tech expert module

8/8/2019 Tech Expert Module

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Technology Expert Module:

Google Lit Trips

By: Laura Bagbey

Overview: Google Earth and Google Lit TripsGoogle Earth is a downloadable computer program called a geobrowser that allowsanyone access to the worlds geographic information at the click of a mouse. There are threeversions of Google EarthFree, Pro, and EnterprisePro and Enterprise have more capabilitiesbut all three provide the public with satellite and aerial imagery of the earth, third party data,tools for creating new data points, and the ability to import GPS information. As Educators wewill be using the free version of Google Earth which can be found and downloaded fromhttp://www.google.com/earth/index.html. In recent years, educators in many disciplines havediscovered that Google Earth can be used in the classroom to create engaging and interactiveactivities that are appropriate in a wide range of subject areas including geography, history,literature, math and more.

As a Secondary English Educator, I will be focusing on the concept of Google Lit Tripsand how they are applied to the High School English classroom. Google Lit Trips is a projectdeveloped as part of the Google Certified Teachers program that allows students and teachers toutilize the information and technology of Google Earth to explore literature in a new anddifferent ways. The Google Lit Trip can be applied to most any piece of literature even if it isonly to discuss the author or the context for the authors writing, however because of the natureof Google Earth and the notion of a literary trip, the concept appears to be best applied toliterature that is set in history, discussed in relation to historical events, or is centered aroundsome kind of trip, quest, or journey.

How to Get Started With Google Earth and Google Lit Trips

First, students and/or teachers must download the free, easy to install version of Google Earthfrom http://www.google.com/earth/index.html.
http://www.google.com/earth/index.htmlhttp://www.google.com/earth/index.htmlhttp://www.google.com/earth/index.htmlhttp://www.google.com/earth/index.html


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Before teachers and students can even begin to implement or design a Google Lit Tripthey must first familiarize themselves with the basic functions and user interface of GoogleEarth. Google Earth provides many resources such as the Student Google Earth User Guidewhich is designed to help users become familiar with its most commonly used functions.Another helpful link is the Google Earth Tip Sheet,which is a one-page summary of some of themost frequently used Google Earth functions. Students and/or teachers should definitely lookthese websites over before getting started.

But dont get scared yet!While a basic understanding ofGoogle Earth is necessary tocreate and utilize a Google LitTrip, you dont have to be a techexpert to know how to useGoogle Earth or a Google LitTrip. The simplest function inGoogle Earth is the Fly tofeature which allows you tosearch for any location in theworld by typing in its address.Explore the program, zoom inand out, search for your house oryour school, have fun!

Anybody recognize this building? This is William and Marys new School of Educationin Williamsburg, Virginia!

The next step for students and teachers is to explore the Google Lit Trips home pagewhich can be found by typing www.googlelittrips.org into your web browser.

When you arrive at the site, youwill notice that there are severaldifferent selections across the top K-5,6-8, 9-12, Hi Ed, and Downloads etc.When you click on these links, you willbe able to see and download a numberGoogle Lit Trips that have been madeby other educators.

I encourage students andteachers alike to explore the site, and

download several of the pre-made LitTrips to get a good feel for what a LitTrip is and how other educators haveutilized Google Earth to contextualize

literature.
http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/google_earth/UserGuide.htmlhttp://serc.carleton.edu/files/sp/library/google_earth/examples/google-earth-tip-sheet.v2.pdfhttp://serc.carleton.edu/files/sp/library/google_earth/examples/google-earth-tip-sheet.v2.pdfhttp://www.googlelittrips.org/http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/google_earth/UserGuide.htmlhttp://serc.carleton.edu/files/sp/library/google_earth/examples/google-earth-tip-sheet.v2.pdfhttp://www.googlelittrips.org/


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Kate Reavey at Peninsula College provides two useful YouTube tutorials called Google Lit Trips:Part 1 of 2 and Google Lit Trips: Part 2 of 2 that can be found:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPiiAqXKy3g

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY55CR8vslw&feature=relatedTeachersIf you are lucky enough to be teaching a unit on a book that has a pre-made Google Lit Trip, likeThe AeneidorThe Grapes of Wrath, you can download the trip and use it in your classroom. .Ihighly recommend that you thoroughly explore the information on the links and have a concreteidea of how you plan to use the Lit Trip before attempting to use a trip in class. There arethousands of links and other pieces of data that surround the pertinent information on the Lit Tripand if you are not careful the class can easily become unfocused or lost. You can also add yourown information to a ready-made Lit Trip to personalize it and tailor it to your classroom.

If you cannot or do not want to apply one of the ready-made Lit Trips to your classroom andwant to create your own, it is important to select a piece of literature that has a strong sense ofplace. A good story for a lit trip doesn't have to involve an epic or even a long journey. A

sense of place can come from either the historical significance of the setting or the centrality ofthe setting to the narrative, but it would be very difficult to create a lit trip for a book like GeorgeOrwells 1984 which lacks concrete textual references to factual places. To make your own LitTrip on Google Earth, it is important to start by thinking about the important locations orhistorical events in your text. Watch some of the Tutorials on the Google Lit Trips site that takeyou step-by-step through the process of adding place marks and embedding multimediainformation. Several of these tutorials can be found by clicking the Getting Started tab at the topof the Google Lit Trips home page. As you plan a lit trip, make sure you keep your students inmind and think about what information will help them to better understand the work andenvision places they have never seen. Remember, you can embed just about anything you createor find online into a Lit Trip so it is crucial that you have a goal in mind and keep your trip

focused.

Teaching The Aeneid by VirgilExample of the use of a ready-made Google Lit Trip

To use a ready-made Lit Trip such as The Aeneid, a teacher would simply downloadGoogle Earth (if that had not previously been done) then download the trip under the 9-12 tab onwww.googlelittrips.org called The Aeneidby Virgil.

The trip will pop up in Google Earth in a window that looks somewhat like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPiiAqXKy3ghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY55CR8vslw&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY55CR8vslw&feature=relatedhttp://www.googlelittrips.org/http://www.googlelittrips.org/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPiiAqXKy3ghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY55CR8vslw&feature=relatedhttp://www.googlelittrips.org/http://www.googlelittrips.org/


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From here a teacher can zoom in or click on the red arrows to get more detailedinformation about what happened at that location in the plot.

If when you try to click on a red arrowthe cursor looks like:

or like then you need to zoomin more because there are multiple linksunderneath that one spot from thatelevation.

Students

Students can create their own Google Lit trips in much the same way that a teacher wouldby exploring the locations characters visit, the proximity of the action of the text to importanthistorical events, the proximity of where the students live to the action of the text, the geographic

features that have an impact on the text, and much more.


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The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Example of a Student Created Google Lit Trip(By: Laura Bagbey)While Longfellows poem does not explicitly spell out the route of Paul Reveres journey,connecting the poem to his actual ride is an interesting interdisciplinary experience for students.

When a student sets out to create their own lit trip they should first do some research on PaulReveres ride make a list of the important locations

Paul Reveres House in Boston where Revere left at 10:00 pm Charleston where he borrowed a horse from his friend Deacon John Larkin and verified

that the local Sons of Liberty committee had seen the pre-arranged signals. Revereleaves Charleston at 11:00 pm

Paul Revere reaches Medford at 11:30 pm Paul Revere arrives at the Hancock-Clarke house at 12:05 am Revere, Dawes and Prescott captured by British on their way to Concord

(Information from http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/real.shtml )

Students would then locate these places in Googleearth and tag them by using the yellow pushpinbutton in the tools bar on the top of the window. Asindicated to the right.

Students can then create a folder by right clickingunder the Places tab, and click Add- Folder andtitle it Paul Reveres Ride. Students should thenplace the locations in the desired chronologicalorder in the folder.

Students can then connect the locations by using the add path button (location indicated on the

image below) and then dragging a path between each of the locations.

Here is anexample of a paththat I created totrack PaulReveres ride.Such an example

would be veryeasy for a highschool student tocreate.
http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/real.shtmlhttp://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/real.shtml


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To further relate the Google Lit trip, students could add quotations from the poem and historicinformation to each place marker by right clicking on the place name in the drop down menu andthen selecting properties.

To play your tour simply click on the play tour icon on the bottom right hand side of the placesmenu (above) and your trip will unfold before your eyes! Make sure to save your trip frequentlyand at the end to make sure that it is there when you return to Google Earth.

Classroom Examples

The Yellow Balloon Lit TripThe students in Mrs. Wilkes first grade class at Okapilco learned about places around the

world by reading The Yellow Balloon, building a vocabulary list pertaining to land and water,and then flying to those places by using Google Earth. By starting at their school in Georgia,placing markers all over the world, and putting text into the pop up boxes these first gradersmade their own interactive Lit Trip of the world.

To navigate to the video of Mrs. Wilkes class go towww.googlelittrips.orgthen click on the getting started tab,there are two how to videos that proceed this one. Click on the PowerPoint image to make the video pop up inWindows Media Player.

My Brother Sam is DeadLit Trip

Mrs. Carol LaRow has created an entire unit for her seventh grade classes at Iroquois&Van Antwerp Middle Schools based off of the historical novel My Brother Sam is dead.

This link provides the info on the school, teacher, and students that utilized this historical Lit Triphttp://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/lit.html

This link contains the downloadable Lit Trip itself and links PDF files of chapter questions, culminating activitiesand more http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/Sam/index.html
http://www.googlelittrips.org/http://www.googlelittrips.org/http://www.googlelittrips.org/http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/lit.htmlhttp://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/Sam/index.htmlhttp://www.googlelittrips.org/http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/lit.htmlhttp://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/Sam/index.html


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The Family ApartLit Trip

At Center Street Elementary School, in Williston Park, New York, Brusca teaches alibrary-research class for fourth and fifth graders. From talking with a fifth-grade teacher, shelearned that students would be reading The Family Apart. It tells the story of the Orphan Train,which relocated homeless and abandoned children during the mid-19th century.

Following the directions at the Google Lit Trips Web site, Brusca created a new lit trip forTheFamily Apart. She marked the path of the Orphan Train with a series of Google Earth"placemarks." Each one provides additional information, such as historical photographs, andposes a question for further student research.

In the school library, Brusca watched students virtually navigate the same journey the characterstook aboard the Orphan Train. "I've never seen them so intent," she says. "This got them todeeper learning." The fifth-grade teacher had students create a newspaper to document thejourney, which gave them another way to apply what they were learning.

above text quoted from the articleNew York Children Take a Google Lit Tripby Suzie Boss

Found on Edutopia at http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-

new-york

Notes on How to do a Google Lit TripOn this site you will not find a class utilizing a Google Lit Trip, but what you will find is

an excellent example of how a real teacher, Mr. Thomas Cooper at The Walker School utilizesand implements Google Lit Trips in his classroom and how other teachers might use them intheirs. This site is also linked to his class wiki page which has many other useful links totechnology resources.

http://whaleriderproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/How+to+do+a+Google+Lit+Trip.pdf

Assessing for the ClassroomPros

Allows students to locate a great deal of abstract information (aka literary settings) in a

concrete visual geographic or geospatial context

Google Lit Tours are an effective tool for integrating the study of multiple disciplines

Student designed Google Lit Tours create a forum for students to design and display their

own data

Allows students and teachers to work with third-party data available on the web

Cons Labels on the map can cause confusion when they become closely spaced at some zoom

levels.

While Google Earth has a timeline feature that allows a viewer to rewind geographic

time, the program only has images of the world from 2000 and cannot show the earthsphysical geography in the time of say, Macbeth.
http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-new-yorkhttp://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-new-yorkhttp://whaleriderproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/How+to+do+a+Google+Lit+Trip.pdfhttp://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-new-yorkhttp://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-new-yorkhttp://whaleriderproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/How+to+do+a+Google+Lit+Trip.pdf


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Much of the information on Google Earth is third party data, so it in necessary to use a

fair amount of spatial awareness and common sense to determine the accuracy ofinformation.

Considerations for Teachers A live connection to the internet is required to run Google Earth even after you have

downloaded the Lit Trip so make sure your classroom has an internet connection beforeplanning a lesson around a lit trip.

If you are going to ask students to create their own Lit Trip, you need to be sensitive to

the fact that some students may not have access to the internet at home. You need toeither provide choice or give the students time to work on their projects in school.

If you plan to use a school computer, check to make sure it is OK to download the

Google Earth software.

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