Create a 3 minute maximum Google Earth tour that begins at your school and travels to a minimum of two additional sites around the world. Include narration, street view, and place marks. Due posted to your blog by Wednesday, 29 February, midnight.
Continuing in Week #6, review all your classmates' tours and write a reflection for the Discussion Forum about the power you observed for this tool in the K-12 classroom (or college classroom). Due Sunday midnight, March 4, the end of the 6th week.
Step-by-step instructions follow.
Download the latest version of Google Earth. Before downloading any software (this link provides the requirements before you click download from the toolbar menu), be sure to learn whether or not your computer can run the software. If your computer is more than three years old, it may not be able to run this software application. Our computer lab on campus has computers that will should you need to work on your assignment on campus. Also, before downloading software, make sure you have backed up all your essentials files, just in case. One should be in the habit of backing up your computer no less often than you are willing to lose everything.
Explore using Google Earth. There are some good tours provided by Google or you can just type in a location and "fly" to that place. Learn to turn on street view and 3-D view and check out some of the large cities with the tall buildings, or drive by your own house in street view.
Plan your own tour. It could be something for your social studies classroom, or a vacation you'd like to take and share with your spouse in advance, or an endless list of reasons for your tour. Know your audience before starting your tour, and while you will share with the whole class via your blog, we do not have to be your audience that you are writing for. Take advantage of any of the ideas shared last week in developing a rubric for a digital personal tale.
Watch the tutorials designated Beginners and Advanced, especially the Placemarks and Tours and Recording a Tour: http://www.google.com/earth/learn/index.html
In order to share your tour, you need to save your tour as a .kmz file. It is this file that when loaded on another's computer allows one to take the tour. Your blog does not accept .kmz files as uploads, so we have to use a location that does accept files, that in turn, the blog can access, and then one downloads that .kmz file to the local computer to view the tour in Google Earth. So, save your file as your last firstnamelastinitial.kmz, for example, mine would be DavidE.kmz Then, create a box.com account. This is a free account that allows you to store 5 GB of information for free. You may create a folder for our technology class if you like, so you can keep files in your https://www.box.com/ account straight. Then, you choose to share that file with anyone who has the link, and you copy that link and paste into a HTML/Java Script gadget in your blog. Then, when we click on your blog link, we are able to download the .kmz file. Be sure to share no later than Wednesday February 29 at midnight so all can view and post a response to the Week #6 discussion forum.
And, don't forget to keep reading the text, The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book.
