Best practices on how to design Google Earth tours for education
Best practices on how to design Google Earth tours for education
Google Earth tours (GETs) are recorded flights around Google Earth. They are
highly engaging to watch and have great potential for communicating spatially in a teaching environment. They also benefit from being easy for an educator to produce but they can be ineffective if they are designed poorly. With this in mind, in this paper we cover three main topics: (1) we consider how best to produce GETs, (2) we deconstruct them as a communication media and finally (3), we consider the larger educational context in which they are used. By reviewing literature relevant to these areas we produce 19 best practices for using GETs in education. The amount of evidence we can show in support of our best practices varies. Those that were generated by comparing GETs to the well-researched area of educational animations are highly reliable because they are based on empirical evidence. Those associated with the virtual flights between locations within a GET are more open to interpretation as they have been less well studied. We conclude that further work should be focused on investigating virtual flight within a GET.
Geological Society of America
Treves, Richard
ef32609d-90b8-4fc8-80dd-460db81dbfb3
Bailey, John
4bfe3d83-c899-446f-a670-a1a28d68579f
2012
Treves, Richard
ef32609d-90b8-4fc8-80dd-460db81dbfb3
Bailey, John
4bfe3d83-c899-446f-a670-a1a28d68579f
Treves, Richard and Bailey, John
(2012)
Best practices on how to design Google Earth tours for education.
In,
Whitmeyer, S.J., Bailey, J.E., De Paor, D.G. and Ornduff, T.
(eds.)
Google Earth and Virtual Visualizations in Geoscience Education and Research.
(Geological Society of America Special Paper, 492)
Boulder County, US.
Geological Society of America.
(doi:10.1130/2012.2492(28)).
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
Google Earth tours (GETs) are recorded flights around Google Earth. They are
highly engaging to watch and have great potential for communicating spatially in a teaching environment. They also benefit from being easy for an educator to produce but they can be ineffective if they are designed poorly. With this in mind, in this paper we cover three main topics: (1) we consider how best to produce GETs, (2) we deconstruct them as a communication media and finally (3), we consider the larger educational context in which they are used. By reviewing literature relevant to these areas we produce 19 best practices for using GETs in education. The amount of evidence we can show in support of our best practices varies. Those that were generated by comparing GETs to the well-researched area of educational animations are highly reliable because they are based on empirical evidence. Those associated with the virtual flights between locations within a GET are more open to interpretation as they have been less well studied. We conclude that further work should be focused on investigating virtual flight within a GET.
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Published date: 2012
Organisations:
Population, Health & Wellbeing (PHeW)
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Local EPrints ID: 343021
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/343021
PURE UUID: 794a344c-1505-40db-ac47-c7d5d3fa0833
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Date deposited: 26 Sep 2012 11:31
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:58
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Contributors
Author:
Richard Treves
Author:
John Bailey
Editor:
S.J. Whitmeyer
Editor:
J.E. Bailey
Editor:
D.G. De Paor
Editor:
T. Ornduff
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