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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Virtual Earth

In my last blog, I talked about virtual field trips/tours that teachers could use in their classrooms at low to no cost to help enrich their classroom instruction. I wanted to know what else could be done, in education, with virtual tours. I searched TEDtv and found an interesting talk by Stephen Lawler, of Microsoft, who gives a tour of the Virtual Earth and talks about the benefits of such a program. Lawler talks about putting the learner in the drivers seat and allowing them to explore and discover information on their own. The Virtual Earth puts the learner in the "real world" that they interact with everyday and brings the learning, that they've been learning their entire life, to life.

An example of something spectacular that Lawler talked about was what Virtual Earth was able to do with Hurricane Katrina. Virtual Earth was actually able to help the search and rescue teams and often the first time anyone was able to see what had happened to their home was through Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth is available freely on the web, and the best part is Lawler stated that "a child can navigate (Virtual Earth) with an X-Box controller or a game controller". This is a free program on the web, that is user/child friendly and has countless benefits for education!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stephen_lawler_tours_microsoft_virtual_earth.html

3 comments:

  1. Crystal-
    This is an awesome website! I went to the virtual earth website:

    http://www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx

    This is a great tool for schools that can't afford to take their students on field trips, but it is also a great tool for students to see different parts of the world without having to fly there. Students could use this to learn about the earth and natural disasters, but I think you could use this tool in Social Studies as well to see other parts of the world. Students are able to look at different architecture of places, location of cities, etc.

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  2. With the amount of and speed that technology is advancing it is important to understand all types of virtual resources/tools that can be used to create a lesson or activity. I think a very important aspect of this site is that all students can use it which makes it extremely valuable at many levels.

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  3. This seems like a great tool to use in the classroom. It really helps students to make a connection with the content they are learning instead of just reading text and looking at pictures in a text book and then filling out worksheets. It's also great that it is free as most science "equipment" can be quite costly.

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