Waffle Bytes

Carmen Sandiego is back - have your students use Google Earth to learn a bit of geography while chasing her down for the Crown Jewels!  Then have them research cities, landmarks and airports and create their own version of the game. You can find the game 2 ways - if you go to Google Maps, a message will appear asking if you want to Catch Carmen Sandiego - If you go straight to Google Earth, there is a new red button to begin the game - First you will get a splash screen - When you start the game, you get your assignment - Then move into a split screen with Google Earth on the left, and the game elements on the right - Gathering information, you then "fly" to the next city based on the clues - Nostalgic for some, but it can still be a great way to introduce kids to some cities and landmarks they may have never heard of.

From the August 10 edition of the Google for Education newsletter : Earth as seen from the Cupola Observation Module Take a tour inside the International Space Station For 16 years, astronauts have been working and living on the International Space Station (ISS), a structure made up of 15 connected modules that floats 250 miles above Earth. On his last mission,  Thomas Pesquet , an astronaut at the European Space Agency (ESA), captured  Street View imagery  in zero gravity to show what the ISS looks like from the inside, and shares what it’s like to look down on Earth from outer space. Students can journey to the station via  Google Expeditions ,  Maps , and  Google Earth Voyager , and even go  behind the scenes , floating right alongside the astronauts.

The new and improved Google Earth is here after 2 years of development, and it is worth checking out! (First note - at this time you can only check it out using the Chrome browser, or with an Android devices.  From The Keyword  Google Blog it will be "on iOS and other browsers in the near future.") To get a nice introduction, I recommend reading the blog post Welcome Home to the New Google Earth . Then, here are some quick overviews for starting to use it - The landing page for Google Earth on the web gives some awesome views - I just sat and watched it scroll through a few times before clicking on the "Launch Google Earth." After you launch, it will load - the time for this varies depending on your connection.  You will then see the new Google Earth There are a variety of icons on the left side - you can click on the Waffle at the top to open the drawer if you need to know what each icon is. One icon is not represented in the drawer - the ...