Happy summer solstice northern hemisphere 2017!

Blue Marble: Changing Seasons – Google Earth for Chrome (How to best use Google Earth video file, kml file, and post below)

Instructions on how to turn off cloud layer and import kml included in video

**Note: Clicking on left panel then clicking “Esc” key will hide the left panel. Click My Places icon to show left panel.**

Here is the file: Blue Marble – Google Earth for Chrome

Over the past several months I’ve been busy brushing up on a little kml (Google Earth files). It is funny how geteach.com is coming full circle. Many years ago I started my programming hobby with learning kml (See previous blog post). Six years later  a new Google Earth has led me to unlearn, learn, and relearn kml. While I am more than happy to share everything I know and don’t know about kml, it would make for a very unwieldy blog post. Maybe some day I’ll write an online course. The issue is not kml per se. It is a pretty well documented language (documentation link); though not all kml tags work on Google Earth for Chrome (supported tags). What makes creating kml files challenging for the new Google Earth is the mashing together of kml, html, javascript, and css in a way that does not run into internet security safeguards; namely same origin domain policies. In other words, learning kml is not enough, and has never really been enough, for how I would like to integrate Google Earth in the classroom. As mentioned before, kml was simply my gateway language into html, javascript, and css. This is why I am such a proponent of kml and try to get teachers and students interested in coding using kml. It is a simple language that allows students and teachers to see patterns, understand processes, and make predictions. That and it makes for some awesome visuals for the classroom!