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Google Lit Trips

Page history last edited by Binnur Erbil 15 years, 1 month ago

 

Research Report: Google Lit Trips

 

By Binnur Erbil, Mapping Velocity Team

 

  1. AbstractGoogle Lit Trips is a collaborative website designed to map literature. Created by Jerome Burg, this website uses Google Earth as a source, so that people can enhance their reading by also taking a virtual journey of the characters’ paths. By combining the mapping features in Google Earth, with the imaginative and literal qualities in text, these maps create a great literary experience by merging both together. The primary targets are students and teachers, but this expands itself to anyone who is interested in the subject of mapping.

     

  2. Description.  Jerome Burg is the creator of Google Lit Trips. As stated on the website, Google Lit Trips is, “a different way to read great literature” (Google Lit Trips). Burg put together this website to add another dimension to the texts read in classrooms. By using Google Earth to track characters, the reader is able to grasp better geographic knowledge, and use it to enhance what they read. This idea is used to encourage people (primarily students) to take the journey of the characters in the stories they read.

                Google Lip Trips is essentially used to track characters in a book. It allows people to see in addition to their initial imagination. They can then question the accuracy of how the text is depicted, as well as understand why characters go to certain locations. By going on different trips, even without having read the book, students can visualize the settings of the book. The trips can also be used to compare the author’s works as a whole. The reader can look at various books, and track the different journeys the characters take, then compare them with each other.  There are also podcasts that can be linked to the persons trip, so they can add information to the trip they created. This also enhances the text, because the person who adds the podcasts can give explanations as the person is going through the map of the characters. 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.

                The website breaks down books to different grade levels, allowing it to be more user friendly. 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. The levels include kindergarten through fifth grade, sixth through eight grade, ninth through twelfth grade, then higher education. By splitting up mapped books into different categories, it makes searching for the map more user friendly. A person can look through their grade level, then see the books available for them. Even if they had not picked up the book of interest, they could take the trip to see if they are interested in setting of the novel.

                Teachers love this website for their classrooms. There are numerous positive reviews, and the website has gained immediate popularity for its effects on the enhancement of education. Students have also been encouraged to make projects of their own. This way they can learn how it is to research, and then map the journey of the characters. Overall, this website has been highly praised for its great effects on education. It makes reading interesting for students who do not enjoy it, and it enhances it for those who love it.

     

  3. CommentaryThis website is a great example to help assist us in our approach for the project. After looking through other Lit Trips, it shows us how others have utilized Google Earth to enhance their reading experiences. By looking at how teachers have used this concept, we are able to see how much of an impacts mapping can make on people as they read. This helps define our target market, and we can use it to compare what actually helps the reading experience, and what uses on the website just detracts from it. When looking at their works, we can see what we need, but we can enhance it further with our plans to add text analysis. Text analysis tools will be different than what has been done on the page, so our addition of those tools may help show what else can be done with Google Earth.

                Observing the process of how other trips were made helps us compare it to our plans. We get to see which tools are highly effective and which tools are not necessary.  By doing so, we are able to get a better understanding of not only mapping in general, but specifically how people have been using Google Earth to map literature. Tools such as making notes on certain locations can assist us with letting the person viewing our trip know where they can refer to in the text. This way, they are able to follow along, and won’t get lost, especially since You Shall Know Our Velocity is difficult to keep track of. Some texts which are referenced are difficult, and have many points the characters visit, so by seeing the approach of the mapping of these characters, we can make it more user friendly and easier.

                We could also see how people approach contemporary authors as opposed to older works. Comparing differences in types of works from certain time periods can assist us to map more appropriately towards this time. Also, we can see how the work compares in relation to age level. We are trying to reach an older audience, so we can see how the style of the maps change as the age progresses. This helps us identify with what is necessary to create the best mapping experience for our audience. Also, we are able to use the new Google 5 as a source, so we have new features such as tracking, as opposed to just pinning locations on different locations. These features make it more dynamic and tracking characters are more interesting. Since our books is contemporary, there haven’t been any maps created for it, but after the project is finished, we could possibly add our map to this website as well.

     

  4. Resources for Further Study.  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.

    "Google Earth Version 5" Google. 2 February 2009. 16 February 2009. http.www.earth.google.com

    “Google Lit Trips.” Google Certified Teachers Program. 2 February 2009.  15 February 2009. http://www.googlelittrips.org/

 

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