Today, the Google Lat Long Blog ran a story about Professor Lee Berger from Witswatersrand University who used Google Earth help him and his students discover new fossil deposits and caves in South Africa. Watch the video below to learn more about this story.

The story about Professor Berger got me thinking about how teachers and students could use Google Earth to make local “discoveries.” My first thought about this is that students could use Google Earth to discover new-to-them natural and man-made sites in their local areas. To take that idea a step farther your students could create a scavenger hunt to complete in Google Earth. And then to take another step farther you might find another classroom in the world who does the same thing and have the students swap scavenger hunts. By swapping scavenger hunts, students in both classrooms can learn about the local environment and history of the other students’ homes.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Google Maps Labs – Try the Newest Options
Google Earth Across the Curriculum
Place Spotting – Challenging Geographic Riddles