Googling it the Google Way 3 - Exploring Google Expeditions , Google Tour Builder & Google Lit Trips

Googling it the Google Way - Exploring Google Expeditions , Google Tour Builder & Google Lit Trips

Date: 31 Jan 2018

This blog post explores some interesting ideas worth trying out in classrooms with kids of all ages using the amazing tools that Google offers including Lit Trips, Maps and Expeditions. But as educators we all need to remember that learning journey begins with the learning goal in mind, considering technology as a vehicle to reach learning goals more effectively and efficiently keeping everyone on board. Considering this vehicle offers a lot of potential to explore and take all students through difficult terrains.

One can only embed technology meaningfully , when one has a good understanding of both the learning goals as well as the tools available. This blog post will give you an insight of the above mentioned tools and share some ideas of using these in your classrooms.

Lets begin with exploring Google Lit Trips [1]. Basically its a project started by a teacher, it provides an interactive and engaging literary experience for students. It places students inside the story and lets them take a walk through with the characters and their story. You need to install Google Earth to use Google Lit Trips, its just takes a few minutes to download (using the Chrome browser). One done, register yourself as a member with the GLT community , skim through the GLT library and choose an appropriate trip. Request for the lit trip and it will be emailed to you within few minutes.

Just to try out and explore I requested the GLT “A walk in a London” [2] by Sal Rubbino. To my sheer amazement one feels like literally walking in the streets of London, imagine how engrossed and engaged students would be during such a journey, which is equipped with interactive tasks, videos and questions, virtual tours, images, games and alot more. The journey begins with an introduction to Big Ben ( a video, some questions to check understanding and an interactive task to explore Big Ben further), journey takes you further through key places in London Including Bank of England, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden, Tower of London and ends with exploring River Thames (through a picture gallery and a video about Queens Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee Pageant on River Thames). After the tour one feels taking an actual walk through streets of London, tour covers minute details and ends with a deep insight and through learning about London (key places, events, culture, people etc). The tour literally brings the reading experience to life!

Now imagine the power of this tool to transform teaching and learning in your classrooms! What if your reading a an Egyptian Cinderella story Rhodopis or a Korean Cinderella story Adelita, instead of simply reading you let students dive in the story and walk along the characters whether in the streets of Cairo, Egypt with Rhodopis or somewhere in Mexico with Adelita. You can add videos of Egypt and Mexico, add questions through polls on videos to check understanding, explore cultures and artifacts, compare current and old Egypt and Mexico, think of changes etc. Link with the SDGs. Either they create their own stories using tours or you could create one for them to explore further with interactive tasks that keeps them engaged. Share all the work at the #iEARN forum International Book Club Project.

I wish I had the idea when we were reading the book “The Water Princess” by Georgie Badiel and Susan Wade, the book takes you through a girls daily journey to a far away place to get water. Students could explore the actual village using maps and tours. Identify places using place marks that have water scarcity. Link them to nearby place where water is available. Link this to SDGs. I am sure your students will simply enjoy this learning journey, because its in context, linked to real life problems, provides them an opportunity to look and devise solutions, a great opportunity to turn students from users and consumers of information to content creators and producers.

Lets move to exploring the second tool I find pretty fascinating Google Expeditions [3] a virtual reality teaching tool, a tool that can that can actually give your students wings to fly anywhere anytime in the world! Seriously they can :) with just Google cardboards, viewfinders, tablets and phones. It not only lets them develop deeper understanding about the various cultures, their surroundings, its extends their learning experience beyond imagination, opens their minds, lets them look at things from different perspectives, connects learning to real lives, its giving students the control of their learning. The first thing you need to do is begin with a learning objective. Since this needs a lot through planning , as a teacher you need to create activities both before , during and after the expedition. Experience the chosen expedition yourself, ask questions ( why, what and where) what new learning will occur, design an activity before the expedition to build students understanding, script questions to be answered during the expedition, and share follow up questions at the end of the expedition.

I came across a very interesting video where students were exploring a tornado from the top of a plane. In another instance they were exploring a volcano erupting and discussing the smoke coming out. Students were exploring genes and DNA, they could see details which otherwise was not possible, they got a chance to see a respiratory system and could create aha moments for themselves as a teacher shared in the video [4].

We could create similar aha moments in our classrooms using Google expeditions whether students are exploring the tallest buildings around the world, comparing minute details, or digging the pyramids in Egypt, or diving under seawater to have a look and deeper understanding of sealife.

One last tool that I want to share before ending the blog post is the Google Tour Builder [5]. Google Tour Builder [6] uses the text, photos, videos from YouTube ,and inserts locations from maps to make an interactive tour story using Google Earth. It opens in your web browser thus letting you create your tours with ease. The tours you create are basically private and only you can view them. In order for these to be publicly viewable, you need to make them public. You can choose from a number of tours in gallery. Creating a tour is simple, just click on the red button labeled create a new tour, your asked to give a name to your tour and mention the author's name.

Your students can make tours to share their travel journeys or places explored during summer vacations. They can be asked to explore the famous cultural artifacts around the world and share their discoveries using the tour builder or explore weather changes around the globe, document their findings in the form of a story in tour builder. To begin with students could be asked to create a tour to introduce their city and country to their global friends when working on a global education project.

The opportunities to meaningfully embed Google Lit Trips, Google Tour Builder and Google Expeditions in the curriculum are endless and require a thorough lesson planning. But before we begin using these tools, we need to look for links with the learning goals. Only use these tool when you are sure they will enhance and extend the learning of the students.

The tools are open for exploration, free to use and easily accessible, give it a try , I am sure you could create some amazing learning experience for your students.

Enjoy Exploring :)

Sheeba Ajmal


References


1. "Google Lit Trips." http://www.googlelittrips.org/. Accessed 31 Jan. 2018.


2. Google Lit Trips: A Walk in London by Salvatore Rubbino and ... - Trello." https://trello.com/c/sm1p346G/21-google-lit-trips-a-walk-in-london-by-salvatore-rubbino-and-tutorials-links. Accessed 31 Jan. 2018.


3.Google Expeditions." https://edu.google.com/expeditions/. Accessed on 31 Jan. 2018.


4.Google Expeditions. "https://edu.google.com/expeditions/ar/". Accessed on 31 Jan 2018.


5. Google Tour Builder. "https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/about/faq". Accessed on 31 Jan 2018.

6. Google Tour Builder. "https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/". Accessed on 31 Jan 2018.