Google launched the brand new and completely rewritten Earth back in April. The app has been refocused on discovering the hidden wonders of the planet, ranging from extreme natural wonders to human creations in the heart of cities. It includes an interactive guided tour mode, Voyager, that gives you curated overviews of places around the globe.
Today, Google announced it is launching 10 new Voyager tours for use in the classroom. At the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, the company said it wants Earth to give students a “new perspective” on the world. It intends Earth to be a keystone of geography teaching, enabling children to navigate, visualise and understand the planet.
The new Google Earth 18-04-2017
Google
Google has worked with partners including the National Geographic Society, PBS Education, HHMI Biointeractive and Mission Blue to create the new tours. They include supporting documentation for teachers and accompanying classroom activities to further engage students. Teachers can add their own tours to expand on specialised curriculum topics using Google’s Tour Builder app.
The new initiative is the first substantial expansion of Earth since its relaunch earlier this year. By rebuilding it as an exploration app aimed at education and discovery, Google has avoided renewed conflict with its separate Maps app. Prior to Earth’s reinvention, it had been increasingly overshadowed by the growing scale of Maps. The desktop-based software had been neglected by Google and was showing its age.
The new Google Earth 18-04-2017
Google
Earth is now a web app which allows Google to release updates much more frequently. It also makes Earth a part of Google’s cloud services, including Google for Education. From this week, the app will be available as an additional service for IT administrators to manage. School network leaders will be able to control the deployment of Earth to classrooms and students in the same way as they could with the classic desktop program.
Besides the new Voyager tours, Google also used ISTE to detail improvements coming to its Expeditions app. The virtual reality experience is being offered to schools as a way to take students on virtual field trips. In a forthcoming update, Expeditions users will have access to a “self-guide mode” that allows any of the 600 published trips to be accessed. Students won’t need to wait for teachers to enable content, a change Google said will “encourage exploration and personal education.”
