Using mapping as a learning tool for students offers several outcomes. Students develop skills in framing material within temporal and geospatial constructs. The ability to layer data and various media types in creating a map furthers critical thinking and gives students opportunities to understand course content in a complex spatial context. Mapping can be thought of beyond the sense of traditional cartography; we can use images of the universe, floor plans of a building, or molecular structures as the basis for maps on which students can build a story pertaining to their course work and/or research. Fortunately, there are some great tools, freely available, for you and your students to use for mapping projects.

Previously in a post on Resources for Multimedia Creation (October 8, 2014) I mentioned Google Maps for developers. “With Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API) users can expand, customize, and embed maps and mapping tools into their websites. This includes combining Flickr (the photo sharing website) content with maps. These work well with Google Sites and Google Docs.” Check out the tutorials and articles to get an idea of the types of projects Google Maps will support.

Harvard World Map, developed at Harvard University, is described as “…an online, open source mapping platform developed to lower barriers for scholars who wish to explore, visualize, edit, and publish geospatial information.  The system attempts to address the gap between desktop GIS which is generally light on collaboration, and web-based mapping systems which often don’t support the inclusion of large datasets.” Harvard World Map allows users to import and make visual large GIS data sets. The application facilitates the use of multiple layers to create complex visualizations. Maps can be kept private or shared. There are examples on the homepage as well as a large number of shared maps found under View a Map. This would be a good option for someone wishing to examine correlations among several data sets without having to deal with the steeper learning curve of a program such as ArcView GIS.

For those using Omeka [see Omeka.org, Omeka.net, and a previous Innovative Instructor post, Omeka for Instruction], the Neatline plugin offers a set of tools to allow “…scholars, students, and curators to tell stories with maps and timelines.” Neatline was developed at the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia Library. Omeka and Neatline are designed specifically to support online collections and exhibitions. Take a look at the demos to get a sense of the rich and complex ways in which cultural heritage artifacts, photographs, or other documentation can be layered over maps to provide complex and nuanced interpretive readings of the collected materials.

If you are teaching in the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences or the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins, there is another option: Reveal.  Developed here at the Center for Educational Resources, Reveal uses mapping, in the sense of the term that refers to hierarchical image mapping, combined with annotation. “Reveal is a web application for annotating images with rich multimedia content. Using Reveal, you can create a website where image annotations link to image, audio and video resources to illustrate visual relationships.” Watch the video to get a better idea of how Reveal works. Reveal uses JHU authentication and for the present is available only to those teaching on the Homewood Campus.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Pixabay.com – An 1691 French map of the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi, located in western Ukraine.