Less than a month ago, the LatLong Blog promoted a series of tutorial videos and lesson plans involving Google Earth.  Now the blog‘s at it again, although Adelia Barber, a doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz, has become the specific spokesperson.

    Adelia Barber – The     Doak Lab

After detailing her use of the program for research, Barber writes, "I’ve also found that Google Earth is great in the classroom.  While teaching an introductory biology class, I decided to replace an outdated library assignment with a virtual plant ecology search mission.  Want to test your own knowledge?  Head to Google Earth to look up the following locations and take a stab at answering some of my questions."

Questions include, "Judging by the characteristics of the trees, what time of year do you think the picture was taken over Central Park in Manhattan?"  Also, "John Muir described a few trees growing on the top of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley when he visited there in the mid-1800s.  Are there any trees still growing on the top of Half Dome?"

As before, we’ve got to admit that this is fairly interesting stuff, if a little Google-centric.  Finally, in the event teachers want to speed up their own Google Earth-using sites, a separate post on the LatLong Blog is promoting the new Static Maps API.  "The snapshot map loads fast, making it ideal for content-heavy and multimedia-rich pages," according to Jeffrey Martin.