Google Earth- An activity for Biology

After fiddling around with Google Earth for a while flying around the world, I thought of possible uses for it in Biology. The one topic I could see myself using it in is Ecology, it could certainly enhance some parts of the unit and allow for a more constructivist and applied approach to learning about human population dynamics or different types of habitats.

An activity could be as follows:

1. Each group of students gets assigned a National Park around the world (eg. Kruger National Park, Sidi Toui, Chiquibul, Everglades).
   
2. They need to search the coordinates for the park, and find them on Google Earth.
   
3. They mark the spot with a placemark, explore the area and take a screenshot indicative of their habitat.
   
4. They look at terrain, weather, images, videos to infer the type of wildlife that would live there, and answer questions such as "What abiotic factors would come into play in an environment like this?", "What are the biggest threats that wildlife in this kind of environment face?" etc.

The entire project could take the shape of a class wiki or even offer the possibility of collaboration between several classes. Each group would make a page for their habitat including all geographic as well as ecological information, include links, photos, videos...
























Going back to my ed-tech guiding principles though, I wonder whether this is a tool I could realistically use in my teaching. Would it be a worthy time investment? Would it help the students understand the topic better than they would without it? Would they be able to do something with this tool they weren't able to do before in terms of building on their subject knowledge? I think the answers to these questions would depend very much on that particular group of students. Might be good as an extra credit project for the more motivated students in the class.