On Monday I shared a post titled Walking in Holden’s Footsteps. In that post I mentioned that having students create Google Earth tours based on a character or storyline in a book is a good way to break-away from the typical book report assignment. One of the first steps in creating a Google Earth tour is to create placemarks. If you’re considering having your students create a Google Earth tour, the following video is a good introduction to creating placemarks in Google Earth.

Each placemark icon be customized and can include text, images, and videos. The video below shows you how to select placemark icons and how to embed a video into a placemark.

This video from one of my fellow Maine educators and Google Certified Teacher Sarah Sutter shows you how to put pictures into your placemarks.

And after you’ve created all of the placemarks for your Google Earth tour, follow the directions in this video for recording a narrated tour.

For more information about Google Earth, you may want to read Google Earth Across the Curriculum.