Hi,
I'm working with some 5th grade teachers (I'm the tech coordinator) on a project involving early explorers to North America. The students assignment will be to create a narrated "tour" of their assigned explorer's path in Google Earth. We're going to get started on it today. When they're done, I'll post their KMZ files to our school website and add a link here, so that others can view it.

A challenge will be figuring out the modern names (Google Search doesn't work for out-of-date place names like Constantinople.)

But it's going to make a much more interesting presentation than a traditional powerpoint!

I'll let you know how it goes.
Zip

Good morning,

I work with teachers here in Virginia and am interested in what you are doing. I also do presentations at technology conferences on this topic. Please share what you do. Thanks.

Well, it took a LOT longer than we thought. But most of the student's presentations came out great. During parent-teacher conferences, the students took their parents to the computer lab and used the SmartBoard to show off their presentations. Using Google Earth was a huge educational improvement to using PowerPoint. Some students did just the bare minimum, but some really went to to town and created custom icons, adjusted the angle and viewpoint of each placemark, etc. There's a webpage on my school site that explains the project and show some photos of kids involved in it. And there's a KMZ file of all the students projects, if anyone would like to download it and see what they did. (Please bear in mind that these are 5th graders, and their social studies teacher didn't check each and every placemark! There are some typos and some historical inaccuracies. But overall it was a tremendous success.)

5th grade Google Earth Explorer Presentations

Warren

Hi Warren,
I'm a tech facilitator in Schaumburg, IL USA. Next year I'm assigned to teach 5th grade. I'm very interested in the details of the project. I downloaded the files the kids' created - looks like a good use of the tool!
Gridgirl

Hi,
The presentations from last year are displayed on our school technology site AES elementary school technology program. I also updated the site with more specific unit plans, documents, and photos of students working. Those are at GPS and latitude / longitude unit plans for 4th and 5th grade .

Hope you find the sites useful!
Warren (aka Zip)

I am really interested in seeing the KMl files.

They'll be on the technology unit plan page soon, but in the meantime, you can download them from this site:
http://www.aes.ac.in/es/technology/GoogleEarth/presentations/index.htm

Enjoy!
Warren