I am a teacher in Chicago, Illinois, and am starting a Google Earth meme. This is a way to pay tribute to teachers who have made a difference in the lives of others and to share memorable learning experiences around the world. Also, I am curious about how learning happens for others and the characteristics of effective teachers. Feel free to morph the following questions and join in if you'd like! Anyone is welcome to participate, but I'd especially like to hear from students and educators.


For this project, I am choosing two questions and you can answer just one or both:

1) What has been your most memorable learning experience?
2) Who is the teacher that has influenced you the most?and why?

Here are the technical directions. Feel free to edit as you pass this on:

To create a placemark describing your most memorable teacher and/or learning experience:

1) Open Google Earth.
2) Fly to the address of your choice. This is the point where you will add a placemark. It should be your work address or home address, whatever you feel comfortable with. One participant noted that as teachers, we should model internet safety practices, so you probably want to mark your work address or a general public place that is near you.
3) Go to the Add menu and select Add Placemark.
4) Drag the new Placemark to the exact location of your choice.
5) Edit fields as necessary:
- Label the placemark with your name.
- Put your written text in the description field.
- Add an url to anything you think might be relevant such as your website or blog.
-You can change the style and color of the placemark if you wish.
- Press OK when you are finished.
7) Make sure you save your file. Go to the File menu, select Save, then Save Place As. Select the location on your computer where you would like to save. Click on Save. You might want also want to save to Your Places in your Google Earth software. Anything in the temporary area will disappear when you quit Google Earth.
6) To send a file, right click or control click on the placemark (or folder) and select the email option from the menu. You can also do this under the File menu. Email it to me, Lucy Gray <elemenous@gmail.com>. I will compile all the .kmz files and post the most recent updates on my blog: http://lucygray.org
7) OPTIONAL: Upload the .kmz file to your blog if you have one. Add a relevant tag so that it can be found in a Technorati search. Possible tags could be meme, GoogleEarthmeme, or teachermeme.

PLEASE PASS THIS PROJECT DESCRIPTION ON TO OTHERS!