The Tour de France starts on Saturday. Unlike in recent years, this year the race is almost entirely within France. The riders will only be outside of France once during the three week event. The complete course can be seen on the official Tour de France map. Unfortunately, the official map doesn’t provide anything more than just the locations of the start and end points of each segment of the race. This presents a great opportunity for a Google My Maps project or Google VR Tour Creator project.

Create a Google Maps tour of the 2018 Tour de France
Students could use Google’s My Maps tool to create a map with placemarks for the start and end points of each segment of the race. In addition to the town and city names have them include a handful of interesting facts about within each placemark. Students can also include pictures and videos in those placemarks. If you have never tried using Google’s My Maps, watch my video below to learn how to get started.

Create a VR Tour of the 2018 Tour de France
Google’s VR Tour Creator that was launched a couple of months ago is quickly becoming one of my favorite mapping tools. With the VR Tour Creator students could create a VR tour of the starting points of the segments of the Tour de France. And with the latest addition to VR Tour Creator students can add their own narration to the tours that they create. Watch my videos embedded below to learn how to get started using Google’s VR Tour Creator.