Take a Trip with Google Tour Builder

Of the 200 new tools I learned last week at Google teacher academy, I'm currently on number 3. I was really impressed by the new experiments that are happening with maps and how revolutionary they are in teaching and learning. Google Tour builder combines places with media in a way that is extremely easy and fun.

Why Use This Product?
What Google tour builder does is take media, Google earth and allows the maker to tell a story combining the two. Sequencing events, it starts by taking a place mark on earth and allowing the user to upload a picture, video to a place and insert text to tell a story. I made a tour on my wife and my scuba diving histories and had so much fun in the process.

The "Tour Builder" dashboard
Why Use Maps?
I think that we'll see a renaissance with using maps in education in the next few years. I thought that maps are generally reserved for social studies teachers, but after playing around with them, they have renewed my interest in these tools because they can combine and synthesize eclectic data and humanize it through narratives. In short, we are producing so much media in the way of videos, pictures but we don't have a way to link them all together in a way that it tells a story and gives it a historical perspective. My tour not only helped me remember my history of diving with my wife Lisa, but shown us how far we traveled and how much I've improved as an underwater photographer; although I still have a ways to go!


9 Applications Education

  1. Chronicling the journeys of famous people in history.
  2. Telling the story of where immigrants came from and where they settled. 
  3. Digital story telling of where students came from and their journeys.
  4. Explaining the five themes of geography and how that relates to place. 
  5. The timelines of natural disasters and areas that were affected.
  6. Where a revolution starts and finishes.
  7. Class stories of families and their ancestors.
  8. World languages classes: how phrases translate around the world.
  9. Tracking a virus from place to place.

I need one more for an even 10. Please leave your ideas below!


Comments

Popular Posts