Map Scales and Google Earth

Do you remember breaking out your atlas to measure how far it was from your school to your house? Or maybe from your favorite vacation spot to your house?  Of course there was also the obligatory worksheet that had perfectly manicured streets with geometric houses, a school, and a library.  All different ways to learn that on the map, the distance is not real...it is a scale.

Now we're so used to using some kind of GPS (Google Maps is my personal favorite) that the concept of needing a scale is completely foreign now.  Even the kids know how to use a GPS app. The skill of reading a flap map, an atlas, is seemingly obsolete!  But, nope, it's still part of the curriculum - and I'm not arguing whether or not it's important, I'm just stating that it is what it is.

So, in technology the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about map scales (to compliment the kiddos 4th grade curriculum).  Since we have computers and not paper maps, we broke out Google Earth and since we have GPS that gives us EXACT distance, we worked on estimating.

The image of the kiddos searching on Google Earth and getting their exact distances from point A to point B (we also brought in some Nevada Geography and measured the important places in Nevada) was amazing!  They are pros!  Then the image of the kiddos using the rules on the monitor was quite funny.  Who ever imaged that we would use a ruler on a computer monitor?!  Not me!!

They really seemed to enjoy the exploration and realizing that a few inches can be anything from a few miles to hundreds (or more) of miles!!

Up next...longitude and latitude?!  Any ideas?!