To develop skill at reading the landscape and to understand the earth better we will use Google Earth and portable GPS to keep close track of where we go every day.  For most PCs and Macs it is now a simple thing to transfer GPS locations to Google Earth. This facilitates placing all your field experience on a geographic base map. Every outside researcher should use this. Everyone will find it useful for living on earth, and knowing where we are and where we have been. We must all watch what is happening on earth--it is vital info.  And knowing where this happened is critical info. Location of earth observations is critical for understanding and interpreting them. Map!

The most valuable aspect of using GPS and Google Earth is to find things of interest outside, easily and quickly.  We aim to do this as part of teaching every day.  EarthCache is a huge tool to help with this.  We should all use it!!