O uso do Google Earth na Educação Ambiental: areas contaminadas

This article presents some reflections on the possibilities of environmental education discussing the contaminated areas and its relationship to daily life, based on the data analysis and various information sources, mainly the List of Contaminated Areas of the Environmental Company of the São Paulo State (Cetesb), an environmental management manual and published materials made available by public agencies, institutes and associations. We discuss the adoption of a mapping method as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for the presentation of the phenomenon using Google Earth. It provides interactive satellite images with different perspectives: vertical and oblique. Besides this, Google Earth combines different layers with many geographic information that provides a strategic resource to research and education. Because of that, this tool based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the processing of data in order to afford different representations of the phenomenon, and therefore different approaches, including the perception of the urban environmental problems in the urban space. In addition, In addition, other related issues can be approached using this software and exploring the spatiality, the interactivity and the multiscale tool. Among the main closing remarks, there is technology as a promising way in the information process and environmental awareness. Finally, we discuss some ways to be followed in continuity and improvement of this work.