Earth System Education website at
http://www.dlese.org. All Rights Reserved. © UCAR 2007"
This edition of the manual was published in May of 2007 in both html and pdf versions

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Contents

Note: The examples and illustrations in this manual are taken from the Giant Peak Tour. You should have
the tour up and running in Google Earth while you work through this manual. Get the tour here:

http://www.stevekluge.com/projects/dlesege/dlesegemanual/Giant Peak, Adirondack Mts., NY.zip



Planning a Lesson ...........................................................1
What Can I Do With GE...................................................1
What Can I Include in a GE Lesson..................................3
Organizing Your Lesson ...................................................4

Creating a Google Earth Lesson....................................5
Creating Folder and Placemarks .......................................5
Saving and Sharing your GE Lesson ................................7
Images and Hyperlinks in Placemarks ..............................8
Adding a Map Overlay....................................................10

Useful Tools ...................................................................13
Image Processing ............................................................13
Text Editing ....................................................................13
Image Hosting.................................................................13

Appendix: Using Google Earth......................................15
Downloading and Installing GE......................................15
Controls and Navigation .................................................15
View Menu Option .........................................................16
Tools Menu Option .........................................................17
Moving and Editing Placemarks .....................................19
Lesson Planning Tool .....................................................20

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Planning a Lesson

What Can I Do With Google Earth
Since its release in the summer of 2005, Google Earth has provided an uncomplicated means of
combining aerial imagery with geologic and geographic information in dramatic fashion. The 3D
rendering of surface features of the earth can be manipulated easily and incorporated into the Earth
Science classroom in a variety of ways. Without a doubt, Google Earth visualizations grab students'
attention. It's the thoughtful teacher's job to integrate these visualizations into lessons that include
important content and inquiry-based learning activities.


When you design a classroom lesson around the Google Earth program, your students will see the earth
from a new perspective. The scale of the Earth, and features that are created or responsible for many of
the important earth science processes are often too large and too complex to see easily as a sketch, a
drawing on the board, a stationary photograph, or even on a real-life field trip. The aerial imagery in GE
can provide a realistic and appropriately scaled representation of the Earth. There are at least three
unique ways that Google Earth can be used in a classroom setting:

1. As a demonstration tool: Tours can be developed that will allow students to 'fly' from one location
to the next with a brief pause at each stop. During a tour, students will have the chance to view
locations that have been identified and connected by the instructor as geologically or geographically
important. Different layers supplied with the program (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc) can be activated
to illustrate key points along with an oral narration for each stop.
2. As a supplement to previously established lab activities: By including a Google Earth tour with an
established activity, students will be able to draw greater connections between their activity and the
Earth. For example, students may construct a river profile manually to understand how the idealized
profile shape of a river is interrupted by nick-points such as waterfalls and dams. A tour from the
mouth to the head and back to the mouth along the same river will help students recognize what
they did with graph paper and pencil actually represents a real location with real waterfalls and
dams.

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3. As a stand alone, technology-driven activity: Careful construction of tours with questions
embedded directly into the placemarks will allow students to take a true 'virtual fieldtrip' from one
location to the next, consider the geography of the location in context with additional material
(descriptions, photographs, hyperlinks, etc). Because Google Earth files are usually relatively small,
they are easy to store on internet servers for students to download and work on their own. Examples
of stand alone activities can be found on the DLESE NY Landscape Region web site, and some
suggested topics are presented in the table on the next page:
Topic
Example
Landscape regions of See the DLESE project website for examples
NYS
Topographic
By applying a topographic map overlay and manipulating the
mapping
orientation of the landscape, the relation between contour lines and
landscape features becomes obvious.
Igneous processes
Slope angles for various volcano types can be calculated
such a volcanoes and
flows
Fluvial processes
Meandering streams and oxbow lake formation along the
Mississippi; erosion and deposition
Glacial vs. stream
U-shaped valleys and deep v-shaped valleys
valley
Glacial landforms
Arêtes, horns, etc; lateral, medial, end, and terminal moraine
deposits
Shoreline processes
Wave refraction; long-shore drift
Meteorite impact
Relating crater diameter to the diameter of the impacting bolide.
craters
Plate tectonics
Earthquake and volcano locations can be activated to show
concentrations near plate boundaries; mid-ocean ridges and
trenches are visible, distance of volcanoes and volcanic islands
from trenches can be calculated.
Structural geology
Especially when used in association with a geologic map overlay,
anticlines, synclines, and dipping structures can be seen.
Time of day and
Shadows from tall objects such as buildings can help students
angle of insolation
identify the sun location and the time of day.

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What Can I Include in a GE Lesson?
There is a continuum of features that can be included in your GE lesson, depending on your objectives. The
list that follows provides an overview of these features. Once you have identified the objectives of your
inquiry, you can begin to select which features best suit your needs. Examples of each feature can be viewed
by navigating to the Giant Peak and the DLESE NY Landscape Regions GE tours.
Placemarks. A placemark is the most basic GE tool, and it is used to identify a particular location,
landscape or geologic feature, or point of interest. Placemarks should be included whenever you need to
provide specific information- a description, question, image, link or instructions.
Hyperlinks. Hyperlinks can be included in the pop-up window associated with each placemark. Hyperlinks
enable the user to navigate to a web site that may contain additional information and details related to your
objective, or may point the user in a whole new direction of inquiry.

Images. Images add tremendous value to a placemark. Images can become the basis for a specific question
(see example left), or can illustrate a feature described in the placemark.

Overlays. Overlays are a "value-added" component of GE. Overlays can include images, maps, or diagrams
that correspond to a geographic feature or location on Earth. Once included, an overlay can appear with
varying degrees of transparency, and represent an added "layer" of information, much like a GIS system.

Lesson Files. Handouts, instructions, directions, and worksheets can be embedded as hyperlinks into
placemarks. These support materials add tremendous value to your GE tour, and serve as a clear way to
know if students are meeting the objectives of the lesson. As with any hyperlink, these materials can be in a
variety of document formats.

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Deciding on a lesson topic
The lesson you choose will depend on the objectives you set forth. Start by visiting the ideas/uses listed
earlier in this section, and by carefully considering the following questions:
1. What will students need to know to get started? (Think both in terms of content and using the
technology)
2. How much time will be devoted to this lesson? Can you access the computer lab for that length of
time?
3. What will the student outcome or product look like? Is your purpose to stimulate discussion, or
should there be a written product?
Perhaps the most important question is the last one. If you are unclear of your purpose, you are likely to
open GE, zoom around, and get frustrated. If you have successfully answered these questions, you will be
ready to begin making some specific decisions.




Organizing Your Lesson

As with all good field trips, careful planning is necessary, and the virtual Google Earth tour is no different.
When developing a lesson in Google Earth, consider developing a list (mentally or written) of the desired
locations for the tour placemarks, and imagine that students will eventually use the tour of placemarks as a
virtual field trip. This field trip will include several stops that have some geologic/geographic significance.

Think, too, about how and where you want to link your classroom lesson into your GE tour. It might consist
of an activity at each stop with instructions to students embedded right in the placemark. Or, the lesson may
be a Word or .pdf document linked from the placemark, as is the case in the sample Giant Mt. tour. (See the
Image and File Hosting section on page 16)

You may find the “planning tool” in the APPENDIX helpful as you organize your thoughts and materials.

Once you complete your planning, you are ready to move into GE and start building your tour!














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Creating a Google EarthTM Lesson
Creating and Saving Folders and Placemarks

Creating a Folder
A Google Earth tour with more than one stop should
be created in its own folder in "My Places". Making
a new folder in the Places frame involves 3 simple
steps:
1. Navigate to the place you want your audience to
see when they open the folder. Adjust the zoom
and tilt to suit your liking/needs.

2. Click on "My Places" in the places frame to select that destination for the new folder.

3. From the toolbar, click "Add" and then "Folder" as indicated above. The "New" folder dialog box will
open as shown to the right above. Type in a name for your folder. Then type in a description of the
contents of the folder. The image above is a screen shot of the folder that contains the sample tour and
lesson that accompanies this manual. When you press "OK", the folder will be created and saved in "My
Places". See also Moving Folders and Editing Folders in the appendix.


Creating a Placemark
Individual placemarks can be added to the folder
you've just created. The steps for creating a
placemark are similar to those required to make a
folder:
1. Navigate to the exact view you want your
audience to see when they view the placemark.
2. In the Places frame, click on the folder you
want to create your placemark in.
3. From the toolbar, click "Add" and then
"Placemark" as indicated in the figure to the
right.

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4. In the dialog box that opens, type in the name and description of your placemark (this is the text that will
appear when your placemark is displayed in GE). The screen shot below was made as the "Glacial
Landforms in the Adirondacks" placemark was made.




The default placemark icon is
, and it is easily changed by clicking the icon in the New placemark dialog
box. For the Giant Mountain folder, we've chosen the
icon.

Once you've selected an alternate icon, all subsequent placemarks will default to the alternate.
The Latitude, Longitude, and View are all set automatically to match the display you set as you began to
make your placemark.
You can play with the Style, Color and Altitude settings, but the defaults will work fine. See also Moving
and Editing Placemarks in the appendix



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Ordering Placemarks in a Tour
When creating and adding placemarks to a tour folder, each successive
placemark will be added to the top of selected folder in the Places frame.
Tours play in order from the top down. Creating placemarks in your folder
in a logical sequence will create a 'backwards' tour (i.e. the first location
created will be the last 'stop' on the tour).
Tour placemarks can be rearranged by clicking and dragging each stop
into its appropriate position in the tour list (See also Moving Placemarks
in the appendix).
One suggestion to aid with the re-arrangement of the tour is to number the
stops sequentially. When re-ordering the placemarks, 'stop' number 1
should be at the top of the tour folder, and stops should continue in
numerical order. Notice that a number of the stops in the sample Giant Mt.
tour are numbered. Remember, placemarks can be edited at any time.





Saving and Sharing Folders and Placemarks
Putting images and hyperlinks neatly into placemarks requires
the knowledge of just a little HTML. But don't worry, it's not
that hard, and what you need to know is very limited. In this
section, you'll learn the basic HTML tags you'll use, and if all
else fails, how to "steal" the necessary code from existing
placemark descriptions.

Once you have created folders and placemarks in Places, GE will
save them there. But if you want to bring your GE tours to
another computer, send them to a friend, or post them to the web,
you will have to save them as separate .kml or .kmz files.
To save a folder or placemark, simply right click the
folder/placemark you wish to save, and select "save as" as
indicated in the image to the right.
Select or create and select a folder on your hard drive to hold
your GE files. You can save your files in either .kml (Keyhole
Markup Language file) or .kmz (Keyhole Markup Zip file)
format. It makes sense to save folders containing several
placemarks as .kmz files.
When you click a .kml or .kmz file in My Computer, it will automatically open with Google Earth.




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Images and Hyperlinks in Placemarks
Putting images and hyperlinks neatly into placemarks requires the knowledge of just a little HTML. But
don't worry, it's not that hard, and what you need to know is very limited. In this section, you'll learn the
basic HTML tags you'll use, and if all else fails, how to "steal" the necessary code from existing placemark
descriptions.
The image and information link in the placemark below were found through a simple Google search for
"Giant of the Valley". Using a few HTML tags, it was easy to display the image and link to the site within
the placemark description. The "How To" follows.

This Placemark….. Was generated by this description



















All instructions, or tags, in HTML are enclosed by < and > brackets. For instance, typing <CENTER> into a
placemark description will center all the content - images and text - that follows. A particular instruction can
be turned off by placing / within the < and > brackets, before the instruction. </CENTER> will turn off
centering, and all content that follows will default to the left margin. The table below contains all the HTML
you need to make a good looking and functional placemark


In the table above the HTML is black, and annotations are in red. Google Earth supports other HTML in
descriptions, too. If you know a little HTML, you can change fonts and create tables to display images
and/or text side by side, but that is beyond the scope of this manual.


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