Google+Earth+Virtual+Field+Trips+Literature+Tie-ins

toc =Google Earth Virtual Field Trips: Literature Tie-ins=

Presenter: Debbie Lugar Time: 11:30 - 12:15 Room: 225 Contact: debbie_lugar@etownschools.org

__Description of Presentation__
Find out how to get your students excited about literature by exploring the actual settings of novels and stories. Follow the travels of Odysseus, Huckleberry Finn, and others. Go to Verona, Italy, to see Juliet's balcony and to Stratford Upon Avon to see William Shakespeare's home. This session will introduce the power of Google Earth in the language arts classroom and provide ideas for using it to enhance student learning.

[|Google Earth Download]

[|Google Lit. Trips] How to Create a Field Trip Using Google Earth: www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jnapiera/GEOL305_files/**GoogleEarth**II.pdf -

[|The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn virtual field trip] (this website is currently not working 1/13/09)

[|The Odyssey virtual field trip]


[|Download Google Earth here.]

How can we use this in the classroom?
 * Introduce a lesson: Insert a screen shot from Google Earth into a webpage/presentation.
 * Follow the travels of characters in novels you read. You can do this by going from location to location each time, or by creating a .kmz file. See your CFF Coach about creating .kmz files.
 * Personal history presentations: students could trace their ancestry.
 * Author research: Find locations that authors visited, trace their travels and see how the travels influenced their writing.

Reminder: Debbie is just demonstrating how she has used GE in her lessons, but she's not here to train you on GE. Before using anything in your classroom, make sure it works and prepare for possible snags.

Moving into a examples:
 * To Kill a Mockingbird travels.
 * London, England: Demonstrating zooming in, but not able to see all due to network issues (Macs not able to access). Showing 3D buildings (built with SketchUp) that are in Google Earth. Moving on to Shakespeare's birthplace. His house is still there, so you (and your students) can look at it.
 * Next, we take a look at Verona and Mantua, Italy.
 * Next we look at a Google Earth tour to go along with Huckleberry Finn. Debbie talks about demonstrating what towheads are with a visual on GE, as they are mention in the travels down the Mississippi. You can also show where the turn to go the free states was that they missed.
 * American Literature: Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. Markers are shown for the stops in her trek.
 * The Odyssey: The locations are numbered so you can follow the travels. There are links that also give information as to what happened at the locations.

Looking at the tours, keep in mind that your students can create these. Let them create the content and show that they do understand what they read.

Working with Google Earth offers visualization for students, which can help motivate less willing learners. For tours that are downloaded online, many will have a copyright notice on it. A student that creates one will not have a copyright notice on it. If you're worried about a student finding a tour online and submitting it as their own, keep in mind that if you make a more specific assignment, it will be increasingly difficult for them to find something online.

Debbie next demonstrates how to use pushpins to in your Google Earth to notate your own tours. A question was presented: Suppose you place a bookmark and you want to make it available to your students? You save a file (.kmz) and share it out to the machines that you want to have it on. You may not be able to create one tour by working on different files. But there are ways to get students to collaborate with GE.

Some sample screen shots: