Mapping

Image by S. Hermann from Pixabay

What is it?

Broadly speaking, mapping is putting information in a spatial context, whether that’s streets, bus stops, and bike lanes indicated on the city grid pictured above or floors of stores on a mall map. Digital maps can offer a wide range of functionality to their users, from zooming in to exploring layers, links, or embedded information that can be hidden or revealed. Digital maps have become an essential component of modern life for many, from the GPS information that helps us find the quickest route home to daily updated maps pointing to trends in COVID vaccinations.

Why do K-12 educators care?

If you’re a geography teacher, you already know that the spatial presentation of information on maps can draw deep questions from students about humanity. A fourth grader might wonder why some US state borders are straight and some are squiggly. A ninth grader might understand the independent nature of Greek city states when looking at the isolating terrain and islands of ancient Greece. A senior might note economic patterns across countries formerly held under colonial rule.

But mapping can have a profound effect on how students think about any subject: the arts, literature, languages, mathematics, sciences, and physical education. Mapping places in literature (from K-2 picture books, like Bao Phi’s A Different Pond, to complex works for high schoolers like Nella Larsen’s Quicksand) can help students gain great insights into characters, plots, and themes, and the real-life human experiences they are meant to speak to. Mapping waste stations in our cities or across the world can help students spot the social inequities of how governments choose to deal with trash. And charting where world languages are spoken across the globe can reveal the effects of colonization as well as the hidden privileges that come with speaking English.

What can it look like in the classroom?

Investigating issues of social justice in middle- and high-school classrooms

ArcGIS, a mapping software company, holds an annual competition for classrooms around the nation. Videos of 2021’s high-school and middle-school winners presenting their maps demonstrate the layers of analysis that mapping can elicit. From looking into the realities of segregation in New York City during the Jim Crow era to investigating the relationship between development and sea grass populations in New Jersey, individuals and student groups can ask deep questions and create compelling stories through mapping.

Third graders analyze patterns about recess at their school

Students in a Toronto classroom collect their own data about recess habits at their school and map it on an image of their playground. During the project students create physical maps, survey every student in the school, analyze the data with the help of sixth-grade students, and map the information to reveal opportunities about recess.

What should I be careful about?

The need for scaffolding. If your students are new to digital mapping, you’ll want to scaffold the project, building out comfort. Perhaps start with a shared class map in a simple mapping interface like Google’s My Maps, asking students to add layers as they do research. You can move later to slightly more complicated programs like StoryMaps (using a free, public account) or very complex ones like ArcGIS, investigating them in small steps, providing (or asking class volunteers to provide) how-to videos that are accessible throughout the project.

The nature of data. As educators, we know that data can be collected ethically and used for extraordinary good. Take, for example, the voluntary sharing of COVID testing data that helped lead to the creation of COVID vaccines. We educators also know that data can be collected unethically and used for extraordinary evils, such as the taking of cranial measurements to justify the creation of race and the practice of enslavement during the late 1700s. But students (and many adults) tend to believe that numbers are unbiased. Spend some time with your students noting that data is heavily influenced by bias, from what data gets collected, to how the data is collected, and the conclusions made from that data. (An easy example is US Census racial categories over time.)

The nature of maps. Maps are, by nature, distortions. In order to be useful, they, at the very least, reduce and simplify places. They also often carry with them the biases of our world and its history: the construction of cardinal directions that place Europe and America at the top of a world map, the names conferred on places by colonial powers or other conquerors, or fixed borders where there are uncertain disputes. Try the “Got a Whole Class Period?” exercise below to increase awareness of these biases.  

The nature of data combined with the nature of maps. “Who makes maps and who gets mapped?” ask self-proclaimed data feminists Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein. Adding to that question, “And why?” can provide a helpful three-question approach to helping our students create maps more ethically. D’Ignazio and Klein’s chapter “Collect, Analyze, Imagine, Teach” presents two sharply contrasting Detroit mapping projects that can serve as powerful for middle- and high-school students on why this approach is important as we map. High schoolers can also explore Mapping Inequities—a powerful project that fuses on historical and modern mapping to reveal structural racism in the US. Getting students to ask these questions routinely—who is making the map, who is getting mapped, and why?—can help students evaluate the value of maps and even note the effects of seemingly small choices, such as the placement of Alaska and Hawaii and the inclusion of Puerto Rico but no other US territories in the New York Times’ COVID tracker.

How can I try it?

Got 5 minutes?

Convince yourself that mapping can add to your teaching. Are your students investigating Buddhist statues? Reading a novel where locations matter? Learning about a group of people, like the United States Supreme Court’s justices or scientists from the Enlightenment? Take a moment to investigate relevant locations, which sites like Google Maps make easy.

I just mapped where this statue is from (Uttar Pradesh), compared it to where the Buddha gave his famed sermon at the Deer Park in Benares, then looked at how far both locations are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the statue resides. The Met’s provenance details makes the distance covered by this piece even more provocative. (Check out the birthplaces of the Supreme Court justices too. Interesting!)

Got a whole class period?

Before launching into a mapping project, take one class period to shake your students up about their own assumptions about mapping. Start class by looking together at any world map—maybe one in your classroom or the first one that pops up in a Google Search. Have students brainstorm any of the decisions the map maker or publisher made that are choices rather than realities (such as flattening the globe, labeling in English, including particular icons or colors). Then, divide the students into five groups, giving each group a different world map to explore. Have each group identify the way the new view changes their understanding. Have groups present to each other, asking students in the southernmost seat of their group to share.

Got a whole unit or course?

Include mapping for a whole unit. Researching figures from the Harlem Renaissance? Have students map birth and other significant places to contrast figures who were part of the Great Migration from those native to the North. Reading a novel rich with travel or contrasting locations? Assign students chapters to map, providing apt quotes from the book and an insight based on their research into the real-life location?

Where can I learn more?

If you’re eager to get started with Google My Maps, this tutorial will do the trick.

This case study presents a project where middle-school girls investigated and mapped places important to the history in Seattle of five groups of people (women and Black, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese citizens). The student responses are enough to turn any teacher into a digital mapper.

To inspire your students to the relevance of mapping in our daily lives, consider watching Mapping the Pandemic, episode five of Geospatial Revolution—a public media series from Penn State.