Google Maps Special Collections is a great place to find and explore the Street View imagery of interesting places all over the world. This afternoon Google Lat Long blog featured a collection that I hadn’t seen before, U.S. Highlights. U.S. Highlights features Street View imagery of historic places like Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields as well as interesting places like state and national parks. Next to the imagery you will find a pop-up box containing facts about the place featured in the imagery you are viewing. Embedded below is a view of Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Applications for Education
The U.S. Highlights Street View collection could provide good supplementary material in lessons on U.S. history and culture. For some of the places you could create an assignment in which students have to find historical imagery to compare to current views of the same place.
As I always say about Street View, this Street View imagery allows students to virtually explore a place that can’t be done by simply flipping through static pictures in a book or on a website.
