SOL12: A Data Dive Down the (Google) Rabbit Hole

Y'all. Did you know that Google has a timeline function that will show you everywhere you have been since you got a smartphone? Maybe everybody else in the world knew that, but I did not. And for those of you who maybe also do not know, I'm about to show you how to find it and use it.

Now, let me begin by saying that I am shook at the invasion of privacy, and the part of me who would choose the Bill of Rights as a hill I would definitely die on has serious misgivings about the fact that Google knows this much about me. But let me also say that I am old enough that I remember rotary phones and landlines, waiting twenty minutes for AOL to dial up, card catalogs, and atlases to navigate family vacations, and the part of me that remembers all that is profoundly awed by how far technology has come in my lifetime. We live in truly amazing times.

Before we begin, let me encourage you to be prepared to devote some time to this. Because it's a rabbit hole and once we start, there's no turning back! Ready? Ok. You'll need to go to your Google account, and scroll down to find these buttons:

I have not yet explored the "My Activity" tab, because one rabbit hole at a time. When you click on "Timeline," you will see a map that is marked with every location you have been since you got your smartphone (assuming you have location history on). Mine looks like this, for the previous seven years (I should travel more).

Now that alone is pretty cool, but you can also look up your most frequently visited places, and how many times you have been there either in your lifetime or in a year! Perhaps you also go on a big giant field trip with your kids (we take our 8th graders to DC). You can look back over the locations you visit, year to year, to remind you of what your itinerary looks like.

It's also handy if you wonder how many miles, exactly, were you on that darn bus? How many miles did we walk? Here you go!

I also enjoyed walking down memory lane a little. Google will tell you exactly how many trips you took, how far you traveled, and what days you were there in the handy-dandy trips feature. It will even show you the route you traveled and any pictures you may have taken while you and your friends were eating Mexican food in the hotel restaurant! Unreal!

Or it will remind you of that really fun vacation you went on with your family. Maybe you forgot exactly where you went and what you saw, but by gosh Google didn't forget! 

It'll even help you take the same route again and visit the same places if your vacation was one you wish to replicate. Again, completely creepy but incredibly cool. I feel like I could spend hours exploring my explorations from the past seven years. 

I hope you found this slice of Google tutorial informative and helpful, even if you're just determined to go turn your location history off so this can't happen to you (struggling with that one a little myself). But, since we are all about the "DATA" in education, I notice that my data trends very local, so I am going to push myself to travel somewhere this year that I have not been to. According to my history, there's a lot of unexplored territory. It's a big world out there. Let's go exploring!