Google Earth and Ruler trouble

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Thomas Petra on January 18, 2012 at 3:25am

Hi Erin.  Would it happen to be this activity from RealWorldMath.org?  That's my site; I'd be happy to help.  Can you let me know a little more about what's happening with the ruler?  I can try to help you here or we could do a Google+ hangout.

- tom

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Erin Sigler on January 18, 2012 at 4:27am

I got the program to work here at home.  Just at school on one of their computers.  The ruler tool wouldn't highlight, so I couldn't get my students to measure.  I am just worried about bringing a class into the computer lab, and it not working.  Are there any things i should check on?

Erin

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Thomas Petra on January 18, 2012 at 5:21am

It depends on the equipment your school has, but bandwidth can be an issue if you have a roomful of students using Google Earth.  Be sure to show students how to deselect the Layers that they aren't using.  That should eliminate a lot of drag in the performance.  They would never want to have all of the Layers selected; usually I don't have any selected except maybe 3D Buildings.

I usually demonstrate in class and assign the Google Earth work to be done at home.  I never had many complaints for that kind of homework, even if it was on the weekends.  Additionally, I would usually assign a Real World Math activity to be accomplished over a period of weeks so they could pick their time to work on it.  If a student had computer issues at home then I would set them up in the classroom during free times.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you have any questions.  There's a lot to go through on the site and there's RWM blog where you can find tips also.  I made a tutorial called Measuring Distance on the ruler tool you can find on this page.  Don't give students the URL for realworldmath.org because it has answer keys.  Let me know if you need any help sharing the activities with them.

• ▶ Reply