Reaching Visual Learners Through Google's Educational Projects:
@joe_edtech
Have you ever wanted to take your students to explore the Battlefield at Gettysburg, or have them walk through the Louvre? Here's a solution that won't cost a dime or require you to arrange for transportation.
A couple of years ago I stumbled on a pretty cool Google project called the "Google Art Project." It was a plan from Google to make extremely high resolution artwork from around the world available for students and aficionados whether they actually had the resources to travel to museums and see the original pieces or not. Google boasts, "More than 45,000 [works of art] are featured in high resolution. Some have been photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or 'gigapixel' photo capturing technology, enabling the view to study details of the brushwork and patina beyond that possible with the naked eye" (Art Project).
Well, that was cool enough for me, but the Art Project has exploded, and has become the Google Cultural Institute, featuring not just an Art Gallery, but also History and World Wonder projects as well. Each one features the same high resolution photography, and, where applicable, Google Street View of museum or historical sites. Here's a short video overview of the Cultural Institute site:
But just in case that doesn't cover visual content for you, Google Earth and Google Maps have literally gone out of this world, incorporating images from the SETI Institute in their Google Maps Gallery as Google Earth files. You do not have to have Google Earth installed to view the images, but they do work as fully functioning Google Earth files.
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| "Google Moon" - from the SETI Institute Collection |
In both cases, the visual products in Google can help you extend or situate your lesson, or you can incorporate some elements of student inquiry and invite your students to follow their curiosity.
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Have you used these tools with your classes already? If not, can you think of a creative way to teach using Google's Cultural Institute or Google Earth? Please share in the comment section below.
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