For this project, I chose to use the My Maps feature of Google Maps to chart Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan War. With this tool, I was able to place points at important locations, and in another layer, I included the pathways in the order that Odysseus visited them. This tool allows students not only to visualize the distance he traveled, but also to actually add up the approximate distance with the tool’s included distance measurements.
This tool also allows you to add images and descriptions to the location points, further enriching the experience. I have added an image and description to the first point on the map as an example. If there was a way to have students editing this, it might be a good group or individual activity to have the students create descriptions, or identify important information to create a more complete representation of Odysseus’ (or any literary or historical) journey.
Featured Image Source: “The illustration for the humorous book The General History Edited by Satyricon” by Alexander Yevgenievich Yakovlev accessed from Wikimedia Commons
