Google Earth

I learned in Google Earth that you can record a video and make a tour out of it. This is a very neat tool because you can upload it to YouTube and other social networks. It would be cool to use it to map out some of the places I have been in my life and put it together into one video.

Next I learned that you can go see the sky, the moon, the earth, and mars. I took a peak at mars and saw that they had polar caps on the northern side of the planet. This is probably old news, but because they have that, that means there's water, and a chance for life! It is neat because in the past you've just heard about things like that, but with this you can actually go to see it for yourself... Superficially.

I also learned that there is an application on the toolbar that allows you to see where the sun is hitting on the earth. As of 9:18 p.m. EST, the U.S. as well as Africa and most of Europe is not seeing sunlight, whereas most of the Asian countries are. These tools are awesome; I really wish someone would have shown me them before now.

Math teachers could do some really cool stuff with Google Earth. Some of the things that came to mind right off that bat was calculating the distance between planets using comparisons and then checking to see how close the calculation was. Another cool thing to do would be using the person to set themselves down in the middle of a city with any skyscraper, and try to calculate the height of the building by just using the resources around and perhaps some prior knowledge. I think when I become a teacher I might have to do some of this stuff as a lesson. It is very neat!