Yeah, we all talk big about how kids need to stop plagiarizing. The copy and paste mentality is ruining intellectual rights. We don't talk enough about how we, as teachers, need to change our own assignments and evaluation tools so that higher-order analysis isn't optional, but required. This new tool I found today makes that possible. Google Lit Trips is the new book report. It's a "mashup", I think. That's a fancy word that just means more than one tool is combined into a new form. Now, a student can open Google Earth and placemark all the stops the character makes along the way in the book, the birthplaces and homesteads for all the characters, the main event locations. The student leaves a running commentary as the "character" traverses the world, offering potential discussion questions or things to consider. There are a lot created for high school books and not so many for the younger grades, but it's just a matter of time. Now THAT's a book report for 21st Century Learners.
