Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - Google Lit Trip Launch

Just a Short Jaunt to China . . . in the 1930's . . .

It's finally finished and published . . . my Google Lit Trip to go with my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - A childhood in wartime China" by Michael David Kwan.

It has been over a year since I attended the Google Teachers Academy in Stockholm (GTA SWE 13) and set out as part of my Googley project to build a GLT to go with my father's book.  It has been a long journey that involved a lot of digging into the past, both physically and digitally (you can read more about my journey in a previous posting here).  This is just to announce that the GLT has been published and released online, and that further details and background information can also be found at the accompanying Site that I built here.  Enjoy!

Taking the Long Way Home - Building a Google Lit Trip

When I joined the ranks of Google Certified Teachers over a year ago (GTA SWE 2013), part of my Google Project that I embarked upon was to build a Google Lit Trip . . . from scratch . . . to go with my father's award winning memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - A Childhood in Wartime China" by Michael David Kwan.  My deadline for completing this project actually passed by two months ago (as I gave myself a year to build it) but in a sense I did make my original deadline . . . kinda/sort of.   Let me explain . . . I began work on the GLT last spring and then put everything on hold until the summer so I could gather more information and old photos at home in Canada.  Then, in the fall, I came back to the project and inserted everything that my summer research had uncovered, and continued my research to try and find the locations of some important places in the book. I was able to just meet my Christmas deadline, but little did I know that I was not even close to being truly finished with the construction process.

What I had not accounted for in the entire process was the amount of work that was required to get it into a presentable state . . . I made a serious mistake here in underestimating the level of detail that was required and the amount of writing that had to be done!

I had met Jerome Burg (the father of Google Lit Trips) before at a Google Geo event, so I got in touch with him about getting my GLT published on his official Google Lit Trips website.  Jerome was very receptive to helping me develop my GLT, and was really excited about including historical non-fiction on his website, especially one set in China.  Jerome's editorial work and feedback was fantastic.  He combed through what I had produced and really pushed me to think about the overall experience of the reader and the fact that I was really telling two stories in the Lit Trip - both my father's story from the book and my own story of discovery as I researched and located different sites and information about my family.  With Jerome's extensive feedback in hand (and burning a hole in my brain with each passing day), I decided to tackle everything over the long winter holiday . . . which never happened (getting the work done, that is ;-).

Six weeks later, I have reworked most of what I had previously produced, formatting and organising everything according to Jerome's guidelines and suggestions, rewriting practically everything to tell my own story with links and ties to my father's story, and taking the time to build a supporting Google Site.  Now, I think I finally have a product that can be distributed and used by others which serves to tell my story of discovery, enhance the reading experience of "Things", and to provide the reader with visuals and background for the places in my father's book.  I really hope that Jerome likes what I have created and that it is now in a publishable state - I just sent it off to him to peruse, poke and prod . . . fingers crossed!

My father David Kwan, with my grandfather John YL Kwan (circa 1938)

Lessons learned and take-aways from building a Google Lit Trip

• Completing the research and gathering all of the extra resources is only the beginning - the creation/writing process takes even more time
• Conducting real-life, hands-on research with primary sources is tough, challenging and frustrating - trying to piece together information from old family photographs, or coming to terms with place names which have changed over time or are written differently, is very time consuming
• Patience is a virtue - you will need a lot of it and you will be tested
• You never know what surprises your research will uncover - now I know that I am 1/4 Serbian?!?, whereas before I thought I was part "white Russian" or Swiss (see my accompanying GLT website for the details of how I came to this realisation)
• Brush up on your basic HTML coding skills - these will come in handy as you build information into Google Earth
• As a teacher, I think having students build Google Lit Trips is not a simple endeavour to be undertaken lightly - perhaps teams of students could collaboratively build a GLT, or it could be undertaken as a major research project, or a tool like Google Tour Builder could be used to create a simpler Lit-Trip-like experience
• Building a GLT will take far longer than you ever thought - double or triple your original time estimate
• Think about where you will store online extras like photos and documents which will be part of your GLT - I used a Google Site to house these items
• Working with historical sites which date back to before the satellite imagery contained in Google Earth takes some imagination and serious sleuthing powers
• If you can find historical maps (which are drawn reasonably close to scale) that you can use as overlays in Google Earth, this adds a very rich and interesting dimension to the Lit Trip experience - but you will need that abundance of patience to get them to sit right, on top of the satellite imagery!
• Creating a resource like this which is close to your heart is very rewarding in the end - building and sharing this kind of resource is one of the reasons we are teachers, right?  And I think this kind of thing is seriously related to your Computing Karma . . .

Have you ever created a Google Lit Trip or tried to build one?  What was your experience like?

Author - Michael David Kwan
Photo by Russel Kwan

This is for you Dad!
And for everyone reading, studying or who has been touched by your book.

Now I'm All Googley!

It has been almost a month since I attended the GTASWE 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden and I promised to write a post about the experience.  Well, it was a blast for sure and well worth the effort of applying, making the video, getting myself to the GTA in the last week before our long winter break, and then trying to recover from being away from school for three days during the last days before Christmas.

Be prepared to put in long, full-on days at the GTA, meet lots of great, innovative and inspiring people F2F and online, work really hard with learning new tools and expanding your world, and then crash afterwards.  I was only gone for two nights, but I didn't get much sleep while I was away.  Not that jet-lag was a problem for me (like it was for some others coming from the US or Asia), as I only changed one time zone.  The work days were just long (and dark in Sweden in December), so it was late to bed and early to rise . . . breakfast was served at the Google offices early each morning and I had a 2 km walk each way from where I was staying.

The biggest take-away for me from the GTA was certainly the people that I met and worked with, and the network of GCTs that I am now hooked up with.  As an Apple Distinguished Educator, I know how valuable such a network of people can be as a resource, guide, mentor and sounding board - the growth and learning with Google started at the GTA and has been running full throttle ever since through the Google+ GCT group, which is very active and dynamic.

Becoming a Google Certified Teacher (GCT) involves creating an Action Plan for a Google related project that you endeavour to tackle over the next year.  "How are you going to change your world?" was the project question . . . I went to the GTA with no clear idea about what my project would be, but over the course of the two days, it all started to take shape in my mind.  On the first morning, I met Liz and we talked about a number of Google-related and topics over breakfast.  Without having any idea who she is or what her role at the GTA was, we got to talking about working in Poland and her connections here.  As I would be the first GCT in Poland, she wanted to talk later about how I might help her with something that she was already working on.  It turned out that Liz Sproat is the Head of Education for Google, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa region) and she is working on a huge project to bring GAfE into Polish national schools.  After discussing this more before the GTA finished, this has grown into the "big part" of my project.  The "smaller part" of what I want to do involves creating and sharing a Google Lit Trip for my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A childhood in wartime China" (by Michael David Kwan).  If you are interested in the progress of either of these parts of my project, then have a look here at my Action Plan Site.