- Google Street View
- Google Earth
- Google Lit Trips
During the time that I was gathering resources to share, I was fortunate enough to catch a tweet from a Web 2.0er/Educator extraordinaire, by the name of Doug Peterson. He had just posted a blog entry called, "An Idea That Just Keeps Growing."...and grow it continues to do!
Google Street View can be found in Google Maps. If you hover your mouse over the yellow peg-man you will see him begin to jump off of his space. If you drag him out onto the map, any streets that turn blue have Google Street View. I decided that I would give my participants the basics of Google Street View and tell them Doug's story as they explored the images within the regions of their choice. I wanted to make sure they had all "chapters" to this great story, so definitely had to make mention of people like ZeFrank, and Megan Palevich.
What followed was fantastic. Within every session, someone had their own story to tell. One such story was from my partner-presenter, whose passion of Social Studies compliments my love of technology beautifully. She had gone home to explore Google Street View herself and went to her hometown, a little village in New Brunswick, Canada. This is her story:"It was so cool to "walk" the same streets on which I grew up. Then I clicked on a video link. It was a video a scuba diver took in a quarry not far from my mom and dad's place. There was my dad's boat that was sunk in that quarry many years ago. He had been a commercial fisherman all of his life and, when his boat had seen it's last days, he had donated it to the divers in order for them to achieve their various levels. My dad will be moved to tears when he sees it..he fished in it until it wouldn't hold water any more. Pretty amazing!"
It was hard to drag the participants away from this, but hey, next came Google Earth! There are many people who have created some great support resources and tutorials for Google Earth. I inserted some of these items within my presentation so participants could refer to them at a later date in order to review some of the features we explored during the workshop. Misty Belmontez has an incredibly helpful website where she has posted such items.
Once you get your hands on some of the code that is needed to created thumbtacks in Google Earth, you are good to go - Misty gives us the code:) You simply insert your own images, text, audio or video files within the code of your choice and voila, you've created your own personalized place.
There are so many things to explore within Google Earth that you could fly off on different trips for days on end! Most recently, imagery from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been added. Turn on "Points of Interest" and look for an icon in the Gulf. There is a 3D layer in which to view Ancient Rome. Make sure you have your 3D Buildings checked, in the Layers portion of the sidebar, and you'll see where famous and historical places have been brought to life for you. World oceans can be explored. And once you've tired of Earth, head out to Mars, the Moon or the Sky in general by clicking on the planet button.
Jerome Burg has spent some time creating a wonderful site called Google Lit Trips. Here you can download all sorts of literature-based trips that educators have created to be travelled in Google Earth. You simply download the trip of your choice and open it in Google Earth. You'll see it appear in the places section of the side bar. Click the check box to turn it on, then double click on the main link and off you'll fly to the path of the Lit Trip. Make sure you click on the "plus" button beside the main link and a drop down of all of the trip parts, often chapters, will appear below. Double click on them one by one and you will find yourself soaring to the next place of the adventure.
One of my personal favourites is Tomie DePaola's "Big Anthony: His Story." Big Anthony travels across Italy and with every leg of the journey there is so much to see and discuss. Again, make sure that 3D Buildings is checked because you are then able to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and so much more.Once you and your students are comfortable with travelling on a Lit Trip, of course you should embark on the journey of creating one yourself. Go to Jerome's Lit Trip Tips in the "Downloads, etc." link on his website and you'll have found yourself the tutorials and guides you'll need. Then, once you've created your trip make sure you share. Jerome welcomes contributions to his site.
Ahhh, I love Google...
The following is the presentation I used for my workshop:
http://prezi.com/wglanqi5cgdk/tech-tools-and-social-studies/
