Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Bibliography by: Binnur Erbil, Mapping Velocity Team

 1. Boss, Suzie. “Google Lit Trips: Bringing Travel Tales to Life.” Edutopia. 12 July 2008. 10 February 2009. http://www.edutopia.org/google-lit-trips-virtual-literature.

This article analyzes the website by Jerome Burg called "Google Lit Trips." The author explains the basics of how to find the website, and what it is used for. Google Lit Trips is a collaborative page, used to map literature, in hopes of allowing people to visualize the locations they read about. Boss addresses how these trips enhance literature by taking the readers on a journey to the paths taken by the characters in the book.

 The purpose of this article it to encourage teachers to use this in the classroom. Boss writes, "combining Google Earth with literature study allows teachers to come up with activities that are highly creative for their students....[by] using the lit trip for The Grapes of Wrath, for example, a teacher could set the stage for a classroom discussion about current immigration issues. That would encourage students to connect the book to issues affecting their own lives." Instead of just imagining what a certain location looks like, students are able to see it. Although it may seem that adding visual features to something which consists of words is not appropriate, tracking literature on Google Earth is beyond imagination. People can watch their characters on their journeys, and yet, still visualize certain elements the author explains.

2. “Google Lit Trips.” Google Certified Teachers Program. 2 February 2009.  10 February 2009. http://www.googlelittrips.org/

Jerome Burg is the creator of this website. The primary purpose of this is to encourage people (particularly students) to take the journey of the characters in the stories they read. There is also sound so that they can listen to audio tracks while they go on the tour. This allows people to create their own trips as well. By going on different trips, even without having read the book, students can visualize where the author plans to take them. Also, each book for a certain author can be compared, thus showing patterns in the authors works. The website breaks down books to different grade levels, allowing it to be more user friendly. Students can find their appropriate levels, and then follow a trip of a book they have been reading for a class, or something they have been reading on their own time.  Having audio as well as the virtual tour on Google Earth makes it so that the journey is easy to follow, and provides a clear pathway of locations in the book. When the sources are user friendly, it motivates people to continue to use it as a second source to assist them in their literature studies. By watching these paths, the readers can definitely gain a better understanding of the text.

3. Leonard, John. “We Are the Fourth World.” The New York Times. 10 November 2002. 10 February 2009. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EEDD113FF933A25752C1A9649C8B63

In this article, John Leonard summarizes You Shall Know Our Velocity. He states that the “novel [is] in frantic motion, one step ahead of the Furies, on its way from Chicago, Dakar, Marrakesh and Riga to pratfall, breakdown, crackup and accountability. And then back again, as if nothing had happened except in some parallel universe.” He shows that they do travel often in the book, and the story Is rapid with all of the locations they visit. Leonard also writes, “Ready or not, Will must rethink all the things Dave Eggers thought about in '’A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,’ like fear, violence, loss, death, unfairness, responsibility, community, redemption, self-aggrandizement and shareware; plus new things like balance, speed, randomness, chaos, teleportation, quantum physics, retribution, clarity, valor and barbecued beef.” The various types of things they experience are random, just as their travels are. The author also explains the meaning of the money in the story. Will plans on giving away all of the money, and “this money, of course, is symbolic spinach, standing in for the feelings of guilt, panic, vengefulness and stupefaction that Will and Hand seek to discard.” By giving away this money, Will is letting go.

4. Rosenblatt, Seth. "Hands on: Google Earth 5 delightful but imperfect." CNET News 2 February 2009. 10 February 2009. http://news.cnet.com/hands-on-google-earth-5-delightful-but-imperfect.

In this article, Seth Rosenblatt breaks down the various features added recently to Google Earth’s version 5. First of all, he begins by explaining how the oceanic maps work. He says that “conceptually, the oceanic maps are great. It is beyond cool to be able to see ocean-related points of interest like shipwrecks, and have cross-referenced content like undersea explorations.” The idea of using this feature is nice, but the author also states that the execution was not completed in the best way possible. He states searching what he is looking for is difficult, which makes using the feature more difficult. Although he does struggle with this idea, he still feels using the Ocean views are useful, and one can see many interesting things such as shipwrecks. He also summarizes the historical map feature, which allows a person to see what the world looks like in “recent decades.” This tool can be useful when trying to visualize a certain place, and comparing what it had looked before to what it looks like currently. Other maps include space, where one can go to Mars, and view what it looks like. Overall, there are a bunch of new features on Google Earth, making it even more useful to use.

5. Stubbs, Michael. Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Blackwell, 1996.

The primary question the author, Michael Stubbs poses, is: "How can an analysis of the patterns of words and grammar in a text contribute to an understanding of the meaning of the text?" The book begins with the history of text and its analysis, then tries to answer its main question. It tries to show the differences in importance between content versus a broad overview. Stubb states, "The model also emphasizes that texts do not have absolute and unchanging interpretations, but are interpreted differently in different historical periods, and in different cultural contexts."

The text may be fixed, but each person has a different perspective on the same story, since their have their own sets of experiences and thoughts.Stubbs believes, "textual analysis is a perspective from which to observe society: it makes ideological structures tangible." He tries to argue that by observing the style and use of words as they appear in the text, a person can see the text with a different approach by observing it utilizing a different method.. By doing so, people are able to approach their conclusions of what the author is trying to express, in a different way. Such observations, are able to enhance literature.