Google Lit Trips
Google Earth Lit Trips are an amazing way to bring books to life.
Embed the action of the story in Google Earth and explore the world as you bring a book to life.
See an example here
Here is a sample storyboard to plan your Google Lit trip:
When you have finished reading your book, this is where you start to plan your trip in Google Earth.
Make sure you do it in the order things happened.
So #1 will be where the story begins.
Name the place
Decide what images, pictures or graphices you want to have with it
Decide what you are going to say - either to make a short video or record the voiceover
How to create a Google Earth Lit Trip:
This is THE home of Google Lit Trips, so start here for ideas.
This guy introduces the idea of Google Lit Trips to his student teacher trainees
Great tutorial on how to create placemarks on Google Earth for your Lit Trip
Tutorial on Adding images (and movies works the same way) to your Google Lit Trip
Dorothy's Summer holiday kmz- very noobie attempt, but we all have to start somewhere!!!!
This "Postcards from the Past" is an Inquiry rather than a Lit Trip, but interesting to see what they have done...
An excellent resource on Google Earth in general
Notes from adding images
right click (control click) on the placemark you have added
paste the URL of the image you want to use - you will have done one of two things to get this image
searched and found someone else's on the web
uploaded your own to Picassa, Flickr OR Blogger (images in your blogs all have a URL too)
Then you need to wrap this HTML code around it
<img src="nowpaste the URL you copied" />
<img src="url" />
OR this much easier option
just copy the embed code from Picassa or Flickr and paste
Save
Recording your Trip (or Tour)
This guy gives an easy to understand tutorial but he gets irritating with his uhms and ahs!
To make a Google Lit Trip:
1. Read the book
2. Plan the steps of the story in chronological order - maybe use a bullet point worksheet as with KPE
3. Open Google Earth
4. Create a folder in the sidebar and name it
5. Find your starting place on Google Earth and Zoom in to the level you want it to be when people arrive
add a placemark - either use the icon or see in the toolbar image above
6. Name the placemark and add a description OR a writeup of what happened there
this is where you can add images, videos, links to websites etc
7. Repeat this adding placemarks in chronological order until the Lit Trip is finished
8. Record the lit trip - see tutorial above - make sure you have a voiceover if possible
9. Now the movie can be published on a blog etc
10. Save the .kmz file to share with the work as well so people can actually use your tour in their own Google earth and interact with it (control click on the folder where you started and Save As a .kmz file)
NB: Hyperstudio has Google Earth integration as well now
Extra for crazies....
How do you combine all the class .kmzees if everyone makes one
eg every one does a "This is where I live"
Add a new folder to the Google Earth on the computer you use [Add/
Folder]. Call it something like "class project". Now this folder will
be in your Places menu. Then as the students send you their kmz files
and you open them, they'll open into your Temporary Places folder in
your Google Earth (which is in Places).
Next drag each one you get from the Temporary Places to your "class project" folder in your
Google Earth.
Continue this process until you get all the student files into this folder. You can just do this as they come in, you don't have to do it all at once.
Then you can save your "class project" folder by clicking on it and [Save/Save Place As] out as a
single Google Earth KMZ file to your desktop. Then centralize the file
by putting it in a place where all the students can grab it (like in
the files area of a Google Site) and when they open the file it will
have all the locations they have contributed.
Also, if your students can collaborate on a Google Map, they can all
make the placemarks together and then those can be saved as "View in
Google Earth" and be collected all at once. But that would require a
Google Account for each of them.