Whether you’re brand new to Google Earth or have been using it for years, it’s still fun to just play with the vast resources they offer. One of my favorite ways to have fun learning about the world is using a simple tool that sits in the middle of the bar on the left side of image window.
As shown in the screenshot above, the button looks like a die showing the five side and is called I’m Feeling Lucky. Click it and Google Earth takes you to a random location selected from their huge database.
The location might be a city, an island, a river, a mountain, or a local landmark.
In this example, we landed at the Augsburger Puppenkiste, a puppet theater in a German city. From here you can use the navigation tools to explore the area, including any Street View images that are available.
The information box at the left will tell you a little bit about this landmark and link you to a Wikipedia article to read more about it.
If you have created one or more Google Earth Projects (which is another and much larger topic), click the Add to project button to add this location to one of them.
Clicking the “People also explored” link will take you to other interesting locations in the same area.
In addition to just being a lot of fun, I’m Feeling Lucky makes a great conversation starter in class. Or you could have students go to a random location, write about what they find, and then share what they discovered.
However you want to use it, open Google Earth, click I’m Feeling Lucky and go exploring.
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