"One second of latitude equals 30.92 meters on the ground [multiply your latitudes by 30.92]. For longitude, calculate the cosine of the latitude then multiply by 30.92 [this is the scale factor for the longitude values]." from the GS+ help files
If you know what to do from there, great: otherwise, grab me and we'll take care of rescaling your data.
If you have a shapefile of your region, and it's in lat/longs, then things get complicated. Talk to me, and we can transform it if you like. But you can skip the background map for this exercise, anyway, so it's not critical.