Project Summary:
The Local Mapping Project asks students to communicate aspects of their local environments through the practice of online mapping. Technological geolocation has become a significant means to revisit our immediate spaces and explore how they connect with a shared history, culture, and landscape.
Each student will construct a Google Map about a single theme that identifies and describes at least five relevant sites using substantive text and images. Examples of similar maps include:
- Katrina Information Map
- San Diego Witch Creek and Harris Fires Info and Maps
- Nioibu Smell Map
- Montréal Sound Map
Many other examples may be found through Google Maps Mania, Mashable.com, and Programmable Web.
Topic choice is wide open. Topics need not be overly grandiose, but they should be interesting, useful, and productive for a specific audience. Consider local historical or cultural sites, campus areas, indigenous flora and fauna sites, health and sport sites, leisure spots, etc. Like all issues of design, topic choice should coordinate with the work's audience, context, purpose, medium, strategies, and arrangement. All maps will be built upon the Google Maps platform, and must incorporate text and images. Students will do readings and activities that will give them the knowledge and experience to produce such maps.
Project Sequence and Grading:
- Field Research Packet (10% of project grade)
Each student will assemble a packet of field research about his or her chosen sites consisting of notes, photos, and commentary. The packet must be bound together in some way (folder, CD, binder clip, etc.) so that the material will stay together physically. The information in this research packet will be the raw material that students will incorporate into their Google Maps. Excellent Field Research Packets will contain productive information and insightful commentary, and will be logically arranged to be assessable to other people. Excellent Field Research Packets will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics. - Design Plan (10% of project grade)
(Design Plan criteria are available here.)
Each student will construct a design plan based on the rhetorical elements identified in Compose, Design, Advocate that articulates the map's goals and how it will accomplish them. Design plans help guide the design process, but they are not static recipes; they are evolving documents that shift to accommodate changes encountered during project development. Excellent design plans will account thoroughly for all of the rhetorical elements established in CDA and present a coherent narrative rather than a collection of disconnected parts. Excellent design plans also will reflect the corresponding map, and be in a finished, polished format incorporating appropriate grammar and mechanics. - Final Map (60% of project grade)
(The rubric created by the class is available here.)
Each student will produce a Google Map that illuminates an aspect of the local area's history, culture, or landscape. Maps should identify and describe at least five significant sites in a chosen theme using substantive text and images. Excellent maps will explicate an interesting, productive subject through insightful, grammatical text and original, professional-grade images. Excellent maps will use icons (placemarks, lines, shapes) appropriately, and demonstrate significant student engagement. - Final Map Presentation (10% of project grade)
(The presentation criteria chosen by the class are available here.)
Each student will present his or her map to the class, explaining how the map represents its subject. Map presentations will use Google Presentation and last approximately 5 minutes. Excellent map presentations will incorporate techniques discussed in class readings. Excellent map presentations will be on time, and be rehearsed and polished. - Postmortem (10% of project grade)
(The postmortem form is available here.)
Each student will produce a reflective postmortem that provides insight into his or her design process. Excellent postmortems will account thoroughly for all sections of the postmortem form, thereby providing valuable information about project development, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Excellent postmortems will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.