So this is pretty cool…take the great piece of literature that you’re studying and plot out the travels of the characters on Google Earth and then, of course, share the goodness. This GoogleLit Trips site is put together by Jerome Burg in California and features Google Earth downloads for Candide, MacBeth, The Odyssey and The Aeneid among others. Just save the .kmz file to your computer, then open them up in Earth. He also has a document that shows how to format the bookmarks to add relevant information about he book.
I need more time…
(Thanks to Anne Bubnic for the pointer.)
Technorati Tags: GoogleEarth, literature, teaching
The very first classroom activity that I did with GE was map the route of the girls in “Rabbit Proof Fence”. I teach on an integrated team and my English teacher was reading the book with the students and I, the geography teacher, would take them on the journey of what the girls were expereincing as they made their way through brutal western Austalia on foot. It was both captivating and meaningful… and my infatuation with GE began…it’s wonderful to see that someone has formalized these lit trips because I believe strongly in ‘placing’ novels and stories so that kids can wrap their brains around not just the word, but the locations that inspire them!
Hey Will – Just demoing blogging for some teachers.
I wonder if this can be modified to add some new dimension to geo caching?
Will,
I had the great pleasure of spending the day sitting next to Jerome at the first-ever Google Teacher Academy. When he first started working up his LitTrips, I was very excited, and he let me demo it to some teachers I was showing Google Earth to (you would not believe how many teachers DON’T know about Google Earth!).
I am hoping to work up one middle school level novel for Jerome this summer.
It’s great to see Jerome’s site and his work getting some recognition. He’s passionate about doing things that really work in education, and I think his students are lucky to have him.
In other news, if you (or any of your readers) joins the Google Earth community and looks under the section for students and teachers (education), there are a lot of people out there creating great stuff and sharing it quite generously. I found some great Ancient Egypt stuff and a few Washington DC overlays as well. The creativity and generosity of these folks is commendable.
Cheers,
Diane
San Jose, CA
P.S.
Regarding geocaching, there is already a kml file available from geocaching.com that I use frequently when I want to just fly over an area in GE and see what caches are there. There’s even a program out there called Google Earth Tweaker that lets you further modify it to revise the icons for caches you’ve found, caches you’ve placed, and disabled caches, which the original file from gc.com does not enable you to do.
You’ll need to be a premium (paid) member of geocaching.com to take full advantage.
Diane
(Dowbiggin in the geocaching world)
Hi. I’m the guy that made the Aeneid, Odyssey, and Macbeth trips for Jerome Burg’s Google Lit Trips website. Thank you all for the kind words, and we would love to get submissions. One woman above did a trip for “Rabbit-Proof Fence” and that would be a cool addition. Visit googlelittrips.com for the submission process.
Thanks for the info about GoogleLit Trips. It might fit into the project I’m directing called CultureQuest (http://www.culturequest.us) where students do investigations about aspects of culture of a particular country and using Google Earth to create the travels will be very exciting for the teachers and students. Students around the globe are involved in the CultureQuest project.
I would like to try this with ancient Egypt – starting today. I’m thinking it’s like a road trip in Google Earth form. Is that correct?