Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Earth Advanced Tools Tutorial”.
This video focuses on some of the amazing things that you can do with Google Earth in previous videos that I’ve made, I taught the basics of using Google Earth as well as how to use these layers. How to add them in take them out and some of the best layers and what they can do. So please check out that video and then I also have another video which shows how to create your own Google Earth tours whether they be narrated tours or not. Narrated so please check out those two other videos on Google Earth, but the focus of this particular video is going to be on these tools that are across the top of the Google Earth window. So, let’s look at what they’re for and let’s just start with the first button.
That’S there at the top – and this is the hide or show sidebar button, it’s as simple as clicking it to make the sidebar disappear and go fullscreen with the image or you can. Click it again to get the sidebar. I usually leave it like this 99 % of the time. I want the sidebar there, so I just leave it.
As is. Let’S look at the second button, we have, what’s called the add place mark button, and this for a lot of people is a mysterious kind of thing. Why would I want to do this? What is it and how would I use it and what’s it for? Well? Basically, it’s for marking places on the map on the earth key places, maybe in your own history or in the history of the world, whatever it might be. So, for example, what if I would like to mark all of the birthplaces of my immediate family, I could do that by flying to the first location.
Okay, my dad was born in northern Mexico, so I’ll just type in the name of his birthplace, click search and it zoomed in on that part of the map. Now, at this point, I could put a little place mark there, just by clicking add place mark when you click that it puts a pin on the map, and that pin is movable okay, I can pin it in a very specific location or in a more general Location, whatever you want to do, but I just want to let’s say I want to mark this exact spot. I just dropped the pin there and then I could name the pin I can put in a description if I’d like to you can also change the style.
The color of the placemark, the view and the altitude, so some pretty neat options that you have here, then just click, OK and now that pin is in place now notice that it adds it here to my places. There’S an entry here for the pin that I’ve just put in and so now any additional place marks that I add, should be listed here as well. All right, let’s move on to the next button.
This is the polygon button. If you click Add polygon it. Let you click and then release the mouse click again, click again and you can create a polygon using really as many points as you would like, and this is used to designate parts of the map or parts of the earth as being something.
So it’s like you’re. Creating a shape that covers an area and then you could label this. For example, I could label this family property now this isn’t really true, but I could go in and label that as being part of my family property, I could go in and choose a style and a color.
Okay, click, OK, click! Ok and now I have an overlay that I’ve created that goes over the top of this part of the map of the earth. Similarly, you can add a path just by clicking moving the mouse clicking moving the mouse clicking. I can create a path, so you could mark a journey this way.
Let’S say the Lewis and Clark expedition or other explorers. You could map out their paths that they took kind of a neat thing and once again you can choose a color and so forth. For your lines, when you’re done click, OK and it’s added to the map – and it’s added here to your places – you can also do image overlays, and this is a little trickier. I’Ve had mixed luck with this, but when it works, it’s pretty cool. You can give it a name if you want to and then what you need to do is find an image. Ok, I have an image here on my desktop and I’ve selected that and it pulls in the picture and adds it to my Google Earth Map. So that’s pretty cool an image overlay now, because this window is open.
I move the image put it where I want it to be. I can resize it and that’s generally true of these other things that you add, as well as long as the window that corresponds to the item is open, you’re able to move them, but look I can’t move this pin why? Because it’s window isn’t open, this pictures window is open, so I can move it by clicking on the center of it and dragging just click. Ok, when you’re done now, if you ever want to open up the window for each of these things or for any of these things, just right-click on one of them choose get info it pops open and now you’re able to move them again, all right cool. Next up, we have a record a tour button and you should watch my other video on this topic, so please check it out, but basically you can click that and record your voice and do some cool things to make a tour. Next up, we have historical imagery button, and this is pretty exciting when you click that it gives you a timeline here in the upper left corner, and this timeline is often just littered with horizontal lines that you can click on to see a historical image of that Area I’m going to fly to a really populated area. How about New York, New York City? That is – and I just click search, and it should fly me to New York City once I’m there you’ll see that there are some historical photos of New York.
Now I’m going to turn off 3d buildings, there’s so many 3d buildings here. If I have that turned on it might crash my Google Earth, but anyway this is what New York City looked like in 2016, and you can see that here it says image. There’S the image date 2016 and you can zoom out zoom in, but if I want to, I can click and drag this timeline to go back to 2014. Ok, you can see down at the bottom imagery date.
2014. Now I can go back to 2007. That’S what it looked like in 2007. I can go back further further in the case of New York.
They even have a picture from 1974. There we have a picture from 1974 historical photo of New York City, so check out this timeline tool. It’S pretty cool, I’m going to store it back to the most recent imagery and I’m going to turn off that historical imagery button, and instead next, I’m going to show you the sunlight option when you click on this. In some ways it’s similar, but instead of going back in time and seeing a historical photo, it just changes the time of day. Ok. So if you want to picture an area in the morning, change it to 8 a.m. in the morning right. But if you want to get a sense for what it would look like later in the day change it to later in the day now, this also works once zoomed in on an area.
It gives you a better sense of why you might use this tool when you change the the lighting. You know when you’re more zoomed in to be honest with you. I don’t use that one much at all, but I like that it’s available next up. We have something pretty cool and exciting, and that is there’s a button here.
It looks like Saturn when you click on it. It lets you switch from Google Earth and go to Google Sky, which is a wonderful tool for learning about the constellations and the planets and other things that are out there in space. So pretty neat very different from the actual Google Earth right.
This isn’t necessarily a 3d experience, but you can still search for things like constellations landmarks. I don’t know if they would be called landmarks out in space, but you get the idea, so that’s kind of fun. You can also switch to Google Mars, which I really like, and as a young person, I had a telescope and I loved looking up at the sky looking at the moon and things like that.
This is just a wonderful tool for people like me who are interested in space and the planets. You can get some really nice photography, some nice images that are as accurate as we can make them of Mars in this case, but there’s also in addition to Mars. There’S also, Google moon. So again it’s searchable. You can even find the locations of the lunar landings and the different launch sites, and things like that. So there actually are quite a few landmarks on the oonh and you can search for them or discover them by browsing.
Lots of fun things you can do with this part of Google Earth. For now, though, I’m going to return to Earth and show you the last few tools that we have across the top of the screen in Google Earth, one that is very useful and I’ve used. This several times is the ruler tool.
If you click here where it says show ruler, it gives you the ability, with this window, popped open to measure anything on the earth. So, for example, I could measure the United States, continental United States from west to east, okay and notice that the line kind of curves along the surface of the earth as you move so pretty cool. I can click and drag and it tells me it measures that distance and it tells me what it is. Two thousand six hundred and sixty five point eight miles. If you don’t want to in miles, you can change it to yards, you can change it to meters.
Kilometers feet inches whatever you want to do. That’S listed here, centimeters, so kind of a fun tool, especially for teachers and others that might need to measure or teach units of measurement, and things like that. You can also do a measurement along a path. Okay.
So, for example, I could just click, click click keep clicking and it’s measuring along that path, kind of a fun and useful and educational tool. That’S built into Google Earth. We also have the ability to send an email of a screenshot or the current view or a place mark.
That’S here at the left or a folder full of place marks. So that’s a nice built-in email option. You can print images that you see here.
You can save pictures okay, so I can zoom in and basically take a snapshot. Take a picture tell it where to save it till it. What the name is? Click Save and you’re going to have a picture that you can use in presentations or slideshows or whatever.
It might be. The last button that we have here at the top is view in Google Maps, and you can see what happens. It opens up a window and it shows the location that you’re looking at in Google Maps. So I hope that this video has helped to add to your knowledge of Google Earth. These are some nice tools across the top, but there’s even more that you could learn about Google Earth. So please watch my other videos, including the one on how to make your own Google Earth tours thanks for watching this video and please consider subscribing to my youtube channel for more videos about technology for teachers and students and watch for a new video, at least every Monday, .