The Kirby Muxloe village website

Have you recently viewed the vast image improvements on Google Earth and especially of the village? What used to be a green blur now has some good definition.

Whilst some images show their age by either a marked presence or absence, for example The Forest Lodge Hotel which is now a new build housing development

or what is now One Stop shop on Main St. but actually shows the purple front that was Hartleys it is still possible to submit the street address and find the field/area or post code where they in fact are or were.

This is a marvelous piece of technology that surely could be of immense use to teachers of geography. Gone are the days of a flat map on paper, this Internet facility not only has roads and towns, cities and rivers but countries and their borders, oceans and deserts and even 3D images of landmarks like the Eiffel Tower.

The cricket pitch looks quite different, almost like a helicopter landing pad.

The Library. Must be at a weekend - no school-run cars.

The moat looks so much wider too.

If you have used a Global Positioning System on a recent journey or walk with the dog, you can also use it to track your movements. You could take photographs on your travels of places of interest, such as the castle and geo-tag the images to allow other users to see what is pinpointed at that particular place on Earth.
You can download Google Earth here.