Mapping

I enjoyed the mapping a lot more than Gephi, it was more straightforward and easier to work with. For mapping we chose to use Google Mapping, I think we chose that one because of how many examples there were for us to look at. It also helped that some of them were pretty interesting, like; UFO sightings, bigfoot, and pokeman go maps. It allowed us to personalize our own map and use any kind of style that we wanted. I enjoyed being able to pick the icons and the ability to choose where we placed them. We could switch it up and cover a larger area with a box or we could pinpoint it exactly where we wanted.

For the actual points we decided to take on the task of trying to figure out exactly where Herland was located. Since the book doesn’t actually tell us an exact area, we used some context clues from the book to guide us to a possible roundabout location. We were able to start off by looking for a river, and then looking for foliage that was nearby. The book described a very tree filled area that opened up into a meadow, parklike area so we decided that around Venezuela would be the best location. It matched up with the descriptions pretty well. So personally I think we at least have a relatively close map location.

The next part of the map that we wanted to add was some descriptions of the points and a quote to describe it. We chose quotes that supported our guess of the location. We also had started to look at the spatial justice within the Herland universe and ours. We only got to one but if we would have had more time to further look into the text I think we would have found many that could have been addressed.

Overall, I really liked this project. I have never worked with google maps, and didn’t even know you could create your own maps. But after working with it, it was much easier than I first thought. So now in the future if I need anything dealing with maps I will have this experience.

I am feeling a lot more confident as we have progressed in the class, technology wise. I feel like I am understanding the process of creating something and then embedding it in the website. Some tinkering is always needed to get there but I am finding a solution much quicker than I was at the beginning of the semester. So I think I am doing pretty good as we finish at the half way mark today! Spring Break!