Deb Norton Tech

Welcome to my 12 Days of Techmas!  During this holiday season, I will be sharing 12 technology gifts for you to explore, use and integrate into your classroom or work. Day 6 is  Google Tour Builder ! Google Tour Builder is accessible from your web browser, makes it easy to add photos and videos to a sequence of locations on Earth, and then share links to these tours with your friends. If you have ever created a Google Lit Trip, this is a richer version of creating a Lit Trip or virtual field trip.  History, English, World Language and all teachers of inquisitive students, this is a site you will want to integrate into your curriculum. Check out the gallery - Here is an inspirational video about Google Tour Builder Happy Techmas Everyone!

Recently, some educators that I work with, showed interested in having their students use Google Tour Builder to create a tour of locations from a historical time period. We could do this on desktops, but the teachers really want the students to be able to use their Chromebooks, which is not possible with Google Tour Builder since it uses the Google Earth download. So I found two alternatives that will allow students to build a "tour" of locations on a map and also include text, images and even video. Alternative 1: My Maps : With My Maps , students can add a marker, and then add an image to go with the marker. Students can also draw lines between different markers. One of the nice features of My Maps is that you can add layers. To display a "tour" the students can turn the layers on or off to show more or less at a time. For this tool, the students would use the extension, Screencastify to record a narrative to go with the "tour...