Google Earth & Wikipedia

After spending several hours exploring the possibilities of Google Earth, I found it to be both informative and fun. The feature I find most useful is the street view function, in which an address, place or town can be typed into the "fly to" section and it can go to that place on the earth and offer photos contributed by people, who have posted them to Google (such as tourists) and views from streets to show you the front of a house or for example, a hotel or park.

After looking at Joe Wood's Blog, I was very impressed by the way he utilised these many features, including street view, to make learning activities. However, these activities may cater better to visual learners, but in saying that, there are many other ways for other types of learners to gather information. Google Earth is just another form of ICT that can assist in the classroom environment.

Using Google Earth in a subject such as Geography could prove to be very useful for showing physical features of the earth such as volcanoes, mountains, oceans, latitudes and longitudes but in teaching music, I don't see it as being as resourceful. Possibly it could be used to show important historical sites in the development of western music, such as the many homes of Mozart and where he traveled to perform his many concert dates as a child.

As for Wikipedia, this website has proved itself to be an indispensable tool as it offers a source of knowledge to almost anything you wish to inquire about. Upon typing "music" into the search bar, it offers a page with 24 sections offering general information, and within each section are keywords which lead to more specific types, genres, terms and movements.

Wikipedia could be easily used in or outside of the classroom. It could be used in a learning experience plan at the start of lesson by asking the students to search for their favourite band for 10 minutes, then to deliver a brief oral presentation stating some interesting facts about their chosen band. It could easily be used for a homework task as well. You could ask students to research a topic overnight, and then in class the next day, give a pop quiz to investigate how they have gathered their knowledge.