Google Treks with Alice Christie: Day 2 ISTE 2012

Alice Christie, PhD in Educational Technology, is a Google Certified Teacher, Arizona State University President’s Professor Emeritus, and has been teaching for over 40 years. Her website helped me immensly during my time in the credential program. Her website provided resources that helped me to practice integrating technology into my lessons to increase engagement and understanding.  

Her sessions touched on two topics: Google Treks in education and iPad apps in elementary schools. 

Google Treks is a concept of teaching and learning that uses Google Maps or Google Earth to take students to different locations around the world. Each location can consist of text, pictures, audio, and video to provide students with valuable information. 

Christie first explained that she used Google Earth for Google Treks lessons, but she found out that the program takes up a lot of bandwidth (In a past ISTE, her Google Trek session accidentally brought down the server). So she recommends schools use Google Maps since the tool is done all online. 

Here are the steps of creating Google Treks with Google Maps:

1. Enter Google Maps website, and then click on My Maps.


2. Click on Create new map, name your Google Map tour, and provide a brief description about your tour.


3. After you save your tour, you will type in the address or keyword that will take you to your first location. 


4. You will then click on the Pushpin of the correct location, add a title, and description of the location. 


5. You can provide links, images, videos, and audio files in these descriptions. 

Click here to go to Dr. Christie’s Google Trek rubric. If you visit her website, you can find different tours based on subject matter and age groups. 

Mark Page-Botelho, my former EdTech colleague in KIS, used Google Treks in Michelle Clare’s 4th grade social studies unit last year. Michelle wanted her students to truly understand the suffering and hardship the immigrants experienced during their lengthy migration to America in the early 1900s. Mark helped students download the application into their laptops, and instructed them on how to create tours that depicted their immigrant’s journey to America. 

(Creating Immigration Passport with Google Documents)