GoogleEarth

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 Overview of Google Earth
media type="custom" key="2365555" Google Earth** is a virtual interactive mapping application originally called Earth Viewer. It was created by Keyhole, Inc., a company acquired by Google in 2004. It maps the earth by superimposing overlays of statellite imagery, aerial photography GIS 3D photos.
 * __So what IS GoogleEarth?__

The application, free to all users, allows viewers to virtually fly around the entire globe, giving the appearance of a bird's eye view of the earth. But what you are really looking at are the satellite imagery with overlays of roads, buildingts, geographic features, and numberous other location-specific data points. You can add your own points of interest and share them with others, chart routes, plot areas, calculate distances, and overlay separate images right onto the application.

GoogleEarth also connects seemlessly with the Internet, providing a plethera of information about locations to the viewer. Information and pictures are available from WIkipedia, Panorama, National Geographic, and NASA, to name just a few.

__**[|Common questions about Google Earth]**__ (answered BY the good folks at GoogleEarth)

1. **When were these pictures taken? How often are they updated?**

Our images are photographs taken by satellites and aircraft sometime in the last three years. The images in Google Earth are updated on a rolling basis.

2. **Are Google Earth images captured in real time?**

No, they aren't. Our images are photographs taken by satellites and aircraft sometime in the last three years.


 * 3. Are there cities covered in detail worldwide? Or just in the US?**

The whole world is covered with medium resolution imagery and terrain data. This resolution allows you to see major geographic features and man-made development such as towns, but not detail of individual buildings. Additional high-resolution imagery which reveals detail for individual buildings is available for most of the major cities in the US, Western Europe, Canada, and the UK. 3D buildings are represented in 38 US cities (the major urban areas). Detailed road maps are available for the US, Canada, the UK, and Western Europe. And Google Local search is available for the US, Canada, and the UK.


 * 4. Why do I see blurry pictures when I go to my house?**

Google Earth combines data of to offer a seamless viewing experience, so some locations look a bit blurry. We offer high resolution imagery (greater than 1-meter) for thousands of cities and more are on the way.

http://wiki.classroom20.com/Podcasts+Lesson+Plans Download of podcast

I would like to be a world traveler! I want to go to all the exciting places of the world and meet the 7 billion humans that call this earth "home." But alas...that scourge known as //work// keeps me anchored here and doesn't provide enough money to participate in my favorite hobby. With the release of [|Google Earth], my love for geography was the imputus of my spending a lot o time "flying around" to see all that I could not go experience. What if students could take these tours of wonderous places? There is an excellent feature in GE where you can create a list of placemarks, and save them to a file. The [|.kmz file] stores enough for you to save this list, and send them to anyone else who is also running GE. They load this file, loading a list of placemarks, and can replay a tour, flying around the virtual globe. This is "GoogleTouring".

  This quick tutorial explains how you can create a Google Tour yourself, and hopefully upload it here. :) As an example, we will create a tour of the capital cities of my country, Australia.
 * How?** (From GT Touring.com)
 * You will need**
 * One copy of [|Google Earth]
 * An idea for a tour
 * A quick skim through the Hints and Tips page.

**What to do**  1. Browse to the first placemark of your location in GE. I generally like to start with an overview of the area (if suitable):

2. G o to //Add -> Placemark// or just press //Ctrl N// to create the first placemark. A window will appear.

3. While this window is open, adjust the properties of the placemark with one or more of the following methods:
 * 1) Use the mouse to move the placemark around on the map.
 * 2) Click on the icon inside the **Name** box to change this icon.
 * 3) Click on the **Advanced** box to change more properties:
 * 4) Label and icon properties in the **Style** tab
 * 5) Exact positioning in the **Location** tab
 * 6) Viewpoint, in the **View** tab

4. Give the placemark a name, and add a GOOD, lengthy description (unlike this!):

5. Create a new folder for the tour, by clicking on **My Places** then on **New Folder**. Type **Australian Capitals** in the **New Folder** window and click **Ok**. The window will look like this: 6. Click on **Ok** and you will have your first placemark in your tour:



7. Browse to the next location in your tour, in this case Sydney:



8. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 above to set the name and description of this placemark.

9. Expand **My Places** in the Folder view, either by clicking that folder or the little arrow next to it, then click on the **Australian Capitals** folder. After this, click **OK**and your second placemark is saved to this folder also:

10. You now have two locations in your tour. Note that GE will put your placemarks in the folder in reverse order, so you might need to re-arrange them by dragging them around.



11. Repeat steps 2 to 9 for all of your placemarks on your tour. Eventually you will have a complete list of locations for your tour.

12. Try out your tour by clicking on the top level folder in the list (in this case, **Australian Capitals**), then clicking the play icon at the bottom of the list. Your tour is complete!

13. Your tour will be saved under the **My Places** folder for you automatically. However, if you'd like to save this tour separately so you can send it to someone or upload it, you should save it to a separate file. Just right-click the top level folder (here it's the **Australian Capitals** folder), then select **Save As...**. You can then save the tour like any regular file and send it or upload it to your wiki.



Sometimes during an auto-guided tour, the image might not render before it moves on and simply shows as a blur. This problem is caused by the time it takes to get images from the GE servers. In this case, you should click on the locations manually then once loaded you can start the tour again. GE does not yet allow the tour speed to be set within the .kmz file, so be patient for now. Hopefully the Google guys add this in soon.
 * Important note**

Another excellent "how" http://www.geosociety.org/educate/LessonPlans/creatingGoogleEarthTours.pdf

Hints and Tips for the Tour 
 * Hints for making a tour**

While you're busy making a tour, here are a few hints and tips to help you create an informative and smooth tour:
 * 1) Try to order your placemarks in such a way as to make the tour self-playing. They should be in linear order so that the view moves from one to the next, rather than jumping all over the area.
 * 2) Use appropriate icons for each placemark. For parks, ue the tree icon and for churches, use the church icon. This gives your audience an immediate clue as to what the placemark is.
 * 3) Fill in a brief summary of the placemark in the description box. You might know what "the roundhouse" is, but your audience might not.
 * 4) The description box for each placemark accepts HTML - take advantage of that.
 * 5) If possible, include a link to a page with more information.
 * 6) If your tour has a very large number of placemarks, consider grouping them in categories with their own sub-folder. Right-click on your tour folder in the Places pane and select "New...Folder".
 * 7) Google Earth lets you zoom, pan and tilt the viewpoint - the view for each placemark should take advantage of that and show the location as best as possible. If you find a better view for a placemark, right click it and select//Snapshot viewpoint//.

 Favorite KML/KMZ files created by others:
 * **[|Sir Ernest Shackleton Google Earth “documentary”]** (**[|blog post]** from Google Earth blog) - 1.9 MB
 * **[|Volcanoes of the World]**
 * **[|Documented meteor impacts worldwide]** (>26,000)
 * **[|World Wide Panorama]**
 * **[|Discovery Channel World Video tours]** (unfortunately ads are included)

MORE EXAMPLES: http://www.gearthhacks.com/downloads/

Google Earth Game http://googleearthgame.wikispaces.com/Game+Home

GoogleEarth download http://googleearthgame.wikispaces.com/GE+download

Tip Cards http://googleearthgame.wikispaces.com/GE+tip+card

Integration ideas: http://googleearthgame.wikispaces.com/GE+classroom+ideas