Tech Integration Success

As part of a curriculum integration project, Simmons College student Caitlin Krauss selected Google Lit Trips, devised a lesson plan based on a student's language-based learning disability, and successfully implemented the strategies. The high school student's disabilities prevent her from easily learning vocabulary, understanding concepts, and remembering what she has read. The visual, auditory, and interactive components of Google Lit Trips provides helpful sensory components, and the content maps, images, and videos provide background information that serves as anchors for concepts in novels. Krauss supplies appropriate question samples and suggests that students with these types of disabilities use a two-column sheet of paper to record bits of information that they discover at each place on the map. Krauss notes that Google Lit Trips can be used in the general education classroom, and that pairing students with different sensory strengths would benefit all users because each student would focus in on different aspects.
Krauss' use of googlelittrips.com to aid a student with learning disabilities is an excellent example of appropriate integration of technology to benefit student learning. The site uses tools such as Google images, Google earth, maps, music, video, and web links to provide commentary on the travels of characters in novels. The information creates visual references that students may lack background to imagine, and it introduces real places in the world that provide a context for characters' adventures. The site provides interdisciplinary studies that include social studies, politics, geography, and literature. After using googlelittrips.com, advanced students could use technology to create their own lit trip. Teachers of both special and general education classes can benefit by using this resource.

Krauss, C. (2009, June). Google Lit Trips for students with language-based learning disabilities. Google lit trips home page. Retrieved September 9, 2009 from .