Google earth on an interactive whiteboard.

I got this idea of an ICT resource at the school from where I was at during my practical training. In a few of their classrooms they had interactive whiteboards that are great resources to use while teaching. With this interactive whiteboard with a touch effect you can connect to the internet, show films and clips, news from all over the world and diagrams and at the same time write on the board and make comments to the things you want to teach your pupils and erase it just as easily.

This way of teaching is not just fun and instructive, it is also an easy way of bringing the whole world into the classroom in just a few seconds.

So, with this tool Google Earth could be a great programme to use in the classroom when teaching English integrated with other topics like geography, biology, math and history or while talking about environment or global awareness which are something that also needs to be learned according to the Swedish syllabus in English. Google Earth is a programme where you have access to the whole world literately. You can find information and photographs about places in the world, famous locations and buildings and similar things. Perfect for your English lessons! One important thing about teaching is to make the stuff you teach real for the pupils and to talk about, let say Grand Canyon in the US, can be so much more comprehensible if the pupils actually can see the Grand Canyon while their teacher tells them about it. And with Google Earth and an interactive board it is possible for the whole classroom to see and learn at the same time. That way the teacher can use Google Earth in their teaching but the pupils can also use this resource to be productive themselves. The Swedish syllabus says that the pupils should be given the possibility to develop their qualification to reflect about living conditions, cultural phenomenon and social issues and by using Google Earth they can see how these conditions differs from different countries because they can see how cities and countries looks like. The environment says a lot about how the people live there and the pupils can take part in photographs from all over the world. They can use Google Earth to find information and make their own presentations. There are many ways of how you can use Google Earth in your education, and here is an example… Integrating is a great way of teaching because you teach two subjects at once and that could be a perfect way of bringing curiosity and enthusiasm in the classroom. If you want to get away from the strict English lessons you sometimes need when teaching grammar and mix that wit lessons when the pupils learn so much useful English without even realize they do, integration is really great! So why not plan a lesson in both English and geography? Let say the pupils’ first think of a trip they want to make or places they would want to go to. Then they can start writing, in English of course and try to find out as much as possible about these places, what kind of food they eat, how the people live there, how the environment looks like, the area and population and so on, and how to get around the easiest way. Then when they are all done they can tell and show the rest of the class how their dream trip looks like with Google Earth. And with this only activity your pupils have practicing on to read, write and speak English and learned about geography.

This is just one of many ways of using Google Earth but there are tons of other ways, only your imagination sets the limit.

Camilla Ivarsson