Paper Toys - Build Great Paper Models

One of the "skills" that I've never really acquired is folding paper to create anything other than poorly gliding airplanes. That could all change thanks to Paper Toys. Paper Toys is a website providing free, printable templates and directions for making paper models of all kinds of buildings, cars, hats, and landmarks. The directions are PDFs that you can download and print. The templates range from simple hats and dolls to complex structures like the White House, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower.

Applications for Education
Building some of these Paper Toys models could be a fun hands-on conclusion to a lesson about the places where some of these landmarks are found.

H/T to iLearn Technology. 

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.

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.