My Favorite Thing: I Feel Lucky!

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 by Kerri Lambert, teacher specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology

Can you believe that Google Earth has been around for almost 20 years? Since debuting in 2005, hundreds of millions have pulled up that spinning globe, packed with all the wonders of the world…. and immediately looked up their address. (If you’ve never watched the comedian Michael McIntyre’s riff on this, do yourself a favor and Google it).

As fun as it is to walk through your neighborhood in Street View, my favorite thing in Google Earth is the “I feel lucky button.” Simply click on the search box, and  below it pops up a little spinning dice beside the words “I’m feeling lucky.” Select it, and Google will automagically take you to some random place in the world. Once you’re there, you can view images of the location, zoom into Street view, and read about that location. 

What’s so great about this is that it exposes students to a wide array of places and cultures that they may not have thought of. One roll of the dice might land them in a ruined fort in India and the next, the highest point in the Netherlands. Teachers can leverage this tool for morning meetings and community circles to spark conversations about cultures, where people would like to live, etc. Teachers can even create a Google Earth project where they save the locations they visit as a class. At the end of the year, the students can revisit all of the places they’ve virtually traveled too. Pair with a passport template in Wixie, Google Slides, or Adobe Express, and your students will be engaged armchair travelers. 

Aside from the rich conversations that can be had by exposing students to different areas in the world, teachers can leverage the locations in their content warm-ups. Google has written dozens of standards aligned questions that can be used with a roll of the die. Looking for a quick write? Roll the die and find a unique setting for a story. Reviewing geometric terms? Challenge students to find examples of parallel lines, rectangular prisms, etc in the location images. Science teacher? Have your students build a food web for the location. Intrigued? Check out the Passports below: 


So I encourage you to open up Google Earth and give the “I Feel Lucky” button a try. You too can explore the world- no need to pack a bag! 


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