3D Buildings and Tours of the Amazon in Google Maps

In the last two days while I was busy traveling and hiking in Alberta (hike pictures to come on Saturday) Google released two great updates to Google Maps.

On Tuesday Google released updates to the 3D buildings that can be viewed in Google Maps Streetview. Now you can see some famous landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower and the White House, as 3D models in Google Maps. I've embedded the 3D model of the White House below.


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Yesterday, Google released new Streetview imagery for the Amazon. Now you can go on a virtual Streetview tour of the Amazon. Some the imagery is absolutely stunning. A video introduction is included below.



Applications for Education
The new imagery and 3D buildings could be a fantastic way for your students to explore all kinds of famous and interesting places around the globe. Whenever I teach a place-based lesson I like to have my students create simple stories using My Places in Google Maps. I've found that compared to using a basic paper map by exploring the imagery and pinning placemarks in Google Maps, my students have a greater recall of where things are and why they are important.

If you have never created a map in Google Maps, I have posted directions to get you started here.

Spectacular 360 Degree Panoramas of Famous Places

AirPano is a great website that I learned about through a Facebook post by James Hollis. AirPano offers dozens of spectacular 360 panoramas of famous landmarks and cities around the world. The AirPano panoramas can be set to auto-play with a music accompaniment or you can navigate the panoramas manually. To find a panorama on AirPano you can browse the listings, search by keyword, or view a Google Map of all of the places AirPano has captured.

AirPano panoramas can be viewed in high or low resolution according to the speed of your Internet connection. The panoramas can be viewed on an iPad. You can also view the AirPano files in Google Earth.

Applications for Education
Having students open the AirPano files in Google Earth could be a good way for them to explore cities and landmarks in their correct geographic settings. AirPano's panoramas are well-suited to viewing and navigating on a touch screen computers and interactive whiteboards.

Google SketchUp Tutorial Videos and Math Lessons

Yesterday, I saw a Tweet from Steven Anderson that reminded me of a couple of good series of Google SketchUp tutorial videos. SketchUp is a great free program from Google that allows you to create 3-D models to use in Google Earth or as stand-alone models. Learning to use all of the features of SketchUp can take a while. Fortunately, as with most Google products, there are some excellent video tutorials to help you learn how to use SketchUp.

New to Google SketchUp is a series of 28 videos that will walk you through all of the basics of using SketchUp to create your first models. Some of the videos have been updated recently and now prompt you to click through to the updated version. Below I have included the first video in the series.


Although it is not an official series of videos from Google, SketchUp for Dummies has a series of web tutorials that you can access even if you haven't purchased the SketchUp for Dummies book.

Applications for Education
SketchUp can be used all kinds of educational projects like building models of ancient Rome or building models of the moon base that Newt Gingrich is going have people living on in eight years. SketchUp can be used in geometry lessons such as those offered by 3D Davinci. 3DVinci's SketchUp page has some very good resource for mathematics teachers, particularly Geometry teachers. 3DVinci presents a collection of mathematics projects that students can do using Google SketchUp. If you've never used SketchUp, don't worry. 3DVinci hosts video tutorials that will show you everything you need to know to get started using Google SketchUp to teach mathematics.

Another Earth - Compare Maps Side-by-Side

Yesterday, I shared a great resource for geography teachers. That resource is called GE Teach. GE Teach was developed by a high school geography teacher. One of the nice features of GE Teach is the option to compare to views of Google Earth side-by-side. This morning I found a similar website called Another Earth.

Another Earth provides a split screen for comparing views of the Earth side-by-side. One neat use for Another Earth is to use the time sliders to compare views of the same places in the world at different times. You can also use Another Earth to compare different places at the same point in time. In the screen capture below I used the sun layer to compare levels of sunlight at the same time South America and Australia.

Click image to view full size.

Applications for Education
Another Earth doesn't offer as many layers for comparison as GE Teach does, but it is still a good tool for students to use to compare views of the Earth across time and space.