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 The LitTrip I looked at was a student created project titled, "Fifteen Poets" ([]). In this project the students share samples of the work of fourteen poets (there may have been a fifteenth at some point but I counted three times and there are only 14 entries). Each entry in the tour is the title of a poem, the pop-up information display gives a picture of the poet, a brief biography, a reading of the poem done by a child (presumably the student) and a link to more works by the poet. The purpose of the lesson appears to be to share what the students have learned as they studied poetry, while providing a decent sample of the work of these poets to others who may be studying poetry. It was very easy to use and the information was well formated, though I do think that it would be fairly easy to clutter up the screen and/or obscure the map itself by putting too much information into the pop-up information window.
 * < ==Google Lit Trip Review:==

As a Special Education teacher I would use a tool like the Google Literature Trips (tours) to add context and greater dimensions to what my student's are working on or studying. For example, have them find and tell me something about the area or place in which a story or event they are learning about took place. If they are learning about the poet who wrote O Breath (from the tour reviewed above) they might tell/show me something interesting about Worcester, Massachusetts. Like the fact that the area was first settled in 1673, the town census in 1830 was 4,173 people, the city was incorporated in 1848, and the current population (as of the 2000 census) is 172,648 ([]). They could also tell me that it is the home of five institutions of higher learning founded in the 1800's (ibid). They could show me pictures of some of the different buildings in the city, or images/paintings of what the city looked like at different times. The point being to bring greater context to what they are learning about, and to leverage what they are studying to promote the further exploration of other, new, and potentially interesting topics, thereby enhancing their education. Another option would be to assign or offer the creation of a Google Earth Tour to my students as a way for them to demonstrate what they have learned about a story, topic, or event (similar to the assignment represented by the sample I looked at above). ||  || ==Google Earth Tour:==

The Schools I "Grew Up" In:
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