Google SketchUp

Before the Google Geo Teacher Institute I knew very little about Google SketchUp. I downloaded it at some point a while back but didn't quite grasp it so I put it on a back burner. After an intensive breakout session earlier this week, I feel like I have a MUCH better understanding of SketchUp and am eager to use it in the classroom. It incorporates math, geospatial reasoning, geography, chromatography and many other educational concepts. 

My session was taught by Allyson McDuffie, the manager of the SketchUp for Education Program at Google. She kept things moving very fast and inundated us with tons of relevant information.

Here is just a little bit of what I learned:

This is "Susan."

Susan Willard is a Google Engineer who worked on the original Google Sketchup. Each time a new version of SketchUp comes out a new model is included to give designers a relative sense of scale. She’s the first female to be the default SketchUp model! Version 8 is out now. 

The "push/pull tool" is designed to expand or decrease the volume of geometry in models.

SketchUp is primary a “click and release” program, generally it does NOT require clicks and drags. The push/pull tool is what SketchUp is known for and it is a patented tool.

My doghouse - complete with a roller coaster and of course, a mini schnauzer.

We spent time in class building a doghouse, which was mainly for practice using the tools, and then we learned how to model a real building that actually exists. It was challenging to learn a program as complex as Google SketchUp in a single day but I walked away realizing that like Scratch, SketchUp has a low bar but a very high ceiling. It is easy to begin using and there are many basic functions, but users can take SketchUp to many levels and go very deep.