Understanding geographic changes has become an indispensable element in geography education. Describing and analyzing changes in space require spatial thinking skills emphasized in geography curriculum but often pose challenges for secondary school students. This school‐based research targets a specific strand of spatial thinking skills and investigates whether students using geospatial technology, such as Google Earth, are able to develop their thinking about spatio‐temporal changes. An experiment was conducted in a Singaporean secondary school in which skill development was framed within the formal geography curriculum. It compared the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches: learning with Google Earth versus traditional instruction without the use of such a technology. Findings indicate that the use of Google Earth significantly increased students' ability to identify spatial and temporal changes and analyse these changes. Qualitative data complemented the results by showing that Google Earth could offer students more opportunities to observe and infer changes, thus facilitating their understanding about the dynamic and the complex nature of changes. Lay Description What is already known about this topic: The advantages of Google Earth utilized as a learning tool over traditional teaching means are obvious regarding building up skills in spatial thinking. Many studies have suggested that incorporating Google Earth into the classroom could help facilitate spatial thinking from the perspective of curriculum design and implementation. What this paper adds: Empirical evidence on the learning effects of using Google Earth in secondary geography education on students' spatial and temporal skills and higher order thinking is provided. Three factors that potentially influence the effects of utilizing geospatial technologies on developing spatial thinking are highlighted. The roles Google Earth plays to assist the development of students' spatial and temporal thinking are identified. Implications for practice and policy: Our findings support the policy to include geospatial technologies as an integral part of school curriculum for effective teaching and learning of spatial thinking. Teachers should be encouraged to incorporate geospatial technologies in classroom to promote spatial skills and higher order thinking. Improvement of the technology‐based learning environment may benefit from considering students' prior knowledge on spatial concepts, the sequence of introducing spatial skills, the type of spatial stimulus used and the depth of technology‐based learning activities.