Teaching the Places in Cities with Google Earth Studio
Primary Education (4th Grade)

The goals of this activity are to help the students learn the different places in cities and teach them about the differences between cities in Spain and those in foreign, English-speaking countries, like Melbourne, Australia. The primary digital resource is a presentation made with Google Earth Studio that gives them an animated audio-visual tour of a city. This presentation is complemented by a quiz and homework assignment that serve to reinforce children's learning of the associated vocabulary and the similarities/differences between how urban areas are in Spain and other countries.

Lesson Plan

This lesson requires about 90 minutes, which is the length of one and a half classes at my assigned school. It is divided into two main parts:

The presentation part is done first and takes 50 minutes. The remaining 10 minutes of that class are dedicated to introducing the homework assignment to the students. During the next class the students present their homework assignments to their peers for 30 minutes.

This lesson is given towards the end of the "places in cities" unit; before the end of unit test, but after the bulk of new vocabulary and grammar has been introduced by the teacher. It is intended as a more practical activity that helps the students to reinforce what they have learnt and the teacher to get a better idea of which children need additional support before they are tested more formally.

Part 1: A Tour of Melbourne

The Presentation

The presentation consists of various photos and animated videos that are used to give a virtual tour of the city of Melbourne to the students in order to help them learn about the different parts of a city as well as some of the cultural differences between Spain and Australia. It takes about 40 minutes to present the entire thing.

In the animated videos, the camera flies around the city to focus on its features, such as train stations, newsagencies, town halls, police stations, etc. As the camera reaches a destination, a higher quality photo of that place with a caption, naming it in English, is shown to the children. At each destination I talk a little about what you can do at this place or why it is an important part of the city. The students are allowed (and encouraged) to raise their hands to ask questions or make comments at each stop of the tour.

Two parts of the presentation that got the most interest from the students were the sports stadiums, due to the "exotic" sports like cricket and Australian football that are played there, and the influence that England has had on Australia, such as with many landmarks being named after members of the British royal family.

Keynote

The presentation that I made for this lesson is embedded below. Note that the videos, sound effects, and animations do not play in the embedded version. For the complete experience you should download it to your computer.

The Quiz

The quiz is done immediately after the presentation and consists of seven questions based around the presentation and the associated vocabulary of the unit. It is intended to take about 10 minutes.

The first five questions are easier and are asked to the entire class, with students raising their hands if they want to answer. The last two questions are more opened ended and a little more time should be allocated to them than to the others. For some classes these last two questions are better answered when the children work in their table groups.

The questions from the quiz are:

After the set questions have been answered, the other questions that the students have about the presentation can be asked if there is time.

Part 2: Creating a Tour of Your City

The second part of this lesson is a homework assignment that consists of the students working in groups of around four to create a tour of their city/neighbourhood. During the next class, once their assignment has been completed, they present it in groups to their peers. This part of the assignment is intended to get the students to practice using the vocabulary and grammar they learned in the unit, as well as to make them more conscious of the environment they live in.

As the homework assigment is basically in an identical format to the presentation they have already seen, they should feel comfortable that they know what they are required to do.

Each group should plan to present for 5 minutes. By giving the students time to prepare and work with their friends, the less skilled kids will feel more confident when it comes to speaking English in front of their classmates.

Digital Resources

The main technology used in this lesson was Google Earth Studio, which is a web app that allows you to create animations using the satellite imagery and 3D data from Google Earth.

An example movie I made with Google Earth Studio can be seen below. It begins at the State Library of Victoria and ends at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

You can download all of the save files for the Google Earth Studio animations I made for this project here.

These sorts of videos are useful digital resources for this unit because they are much more engaging than static images. When you show a series of photos taken around a city they feel disconnected and it is difficult to figure out where each place is in relation to the others, especially if you haven't been there in person before. Animated videos such as these help to alleviate these problems and allow for a significantly more fluid experience because we get to see what is happening between each of the points of interest.

Using Google Earth Studio

You create animations in Google Earth Studio by setting keyframes. This means that you choose the start and end points of the desired animation on the map, then the program animates a smooth transition between them. Combined with the simple user interface, this makes it relatively easy to create cool videos.

Google Earth Studio requires the Google Chrome web browser and an internet connection. The animations are rendered locally so using a more powerful computer results in a better experience as a user. As the program is currently in beta, it currently only exports animations frame by frame (i.e. you download a bunch of images rather than a video), so you need to stitch the frames together into a movie yourself. There are many programs that will do this for you; I used Compressor.

Other Potential Applications of Google Earth Studio in Primary Education

I think that Google Earth Studio animations would complement the teaching of some of the other units that the students at my school have been studying.

Some classes have been studying giving and receiving directions in English. Similar videos could be used to make illustrate a journey that the students have to transcribe as instructions to recreate the route. Others have been studying natural wonders and geographical features. Simple animations such as the one below of Ayer's Rock in Australia could complement the teaching of this.

Camera orbiting Ayer's Rock