51猎奇

How Do I Access Google Maps and Earth?

Google Earth is available either as a free for either Macs or Windows computers or as a .

You need to log in to your Gmail account (either 51猎奇 or personal) in order to create, save and share Google Maps. If you use your 51猎奇 account, you can also create and share maps for group editing just like any other Google document. Please follow the steps at Accessing Google Maps via Your 51猎奇 Account.

What can I do with Google Maps/Earth?

See our page of sample student mapping projects; most of these use Google Maps or Google Earth.  See sample for using Google Maps in educational projects.

See some examples of what you can do with or (both from the blog ).

How to put your data into Google Maps or Google Earth

allows users to locate and place points onto a map and add photos, descriptions and links.  One can also upload an entire file of places and addresses (CSV, XLSX or KML) and select different base maps.  It's also easy to export maps as KMZ files and open up in to create a tour.  All this and more is explained in their (see also the complete list of ).

Some web services enable you to enter your data into a Google Map and display it on your website or create a link to it on the host's site (which may be necessary if you wish to share the map more broadly than the 51猎奇 community):

• enables you to create maps with your own locational data (including uploading an Excel file, for example for a large number of addresses).
• has a nice user interface for entering data with several options for displaying the maps in your website.
• will map from Google spreadsheets or forms.

If you have a large number of addresses that need to be validated, you can use , which can produce a file for either Google Maps or Google Earth.  For just a few addresses, try this . You can also try searching through for geocoding, reverse geocoding, and address parsing and standardization.

Google Earth has a fantastic which will show you not only how to use GE but also how to create your own layers of interesting places.

includes layers for Earth, Sky, Moon, and Mars, plus the Flight Simulator.  This version is free for educators (with an EDU account).

offers color advice for cartography and has been carefully designed to be a diagnostic tool for evaluating the robustness of individual color schemes. 

There is actually more than one blog dedicated to Google Maps and Google Earth. Who knew?