When I was 9 years old my dad had a paid sabbatical (so unfortunate those rarely exists anymore) and at the time I never realized how fortunate I was as a child for my parents to take me and my two siblings on a ROAD trip, yes by car, from Austin to Boston one summer. During my first year of teaching,  I was always shocked when I taught a global concept (land forms, climates, weather, temperature, tides, seasons, food chains) and how many of my students had very little knowledge about what was the beyond their bubble of Fort Worth. I frequently found myself Google Searching images or scrambling to find a YouTube videos trying to show them things that they weren't fortunate to experience yet. I would show them an image and say , "This boys and girls is the Grand Canyon, it is located in Arizona and it covers 1,902 square miles" and they would nod their heads and I would stand there with my hands on my hips saying to myself "Yeah okay... you don't get it.. you just see a picture... you can't fully imagine how spectacular it is!" 

Well...This past year at TCEA  (Texas Computer Education Association) I went to a fantastic presentation (ShapeUp Your Geometry Lessons - Blaire Boghetich and Kristi Kellum) that presented  how you could use Google Earth to show students bird-eye views of famous landmarks and students could take measurements to calculate the perimeter and area. While I sat in the front row, they demonstrated the lesson: they typed in "Statue of Liberty" and then click on "Search" and the Earth started to rotate and it zoomed in on North Ameraica, then the United States, then the North East and then New York and then NYC I had an Oprah "Aha" moment... "I CAN TAKE MY STUDENTS EVERYWHERE!!!" Since TCEA I have used GoogleEarth at least once a week to take my students on virtual field trips and it has allowed them to make global connections.