Here on the Google Maps team we’re as excited as everyone else that the final season of the TV series Lost starts today. Our users are excited as well, and they’ve created maps to track the adventures of the Oceanic 6 around the world:Mike’s guide to L…
We’ve just finished pushing out an imagery update for Google Earth and Google Maps; check to see if any of your favorite places has gotten an update! You can view the updated areas highlighted in red below. Alternatively, you can download this KML, for…
(cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog)Madrid, Spain is the latest city to be introduced to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.The City of Madrid contains scores of beautiful structures ranging from art museums and classical monuments…
(Cross-posted from the Official Google.org Blog)I’m here in Copenhagen this week, at the COP15 International Climate Change Conference. Whether you’re attending in-person, or reading news headlines from home, you can’t miss the fact that addressing cli…
The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest prize for grassroots environmentalists. Informally known as the “Green Nobel,” the Goldman is awarded to six environmental heroes each year – one from each inhabited continent – with a ca…
The University of Michigan is continuing their recent advocacy efforts by hosting an event focused on science applications of Google Earth. The conference,which will take place on Wednesday, April 22nd (Earth Day!) in Ann Arbor, will feature a series …
As your friendly tips guru, I try to keep pretty well-acquainted with all things Earth. But I recently found myself thrown for a loop when the lights got turned off on my virtual world. Google Earth seemed to be in a permanent state of nighttime — and…
Since launching Google Map Maker last June, we have heard a steady stream of users asking us to make the data created with it more available. We have recently pushed more Map Maker data on to Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile and now allow users t…
When Google Earth 5.0 was released back in February, it included the capability to view the world ocean landscape from beneath the water surface. This capability now extends to the “Third Coast” of the United States, the Great Lakes. Through a coop…
Were you someone who struggled to stay awake in ancient history class? If so, perhaps this was due to those uninspiring “artist renditions” in your textbook. Reading countless pages that described how a monument, building or city may have appeared at t…
(cross-posted from the Official Google Mobile Blog)The world just got a little bit smaller. Google Earth is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch, allowing you to fly to the far reaches of the world from the palm of your hand. Since we launched…
Hello from Bioneers! For the past two days, Google Earth Outreach has been at the 2008 Bioneers conference in San Rafael, CA. The annual conference brings together non-profit and public benefit groups from all over the country for three days packed wi…
Nome
After a short flight from Kotzebue, we landed in Nome in pleasant weather and caught a cab to our hotel. Our cab driver wistfully mentioned that he had just arrived home from Fairbanks, where he had played his last round of golf for the year. A university vehicle awaited us at the hotel and we discovered that our cab driver is also the mechanic who had just serviced our borrowed rig. He is an example of a phenomenon quite common in small Alaskan towns, where many people display numerous talents and fill a variety of roles within their communities.
We had another great school experience at Nome Beltz Jr-Sr High School. As with our earlier school visits, we saw quite a few hands go up when students were asked if they had used Google Earth before, but then the students were amazed to discover so many new layers and features they hadn’t known about. During the lessons, it was so great to see the light bulbs go on when students realized that they can even go beyond exploring these layers and can create and view their own content in Google Earth. That’s what this is all about – helping students have an “aha” moment.
After school, we met with faculty and staff to share information and discuss classroom activities and school projects. Some teachers had already come up with ideas for geo-based projects and lesson plans, and although we were at the tail-end of an extremely busy week, I was suddenly re-energized by the conversation.
We were lucky enough to be offered a quick tour – and an opportunity for the school to use their new GigaPan. All of the principals have been so generous with their time! We piled into a school van and saw the sites, with commentary from the school’s director of technology and the principal at the wheel. We drove up to the top of Anvil Mountain on a rugged gravel road. This mountain was the site of a White Alice communications station during the Cold War. Nome is only 160 miles from Siberia and the Anvil White Alice was designed to detect planes or missiles coming from Russia. The site has been cleaned up, but at the request of the people of Nome, the shells of the towers still remain.
We continued up the road and set up the GigaPan to take a panoramic view of the fall tundra, old gold dredges, and the waters of Norton Sound. The undulating hills of red and gold were gorgeous to behold – take a look for yourself by panning around and zooming in on this image:
Farther along on our impromptu tour, we were on the lookout for musk-oxen, but unfortunately, none revealed themselves to us. Back in town, we saw monuments to the past in the statues of the “Three Lucky Swedes” and the renovated St. Joseph’s church. Nome is a city rich in history and the students are well aware of it. When asked what they would like others to know or see about Nome, I heard such responses as, “the golden beaches” and “the Iditarod.” I can’t wait to see how these students use their new found skills with Google Earth and Maps to share their stories of Nome with the rest of the world!
Posted by Katie Kennedy, University of Alaska Geography Program
Kotzebue: guns, drugs and helicopters Now that’s an attention-getter! What kind of crazed situation did the Google Geo Education group get itself involved in? I’ll get there soon enough, but first let me spend some time providing the back-story. Kot…
En route from Barrow to Kotzebue In order to get from Barrow to Kotzebue you need to fly all the way back to Anchorage first, so Wednesday was a travel day. We spent our layover refining our lesson plans, so I thought I would share the activity I’ve be…