Google announced today that it will be hosting two Google Geo Teachers Institutes in Europe this summer: one in Dublin, Ireland, and another in London, England. The pair of two-day events will be taking place in June and will be held at each city’s respective Google office.
The Google Geo Teachers Institute is a professional development program conceptualized to assist educators utilize Google’s geographical search tools. According to the Lat Long Blog post, educators who participate in the Teachers Institute will get “hands-on experience and learn best practices and tips for using Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Sketchup, including a focus on features like Ocean, Mars, Moon, and Sky in Google Earth.”
Here’s a video from a Geo Teacher’s Institute event in 2010 wherein students and instructors learn to use Google SketchUp to create 3D models in the classroom.
Google’s been promoting geography education for a while now. In addition to sponsoring National Geographic’s Geography Bee, many professional geographers have gotten some mileage out of Google’s bevy of geographical tools, as evidenced in the following video.
Any educators that are interested in attending the Geo Teachers Institutes simply need complete the required application by the end of April.