The summer after my first year of teaching I packed up my old Toyota 4Runner with my camping gear, fly rods, and books on tape. Then I headed west to Grand Teton National Park where I spent weeks hiking and fishing. It was a place I had wanted to see since I was a little kid thumbing through National Geographic and Backpacker magazines in the Robertson Elementary School library. Today, kids can be inspired by browsing through Google Earth’s tours of 31 U.S. National Parks.
This morning Google announced the launch of a new series of tours available in the web browser version of Google Earth. You can access the list of tours here and then select the park that you want to visit. Each tour features a series of images and information cards to scroll through. At each stop in the tour you can use Google Earth’s navigation tools to zoom, scroll, and pan through the views.
You can share a specific Google Earth view with your students by clicking on the share icon on the lefthand side of the screen. Google Classroom users will have an option to share a view directly to their Classrooms. Other users can simply copy a link and paste it wherever they would typically share links. Watch my video below to learn how to share Google Earth views to Google Classroom.