Google Earth™ Field Trip: Exploring Landforms
Google Earth™ is an invaluable tool in the classroom and at home. It allows you to take your students to any location in the world in seconds! When planning our social studies curriculum, our favorite activity is creating a Google Earth™ field trip and exploring landforms virtually. Seeing pictures in textbooks just doesn’t compare to actually letting students go on a “trip” around the world to explore places like the Island of Tahiti and the Sahara Desert of Africa. Google Earth™ has come a long way in terms of technology in recent years, and if you haven’t used it in a while, you and your students will be amazed how fast and efficiently you can “travel” from one place to another.
Getting Started with Google Earth™
It’s important that prior to going on a Google Earth™ field trip, you allow time for your students to get comfortable using this tool. The best way to do this is to have them explore an area that they are familiar with (for instance, their city or town). Kids of all ages love playing with the zoom in/zoom out feature and seeing places they recognize in real life from this aerial view. Students can even create a digital “Me on the Map” flip book using Google Earth™ and Google Maps™.
Once they have an idea of how this mapping system works, they are ready to take the virtual field trip to various landforms from around the globe. Very little background information is needed, so this can be one of the first activities that they do when being introduced to different land and water features that make up our planet.
Planning a Google Earth™ Virtual Field Trip
The easiest way to take your students on this trip, is to use our Landforms Digital Activities resource, which already has all the work and planning done for you. We have mapped out 14 landforms from around the world with clickable links that take your students right to a 3D view of the special place of interest. The 14 landforms we covered are:
- beach
- canyon
- desert
- hill
- island
- lake
- mountain
- ocean
- plain
- plateau
- river
- valley
- volcano
- waterfall
These are some of the landforms we feel are the most important, but you can choose to add more to explore or omit the ones that aren’t part of your learning goals. After they explore each place, you can use the other activities in our unit to assess their understanding. There are sorting and matching activities, and even a fun research project that they can complete and share to further expand their knowledge of Earth’s features.
If you want to plan your own field trip, that’s fine too! Create a list of landforms you want your students to explore. Have students “Launch Earth” and search for landforms by typing in the name of the places you want them to explore.
More Fun Ways to Use Google Earth™
Besides exploring landforms, Google Earth™ can be used in so many other ways. Here is a list of how to incorporate this tool in the classroom and home learning environment:
1. Take a tour of new and interesting places.
Launch Google Earth™ and on the left side click on the Voyager icon. There are pre-made tours called “Voyages” that your students can view using this technology. Stops on the voyages allow students to read and watch videos to learn more about related places across the globe.
2. Measure distances.
The desktop version of Google Earth™ also includes a measurement tool icon which is a great way to include math into your social studies curriculum. You can switch between the different systems of measurement (meters, kilometers, feet, miles, etc.). Students will plot two or more points to measure the distance of various places. This activity can be completed over and over again by clicking the “Done” and “Start new” button.
3. Explore Space.
Download and install Google Earth Pro™ for FREE. The desktop version of Google Earth Pro™ includes views of various space objects such as the Moon and even Mars! This extension is by far a student favorite and the perfect companion to any space science lessons.
See how many fun ways there are to use Google Earth™? Your students will LOVE any chance they get to explore places around the world and even in our solar system! We hope you will find time to incorporate this amazing tool in your classroom. Wishing you all the best on your real-life and virtual field trips!
Looking for more interactive and engaging mapping & landform activities? Check out our Treasure Map Hunt blog post and try the freebie with your students!
