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Google Lit Trips


by MARK WEST 08/18/10

Mac Tips

Special Keys

The Mac Command Key


The Option Key


The Control Key


Exiting A Bad Program

On Windows, Alt+F4 will quickly terminate a program.


The "3-Finger Salute"



"Right Clicking"




  1. Press and hold the Control Key while clicking.

Google Lit Trips

Ever want to tie in Social Studies into Reading and Language Arts? Here's an easy how to.

An offshoot of the Google Earth project is "Google Lit Trips". It uses Google Earth and creates an interactive experience for experiencing a book. Wouldn't it be nice to see the area the book was describing to help bring the written word to life in the mind of a reader? That's exactly the idea behind a Google Lit Trip.

Two websites you will need to visit before beginning is:

Note: you do NOT have to run ActivInspire unless you need to make annotations over the desktop. As with any other piece of software, you can use the software on your computer and display it on your Interactive White Board so that students can gain this experience.

KMZ file?

The KMZ file type is a zip file (a file archive) and KMZ stands for Keyhole Markup Zip file. On a Mac, you'll download it and it on many browsers, the download file will end with "". Don't unzip it (open it).

If I don't unzip it, then what do I do with it?

  1. Open Google Earth.
  2. Drag the file over the globe in Google Earth.
  3. On the left side, under Places, under Temporary Places you will see your lit trip and you can click on a location and zoom to it. Often it will pull up an information screen with text, pictures and weblinks; this can be dismissed by clicking on the blue X in the upper left-hand corner of the white information box:
  4. You now have an interactive map of the area that you can scroll around and zoom in and out of. In some cases, such as historic sites that are no longer standing, you'll see that the author of the lit trip has used Google Sketchpad to give you an idea of what the place looked like, as is the case with Troy in Homer's Odyssey:
  5. You can now navigate the places panel (by clicking on various locations) to see the areas in the story.