ED422 Journal Entry #1 9/07

Friday, September 7, 2000 Power of the Mashup- Journal #1 Combining Essential Learning with New Technology Tools.


Jerome Burg, a High School English teacher was always looking for ways to hold his students interests while reading old classics. He came up with the idea of Google Lit Trips. It is an interactive Web-based tool that allows students to search the globe, using satellite imagery, maps, terrain and other images to travel along with a literary character on his journey throughout the story, by using Google Earth.
By creating this, Burg makes the information of a story more visible to students. This translates into a deeper understanding, and a makes ideas more shareable, and easier to discuss. Like they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Many students are visual learners, and this is an excellent tool to use with them.
Burg started to incorporate video footage to accompany his literary journey. If the character experienced a dust storm, he would include actual footage of a dust storm. This way the students would feel like the character in the story, and experience what the character was experiencing. This was a great tool reading “The Grapes of Wrath”, a commonly read literature story for High School students. The book was very controversial at the time, examining the migrant workers life, and the “dust-bowl”. It is a very important part of California history, and Burg has made it more interesting and realistic through his Google Lit Trips Web site.

1.Is Google Lit Trips Web sit something that would be useful in my classroom?
I think this could be a very valuable tool for classroom use. I think that it presents the information in a very real way for the students. They can actually visualize the characters journey, and experience it along with them. Since I have only one computer in my room, I could project it from my computer, through the Epson projector for the entire class to view.


2.Would this website be too complicated for my students?
I often find my kids on Google Earth, when they’re supposed to be working on other material. They obviously know how to get there already, and actually enjoy viewing the website.