Mod 6: Google Earth Pro is It for me - and it's free!

The whole world fits on my computer screen now with Google Earth Pro! I visited my favorite place, Eastern Long Island, where I grew up. I went to my favorite beach and looked out at the waves. I recognized that most recognizable house there on the dunes. I followed the road from Main Beach into town and saw the tops of buildings and other places I've spent a lot of time in - the movies, the library, Town Pond.

Talk about the World Wide Web making the whole world smaller!!!

Then I went to the Middle East and sent love to all the people there, and coasted down into Israel and tried to see Nazareth. Couldn't figure out which landmark to choose there, to come down to eye level and see, literally, on the ground. I'll come back and visit Nazareth later.

Once I bought a globe at an auction for a dollar and the auctioneer, Charlie Vanderveer, called out to me, "Ruth, you just bought the world for a buck!"

Well, Charlie, now I just downloaded the World for free!

I will use Google Earth Pro to make the world much more accessible for my students, to teach geography and current events, maps and politrix. I don't think I'll ever get enough of Google Earth. I'll ask students who live or have lived far away to give reports about where they've been and show us on Google Earth, so we can all get a geography lesson, history tutorial and political class all in one! I wish for my students to call the world their own, to feel ownership of it, to experience belonging to it.

I did not focus on this technology in my custom search engine project because I saw the joy of Google Earth Pro and just took off, whether it fit in my chosen curated field or not. I just really wanted to TRAVEL, and to turn my students on to the joy of a world-wide walkabout!