Cool places you have visited to help me out with a my class I teach..

[cougarfreak]

Ok, I do this activity 2-3 times a week. I do this because some of the kids I have will probably never leave the area in which I live. I teach in a semi rural school, where some kids come from low income housing, and some kids come for million dollar homes and up. So I have an extremely diverse range of students, both socioeconomically, and have minority (only about 5-7%) students as well. I teach freshman geography. What I do is I pick a place (city or smaller), and "visit" the place on google earth. I do a 4-5 slide powerpoint show with some of the cool attractions, or historical facts about the place we are visiting. Examples of places I have done are Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Scotland with Loch Ness, the Abbey Firth, and William Wallace Monument, etc. etc. What are some of the cool places you have visited or around where you live, and some of the specific attractions you have seen? I usually do 20-30 per semester, and I'd like some fresh ideas.

[Izulde]

Istanbul - The Blue Mosque was my favorite, but there's also Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace (the last of which I think is overrated)

Granada - The Alhambra. Can't beat a big palace complex up on a mountain. :)

[Cringer]

All the best places to see are covered in the Vacation movies, show them those while I think of some lesser things to show them.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Las Vegas has the Strip, Hoover Dam, and Grand Canyon which all show up well on Google Earth.

Niagara Falls shows up well on Google Earth as does Victoria Falls.

Plenty of neat locations in Egypt with places like the Pyramids, Sphinx, and Valley of the Kings.

Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada would be a good Google location. It's a lake that is fed by 7 different glaciers. A good side discussion would be how the glaciers feeding the lake have been in regression in recent years.

The island of Bora Bora in Tahiti is an interesting location. There's a barrier reef that surrounds the island. You could discuss the formation of the island by the now-extinct volcano and the formation of the reef surrounding the island.

Places in China like Bejing and Hong Kong are extremely crowded and provide great visuals of what that looks like. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam and just how much land will be covered by the lake when it eventually forms is a good discussion as well.

Showing the footprint of the World Trade Center Towers and the Statue of Liberty are good ones as well.

[MikeVic]

Doesn't Dubai have a bunch of man-made islands shaped like a palm tree and the world? I haven't seen then in Google Earth, but those might be cool to see and talk about.

[Lorena]

Yosemite in No. Cal.

[JPhillips]

Chongqing was the provisional capitol of China during WW2 and also the base for The Flying Tigers. There are some good pictures on Google Earth of the area. I can provide some guidance if you choose to use this idea.

Beijing is also a good place with lots of great pictures. You can show the Forbidden City and some of the Olympic venues. The Forbidden City is incredible especially when you can see how big the entire complex is.

[Lorena]

this thread might help cougarfreak: http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=49935

[SnDvls]

you took my Brazil one....I'll always remember that trip and probally never go back, but glad I got to go.

[Butter]

Visiting Mount Vesuvius and the remains of Pompeii was pretty cool.

[johnnyshaka]

Rome and Vatican City show up very well.

I grew up in Ottawa and there is lots of cool stuff to see there. For starters, the Parliament Buildings and surrounding stuff is pretty neat as is the Rideau Canal...a man made waterway that extends thoughout the city and even freezes over for the winter to form the longest skating surface in the world.

[path12]

Santorini might be a good one, I haven't looked but I'd think the caldera would show up nicely on Google Earth, and you've also got the speculation about Atlantis....plus it's friggin' gorgeous.

[CamEdwards]

Visiting Mount Vesuvius and the remains of Pompeii was pretty cool.

Lucky bastard. My wife's best friend now lives on the outskirts of Naples and keeps inviting us over to visit, but the cost of airline tickets for the family is a little staggering.

I would second the Grand Canyon, though seeing it from the top down might not be as impressive as seeing it firsthand. The Washington, D.C. area is pretty neat, especially if you scroll down from the National Mall and follow the George Washington Parkway to Mount Vernon. Along the way you can stop in Old Town Alexandria and point out the streets that Washington surveyed as a young man.

[DaddyTorgo]

machu pichu is awesome (and I have a ton of pics you could use)

[Groundhog]

Japan has a ton of interesting sites (Mt Fuji shows up nicely on Google Earth), and Himeji Castle, west of Kyoto, is probably the most awe-inspiring place I've ever been.

[Klinglerware]

Rice terraces, Banaue, Philippines
Halsema Highway, Philippine Cordillera
Grand Canal, Venice, Italy
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Looking down on Hong Kong from Victoria Peak
Bled, Slovenia - Lake Bled, Bled Castle
Trakoscan Castle, Northern Croatia--the surrounding countryside is stunning

As far as European cities go, Budapest, Istanbul, and Copenhagen are among my favorites. Stockholm and Moscow might be interesting to google map, because of how they are laid out...

[Marc Vaughan]

Bern - capital of switzerland
Only country capital I've ever been to without an airport, amazingly beautiful location (you can literally walk out of town into the mountainside).

(oh and I'd also recommend Venice in Italy)

[Marc Vaughan]

Oh one other thing which might be 'interesting' for them - instead of famous places why not 'match' American cities to their namesakes in Europe as most seem to have them (even New York has a New York village in England :D).

[Izulde]

Can't believe I forgot Venice. Yeah, throw that on the list too :)

[ISiddiqui]

Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, is an absolutely stunning example of Mughal architecture. It is a massive mosque built in the late 17th Century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badshahi_Masjid

[VPI97]

Suomenlinna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenlinna) in Helskini - A naval fortress built upon six islands in the bay. Construction started in 1748 and possession of the fortress (and Helsinki) has went from Sweden to Russia to Finland throughout the years. Cool place to spend a day.

If you like architecture and historical sights, Helsinki is a neat place to visit...something else that may be interesting to students is the whole 23.5 hours of daylight in the summer months.

[JW]

Have you done New Orleans? They will know the Superdome, which is easy to find, but the real interest is in showing all the water around New Orleans, and things like all the ship traffic on the Mississippi River. Might be itnteresting to relate it to Katrina. And just tracking the course of the river down to the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing spectacular, but might be an interesting lesson.

[Carman Bulldog]

Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. Extremely cool, and by that I mean freezing cold. But it does have a somewhat historic landmark in the Inuksuk (or Inukshuk if you will). You can google some pictures but I also have a couple from when I was there that I could send you (including a brand new H2 Hummer which stuck out like a sore thumb).

It is also the hometown of Nashville Predator Jordin Tootoo, but I doubt few of your student's follow hockey, even if it is the team closest to your proximity.

[cougarfreak]

Thanks, these are all tremendous ideas. Keep 'em coming!

[JediKooter]

Amsterdam...not because of the 'alternate' activities that you can practice, but, the history and the museums are awesome, the people, the food, just an all around awesome place to visit.

Oh and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

[Neon_Chaos]

I was in Beijing in May.

Sites to see:

The Forbidden City - The entire thing is huge. It's an enormous complex, and a testament to how powerful the ancienct Chinese Emperors were.

The Summer Palace - Okay, imagine the Forbidden city... but with a giant freaking lake in the middle.

The Great Wall of China - Talking about huge things... what do you get when you have a never ending supply of labor and a threat in your borders? The great wall. I still am awestruck at how they were able to build the wall in such a way that it traversed the lowest valleys and the high mountain ridges in an endless array of bricks.

And several sights in the Philippines:

The Banaue Rice Terraces - 2000 years ago, natives basically carved steps into the mountainslopes in order to grow crops in an usuitable landscape.

Puerto Princesa and Boracay - the best goddamn beaches in the entire world. ;)

[Rizon]

The ghetto. Watch kids juke crack and gank each other's shit for Nikes.

[sterlingice]

Istanbul - The Blue Mosque was my favorite, but there's also Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace (the last of which I think is overrated) Istanbul is a great one that not many people think of

SI

[saldana]

i have some awesome pictures from a 4 seat cessna of the glaciers in the mountains outside Juneau.

and although i have never been there, Angkor Wat is high on my list of places to see....largest religious building in the world

[Leonidas]

Cappadocia Turkey is the most unusual place I have visited. It has the most unique geographical features I have ever seen. There's also an entire underground city there that was built by Christians to hide from Romans and several Christian Chapels built into cliff faces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia

My favorite place I've ever been though was Florence Italy. The best collection of Renaissance Art I've seen as well as the home of Michelangelo and Dante.

[OldGiants]

Cappadocia Turkey is the most unusual place I have visited. It has the most unique geographical features I have ever seen. There's also an entire underground city there that was built by Christians to hide from Romans and several Christian Chapels built into cliff faces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia

My favorite place I've ever been though was Florence Italy. The best collection of Renaissance Art I've seen as well as the home of Michelangelo and Dante.

I second Florence.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa looks quite good in Googol Earth.

After that, you can take them to the Leaning Tower of Pizza on Route 22 in Watchung NJ.

[chesapeake]

Add my vote to those for Istanbul. It is a beautiful and fascinating city.

The most remote place I've ever been is probably Lake Issykul in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the largets saltwater lakes in the world and, because of the salinity, it is the most amazing shade of blue.