Traci Gardner
NCTE Inbox
Looking for ways to combine digital literacy skills, research, literary study, reading and writing for the web, and more? All you need is Google Lit Trips! This one tool can provide cross-curricular connections, literary exploration, and 21st century literacy skills. It’s simple. Literary Maps + Google Earth = a great classroom resource!
Hall Davidson
Director, Discovery Educator Network
GoogleLitTrips.com is flat out a fantastic project with deep examples of the way technology can be meaningfully integrated into the curriculum. Too often in technology there is a lamentable lag between promise and classroom realization. Jerome Burg closed that gap with GoogleLitTrips. Classical works, modern literature, and wordless primary illustrations are given new life, new access, and a critical new perspective for classrooms. Media, literature, and the earth itself converge here in one of the most exemplary technology integration sites on the educational world wide web. The project's bonus feature is that Jerome himself is a resource who will help you learn from and build GoogleLit projects. By all means, visit, share, and build!
Jill Castek and Jessica Mangelson
Book Links, American Library Association
Lit Trips are virtual expeditions created by teachers and their students for use in classrooms. These free resources offer a unique reading experience that pairs the exploration of geography with great literature. Google Lit Trips enhance popular stories at all grade levels by taking students on a new form of road trip. Readers will enjoy visualizing scenes and activating their imaginations as texts come to life in full-color imagery.
Will Richardson
“Learner in Chief” at Connective Learning and the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.
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.
Jane Krauss
educator and coauthor
Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age
Google Lit Trips is one of the most coherent and friendly applications of Google Earth for education yet. Jerome "mashes up" GE with great image and information enhancements and then offers literature trips in an elegant Web package that teachers and students will be excited to use and emulate. I can see a community of practice developing around Google Lit Trips, and how much fun is that!
Brenda Dyck
Brenda’s Blog, Education World
I admit it -- I am a virtual eavesdropper. I read the blogs and wikis of teachers who use the virtual venue to wonder out loud and share their ideas about how new technologies can be used to extend knowledge. It was on a blog that I first read about a new form of digital storytelling called place-based storytelling, an adaptation of digital storytelling that combines digital mapping tools with the power of the narrative.
There, I also learned about Jerome Burg, a high school teacher from Livermore, California, who created a brilliant project that combines Google Earth with great works of literature. Google Lit Trips gives new meaning to the term novel study by turning that age-old language arts tool into a multidimensional learning experience for students. Through Google Lit Trips, novels like The Grapes of Wrath, Night, and Homer’s Odyssey come alive for students by bringing all three senses into the learning experience. Burg believes the success of that application of Google Earth hinges on its multi-sensory appeal and its ability to put kids in the middle of the story, not just at the periphery.
Anne Bubnic
California Technology Assistance Project
If you want a think-outside-the-box experience, spend some time with the Grapes of Wrath kml file at GOOGLE LIT TRIPS. The podcast is excellent! The photos are exquisite. So many sources! Even the link to Google define: company store – very clever. And videos tucked inside the exploration are like added jewels. The sum of the parts ...all combining to create a rich multidimensional experience. I loved all the deep questions and the way you’ve created a non-linear exploration within a linear journey...with lots of opportunities to delve deeper and extend knowledge.
Lynell Burmark, Ph.D.
Author, Visual Literacy
What a ‘novel’ idea! One more homerun for veteran English teacher and tech guru Jerome Burg! GoogleLit Trips give a visual context to great works of literature, as they map out the adventures of characters from several works of great travel literature. Like everything on Google Earth, they are eerily addictive. Add to that Burg's masterful bank of leading questions that relate the emotions and the actions of characters to what's happening today in students' lives and you have a recipe for addiction to great literature! Students will internalize the conflicts and the passions because they are traveling through the stories right along with the characters. I only hope that this site continues to expand and that other literature teachers around the globe join Burg and co-content creator Matthew Hart to contribute as well as use these materials with their students. Every class deserves a compelling introduction to great literature. Thanks to Jerome's creativity, talent, and dedication (and the awesome Google Earth) that can now be possible.
Roland O'Daniel
Educational Programs Consultant, Collaborative for Teaching and Learning
The adaptation of Google Earth for the travels of the characters of a book, seems like such a great way of getting the students to activate more schema, create incredibly in-depth scenes, and make the text come to life. When working with struggling readers, they need help developing those scenes and activating their own imaginations. What a great way of using their own schema (interactive web apps) to develop their understanding of traditional literacy.
Nancy Sharoff
Google Certified Teacher (NY)
5th/6th Grade Math, Adjunct Professor, College of New Rochelle, Touro College, NYIT, NYSUT
What a fabulous undertaking! I'm spreading the word to all my colleagues up in the High School and will be referring to it when I do any professional development training to show the power and true integration of technology with curriculum.
Stefan Geens
What literature lends itself especially well to georeferencing? Travel literature, of course. And there is no better travel literature than The Aeneid and The Odyssey. Both are available at GoogleLit Trips, a wonderfully single-minded website devoted to turning great works of literature into KML files
