Google Lit Trip and Interdiciplinary Learning

I was really excited about Google Lit Trips and the implications of this website for teaching and learning. The best way to interest students is to actively engage them in the material that they are learning and to make it relevant to their lives. This site allows teachers to add a rich geographical component to literature, making content more real and tangible. Students can actually follow the journeys of their favorite protagonists, understand the terrain where they lived and /or see how those exact places changed over time all with Google Earth.
In my classroom, teaching time and space can be very difficult when discussing ancient civilizations, past decades or even the future. Maps are a visual tool which can depict local terrains, cities, countries, bodies of water etc... but regardless of their visual component, maps are still an abstraction and we still need to do more to make concepts and material relevant to children. I love the idea of using a story like "The Family Apart" to not only teach about a historical episode and time period, but to use the act of mapping in a 3-Dimensional nature to enhance the narrative and actively engage the students further into the story. As I read how Anne Brusca used this tool to teach "The Family Apart" I realized that Google Lit Trip can be an amazing tool for supplementing both English and Social Studies curriculum's.
As a teacher who needs lots of instruction when engaging with technology, it's important that new technology be user friendly, accessible and help me engage students in interdisciplinary and inquiry based learning. Google Lit Trip is free, easy to download and easy to use and understand. It also has vast applications in the inquiry based student-centered classroom. Yay!