Here Is A Great Tool from Google to Use with Students for Virtual Field Trips and Digital Story Telling

Google Earth Tour Builder is an excellent tool to use with students in class to create virtual tours and explore places from all around the world. You can design a tour of any location you want, you can also enrich your tour with multimedia data such as photographs, video clips and text.  Tour Builder can be used in a variety of classroom projects. For instance, students can use it to create and narrate a story showcasing particular events and where they took place, places visited and many more. It can also be used for virtual field trips or for teaching history as is shown in Bobby lake’s video below. Visit Google Tour Gallery for more inspirational ideas on how to use Tour Builder with your students.

Tour Builder is very simple and easy to use. Here is a step by step guide on  how to create your first tour:

1- Google to Tour Builder homepage and Click on ‘ Create a tour’ after you sign in with your Google Account

2- Provide a name for your tour and click on ‘Create Tour’

3- Provide a context to your tour by writing a short description in the ‘ Tell The Story’ box

4- Choose a type of story for your tour. It is set to ’Story 3D’ by default but you can choose from the options there

5- Pick a colour to mark your path

6- Access advanced options to customize your map style

7- Click on ‘ Add location’ and type in the locations you want to create a tour for. For each location you select, you can add photos and videos, specify a start and end date and provide a short descriptive summary.

8- Once you are done editing your tour, click on ’Share’ button to share it with others through a generated link or you can keep it private.

Watch the video below to see how Bobby lake uses Tour Builder in his class.