Using Google Images, Maps and Earth to teach critical thinking

Decolonising the curriculum and beyond

Abstract

In this article I outline how Google Images and Google Earth can be used to visualise to students the constructed nature of legal and political concepts in law and international relations. The method consists of asking students to critically discuss the gendered and racialised nature of Google results when googling such legal, geographical, and political concepts as “drug trafficker”, “international development”, “Great Britain”, or “Brazil”, as well as discovering the different layers of natural, cultural and political boundaries and connections that crisscross the world by using Google Earth.  

As an innovative method for technology-assisted teaching this method can be used in both face-to-face and virtual learning situations to teach students critical thinking in a way that is both interactive and multimodal, while drawing on technology that students know from their everyday lives. The method can be applied creatively by both students and teachers, and ideally should allow for students to become their own critical researchers, able to uncover the ways in which apparently neutral concepts are shaped by and shape global structures of inequality.