Google Lit Trips

For those of us who have ever taught a piece of literature and struggled to provide students with the kind of background knowledge that will allow the piece to spring to life, Google Lit Trips is an impressive marriage of technology, geography, and culture.

Each lit trip is created by one or more educators to help students connect with the geography and culture of the locations within a particular work of fiction or non-fiction.  It does this by using Google Earth, software which is available as a free download.  To access the lit trip, teachers or students download a KMZ (map file) from the Google Lit Trips site and open that file within Google Earth.  Some lit trips also include supplementary PDF study guides and podcasts; however the best of them include the study guide and many other supplemental materials within the map file itself.  The end result is a rich experience which far transcends just having students identify locations on a map or globe.

To illustrate the possibilities of lit trips, here is a screenshot from the lit trip for The Kite Runner.

As you can see by the left-hand panel, the lit trip is organized by chapter.  Students need only expand the chapter to find links to the locations mentioned within.  Locations are not only marked within Google Earth (background); they are accompanied by images (centre panel), the reference to the location from within the novel (top right), links to supplemental material from the web (off screen), and study questions related to that location (right panel).

Here is a sampling of titles for which Lit Trips are available:

• The Grapes of Wrath
• Macbeth
• Night
• The Kite Runner
• The Slave Dancer
• Hana's Suitcase
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
• Underground to Canada, and even such childhood classics as
• Make Way for Ducklings

A Caution:  Please be aware that Google Earth may or may not be available on your school computers.  If it is not, you will have to request that your principal submit a "trouble ticket" to have it installed.  However, Lit trips is just one application for Google Earth.  There a many other curricular applications for this technology that make it worthwhile having within the school.