Hello! My name is Jason Heiser and I’m a guest blogger. Today I want to discuss a program that is near and dear to me….. Google Earth. I am going to briefly discuss how GE could be used to teach the Civil War and give some ideas for how to create a Google Tour for use as a visual backdrop, facilitated lesson, or a student project.
As a history teacher I truly cannot think of a better program to use as a back drop to a unit on the Civil War than Google Earth. Google Earth provides a 3-D panoramic view of any place on the planet. Now imagine taking a student to a battle site and giving them a view of the area (minus trees of course) as a soldier might have seen it! Being able to see the terrain and what geographic obstacles might have been encountered when charging or retreating! Imagine how powerful that can be for bringing to life a battle from Civil War. In using Google Earth the obvious advantage is that students will get a visual of the landscape and rather than talking about troop movements, teachers/students have the ability to zoom into ground level and fly through their movements by following a path! An easy way to give students a P.O.V look at movements is really very simple. First, use the path tool to create where the troops moved in the battlefield. Now, zoom in to your first point at ground level. When you are completely zoomed in you’ll see the landscape and now can create a push pin. With the push pin window open, type in any worthwhile information or links in the push pins window that the students should know at that point and save. Google Earth will save that view automatically and give you the ability to move to your next point by using you directional tools. As you follow you path place more pins along the path to represent their movements and what happened at that point. When you are creating your point press the play button in you places box and watch as your tour gives the students a P.O.V look at the battle. This type of visualization is only enhanced if you are able to do it on a whiteboard and a projector.
As teachers we realize the potential to a creating a learning experience like this for students and realize that in creating a tour, like this one, would be a time investment for one battle yet alone doing multiple battles for a given unit. The other option is to have students make them for presentations. What better way to have student dive into the Civil War and its battles but by having them take the class on a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield, Antietam, or Shiloh. Not only will the students be learning about the importance of these battles but they will be seeing and showing them in a way not possible before …. Unless it was a field trip! The potential of this tool and how it can be used to enhance a lesson or project is only limited by the imagination of the creator. To see some simple and complex examples of how Google tours can be used in the classroom, please visit my wikispace at: http://historytours.wikispaces.com. Check out our American and World History pages or our newly launched Geography page to get ideas or use the ones already created! Check back often as we are growing and adding new content periodically. Thank you!
This is an photo of Devil’s Den in Gettysburg as seen from Google Earth:
UPDATE: Brett over at the TOCWOC blog has a good post on Google Earth and Civil War Battlefields.
UPDATE 2: Check out this cool idea of using Google Earth photos to have students take a Civil War & Google Earth Quiz
Posted under Lesson Ideas
