Google Earth Virtual Field Trip Reflection

What an “adventure” it was creating a virtual field trip using Google Earth!  Just creating one enables you to gain a lot of knowledge; one thing leads you to another and the more engulfed you become in your topic!  One of the topics that we explore during our Nonfiction Unit is the Holocaust.  I decided to create a virtual field trip of Anne Frank’s life before and during the Holocaust.  We begin our journey at a prominent facility in my small town of Windber, PA, which was used to contrast the horror we are about to encounter in Europe.      

I believe this virtual field trip of this horrific time in history - ripe with prejudice, discrimination, intolerance, and genocide - will touch my students and allow them to realize that this tragedy revolved around a persuasive man, Adolf Hitler, who was able to brainwash a nation into murdering those who were different, known as the “Final Solution,” and who did not fit into his “master race.”  Although this was on a grand scale, hatred on a small scale has the potential to erupt and turn lives upside down unless the respectful and ethical minds are developed and nurtured.

As noted by Gardner, “As one passes through the years of middle childhood and enters adolescence, a significant amount of time should be spent dealing explicitly with issues of group membership and group conflict” (Gardner, 2007, p. 115).  With this project, students get an interactive look at the locations of this conflict, along with additional avenues to further enhance their learning experience.  It would be wonderful to expand this as a class project to add additional group conflicts in other areas; some students would be surprised to see that these conflicts still exist! 

Also, with the growing diversity in the United States, students should be aware of how to tolerate and accept these differences and be able to connect with others.  It is our duty as educators to model these interactions and provide opportunities for them to role play.  Gardner states, “Students should be brought face to face with how groups have related to one another in the past and how they might productively connect in the future” (Gardner, 2007, p. 116). 

I hope that by seeing the prejudice through the eyes of an innocent victim, a peer, students may be more inclined to show empathy.  However, it would be an injustice for students to feel this empathy just because it was placed in front of them for a few short minutes, where they are “exhibiting mere tolerance without any effort to understand” or “expounding a good, responsible line but failing to embody that course in one own’s actions” (Gardner, 2007, p. 157-158) – pseudoforms of the respectful and ethical minds.

Google Earth can be utilized for many concepts; I look forward to using it in the future.  How fantastic it is to have a tool that allows students to visit countries and learn about their history, government, and culture without leaving the classroom!

Gardner, H.  (2007).  Five minds for the future.  Boston:  Harvard Business School Press.