Ask a child to make a map, and chances are high they’ll happily do so. We all have maps in our brains that are just waiting to get out, and creating maps is artistic and fun for anyone. Making and using maps—whether they be purely mental or recorded on paper or in digital form—is an essential part of being human.
My objective as an educator is to foster this map-based geographic way of thinking and to enable anyone to communicate these ideas and make their own maps. For the past two years the Out of Eden Walk project has sent me into schools across the northeastern U.S. to teach digital cartography, and it’s been a pleasure to witness the curiosity students have about our world, and their eagerness to practice cartography. My classroom exercise, Personal Geography, prompts students to first think about places that are meaningful to them, then make a map of the place using Google MyMaps. I end each session by welcoming the students into the practice of cartography and inviting them to go beyond the personal geography map and use their learned mapping skills to visualize other phenomena they’re studying. The varied maps below are student-created fruits of this effort.
Routes to friend's houses, by George A, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School, Portland, Maine.
Earthquake and volcano map, by Mrs. Buckley’s sixth grade Science, Section 2, Robert Adams Middle School, Holliston, Massachusetts. This map is interactive: Click here to explore.
We learned how to use the GPS and took a short walk. By Team Gold 6, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School.
Map of election speeches by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, made by Henry F when he was a rising ninth grader going to South Portland High School.
“We started using Google Maps after we learned about line making. We went outside and tracked with our minds. No GPS devices on this trip. Humans were the data collectors.” By Team Blue, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School.
Economy map, by Finn B, sixth grade, Robert Adams Middle School, Holliston, Massachusetts.
“These letters in the city streets were made by planning out routes and then tracking them with GPS devices.” Created by rising eighth to eleventh grade students in the Portland/South Portland 2017 Summer STEM Academy.
Notice the topical variety of this atlas of maps: navigation, geology, politics, economics. I also witnessed students mapping U.S. National Parks, Second Sino-Japanese War sites, ancient city-states in Greece, and more. I didn’t direct students to map these topics, I merely gave them the prompt: Use your mapping skills to visualize something you’re studying.
Students quickly realized that applying this geographic way of thinking outside the classroom can lead to better understanding their environment. Lincoln Middle School student Tatreaux Sokol took his newly learned mapping skills to analyze something that had been on his mind for some time: crime density in Portland, Maine.
The author discusses the finer points of mapping with Tatreaux Sokol, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School.
Lex Lyon
Crime locations in Portland, Maine, by Tatreaux Sokol.
Sharing the Out of Eden Walk with seventh graders at Lincoln Middle School.
Lex Lyon
Cartographic euphoria displayed by Cassie Weymouth, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School.
Lex Lyon
Geographers like me often say, “Everything happens somewhere, and mapping ‘where’ leads to greater understanding.” Modern technology such as drone mapping, geotagged social media posts, and GPS receivers in mobile phones have vastly increased the amount of “where” that’s being collected. With this accelerated ability to collect geographic information, we need an increase in our ability to process, analyze, and visualize this data in the form of informative, communicative maps. Based on my classroom experiences so far, this generation of youngsters appears capable of and eager to meet this challenge.
Map on, middle schoolers!
Jeff Blossom, of the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University, is the Out of Eden Walk’s chief cartographer. He has an M.A. in Geography from the University of Denver and has more than 25 years of mapmaking experience. Jeff is especially interested in developing tools and teaching methods to educate kindergarten through college level students how to use and create maps.
He’d like to thank the following educators for allowing him into their classrooms, for using maps in their lessons, and for encouraging their students to keep mapping: Martha Going, Kathryn Buckley, Jesse Conant (Holliston, Massachusetts); Lex Lyon and Michelle Amato (Portland, Maine); Vanessa Mann, Tasha Peterson, Tom Sidley, Kate Shiebler, Martha Sheridan, Lucia Salamone-Lister (Acton, Massachusetts).