Middle School (Grades 6-8)

 

Feel free to collaborate with me.  Add one of your ideas for integrating Google Maps, Earth, and SketchUp into the Middle School Classroom here, or flush out one of these basic ideas.

1. Create a layer about American poets. Students can each study a particular American poet, where they lived, and historical events that may have influenced their lives and their poetry. Student could then create a placemark on what "American" ideas are represented in each poet's work through various elements, such as metaphore, simile, and paradox. Students could podcast a poem by their author and embed it into the placemark, so that viewers could listen to the poem. Students could then study the geography related to poetry in American. Students could also number the placemarks use the path tool to create a time line of American Poetry in Google Earth.

2. Create a layer about historical figures. Students could study recent historical events and interview people who lived througth them in order to appreciate and understand on a more personal level both the triumphs and difficulties faced by America and its people. A placemark could be created about each event. Pictures, text and a podcast (or even a video) of the interview could be included in the placemark. Each layer could concentrate on a them in U.S. History, such as the changing role of Women from the 1950's. U.S. History and Civic classed from various parts of the country could combine their interviews into one layer. Students from all participating schools could benefit from each school's interviews and placemarks. Students may get a better understanding of where events took place in relation to each other.

3. Students could create placemarks of key events that took place during a historical battle, such as the Civil War. The measuring tools in Google Earth could then be used to study the distances between various historical battles and use this information to understand the difficulties of communication and supply lines during battles.

4. Create a layer of U.S. Presidents accomplishments and failures. Create placemarks of key causes to the success or failure of these accomplishemnts and attach the placemarks using the path tool, or code. Teachers could coordinate this project with LS Project #6 and MS students could be responsible for presenting their information to the LS class as an enrichment activity.

5. Students could create a series of placemarks that explain how a law is created. These placemarks could be tied to the buildings in Washington, DC where each step of the process takes place. Annimation tools (MovieMaker) could be used to create a tour of the process.
6. Google Earth could be used to locate major physical and human features of the world, such as oceans, mountain ranges, natural landmarks and major cities of the world.

7. Create a layer that demonstrates the historical migration of humans and also current migration patterns of various ethnic groups. Placemarks that discuss various "push" and "pull" factors of migration could be created and overlays of arrows or other symbols could be used to show how they affected migration patterns.

8. Use the United Nation's Atlas of Our Changing World to show students how humans are alterning our environment.

9. Students could use one of the network links from the United States Geology Survey, to collect data (such as stream flow) about a particular place over a period of time. The data could be saved into a spreadsheet and then students could be tasked with completing basic statistics, such as mean, median and mode of the data set and then use these statistics to make perdictions.

10. Have students use the Sketchup tools in GE to create 3D shapes and calculate their volumes, areas and perimeters. Students could explore the similarities and difference among these shapes and objects in the real world. Students could also look at depressed areas in their city and explore the shapes of building that could possibly be built on the land and what would be the best purpose for these structures.