Google earth

On 8th September, I taught class seven on the 'topic reliefs of Bhutan'.  I started by giving a brief account about the different land features.  I gave all the information given in the text. I gave a list of famous names of mountains of Bhutan so that in the next class I was able to take them in IT lab to use GOOGLE EARTH to locate those places.

figure 1. Google earth

Google earth (figure 1) is one of the best free satellite model of earth on the net. Using Google earth can help you locate different landmarks from all over the world. We can also use directly as a presentation tool or save as a graphic for using it as a teaching aids.

figure 2. Students using Google earth.

This needed an installation of Google earth software. The students were divided into groups of five and then they were given a computer in each groups as in figure 2. Some of them read out the list of mountains and rivers to the group while one of them typed in the search button. They were very happy to see the 3 D view of land features and they even searched many other countries and locations they knew (shown in figure 3). I observed that some of them were so excited that they even started searching their hometowns. They told me that they felt like they were travelling from one place to another.

One of the drawbacks I came across while using Google earth was, out of eagerness, they always went on searching their choice of places. This was more of distracting their focus on the lesson.

But in general, the software was very useful in showing them the land features and locations of the places. It was very useful especially in geography classes.