Story Maps
Using maps and spatial representations for storytelling and storywork
Google Earth Narrated Tours
Google Earth allows users to pinpoint locations (retaining the angle and vantage as the user intends) and create tour. These tours can be narrated (live or recorded) and exported with a .kmz extension – these files can be opened up again in Google Earth (e.g. for the teacher or class to see) and played as a narrated tour. In the example shown here, the pinpoints relate to glacial and fluvial geographic features that can be seen around Prince George, BC. A tour using this pinpoints could be narrated with geomorphological definitions, descriptions of what a person would see at this location, or other "stories" of place.
Tutorials are easy to find online for navigating Google Earth, creating and exporting a tour out of pinpoints, and narrating a tour. Makes for an interesting way for individuals or groups to tell stories that involve place, and can be used as a method of assessment. |
Digital Map-based Storytelling
Storytelling may be done with digital mapping tools. ESRI Education/ArcGIS, using Geographic Information Systems, is one way to go, but other platforms exist. The ESRI StoryMaps site and software used to be free, and might still be with a proper account, but I have not investigated in a while.
Sense of Place Maps
A particular interpretation from http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/SenseOfPlaceMap.html:
A Sense of Place Map is a picture in whatever form occurs to you that addresses three questions:
Although text is allowed in a Sense of Place Map, the shift of emphasis from verbal or textual reporting to pictorial representation allows new insights to arise or be brought to the surface. This is akin to the effect of Freewriting. As in Freewriting, there should be no obligation to share or display your work. However, discussion of the typically diverse aspirations and trajectories of group members that emerged through this exercise can be thought-provoking. A Sense of Place Map may be drawn at the start of a project to provide an impressionistic picture of your aspirations. Or it may be drawn at the end of the project to place the project into a longer trajectory of your work and life. These uses of a Sense of Place Map evolved from a more ecological version in Thomashow, M. (1995). Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. |
Social Mapping
Social mapping is a way of building a community inventory that highlights a dimension of interest such as climate resiliency, social services, ecological diversity and so on. One of the best explanations of social mapping, as well as instructions for making social maps, comes from Flora & Fauna International via https://www.fauna-flora.org/app/uploads/2017/11/FFI_2013_Social-Mapping.pdf: