When word of a natural disaster is spreading from somewhere in the world or announced on the news, students can use Google Earth to conduct an investigation of the disaster's effect.
From A Very Short List: Based on a chilling contingency speech written for Richard Nixon titled "In the Event of Moon Disaster," this nostalgia-laced 15-minute radio broadcast, courtesy of American Public Media, tells its story entirely through the radio communication between Mission Control and the astronauts. Seconds after tuning in, you'll witness Apollo 11's crash landing on the moon. Buzz and Neil are okay, but the lunar module is destroyed, and the men are running out of oxygen. The story is haunting in its plausibility, and despite the fact that the astronauts sound less like test pilots from the Air Force than hipsters from Brooklyn, the quality writing and sound effects bring this macabre counterfactual deliciously close to reality.