Image above: The very useful ESRI Story maps site.
Related links to Spatialworlds
GeogSplace (a teaching blog for Year 12 geography)
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
manning@chariot.net.au
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
Story telling through maps: Esri's Story Maps
"Map-based storytelling is fun, compelling, and helps us all better understand our world."
Several previous Spatialworlds postings have played with the idea of story in geography; geogstory in geography teaching and learning.
This posting showcases the fantastic Esri Story Map initiative and the availability of hundreds of story maps that may be of use to the teaching of any aspect of the geography curriculum. The story maps produced are not only spatially interesting but also full of valuable information. You may even like to get your students make their own story map - details of how to do it are on the Esri Story Map page.
Story maps use geography as a means of organizing
and presenting information. They tell the story of a place, event,
issue, trend, or pattern in a geographic context. They combine
interactive maps with other rich content—text, photos, video, and
audio—within user experiences that are basic and intuitive.
For the most part, story maps are designed for general, non-technical
audiences. However such maps can also summarise
issues for business and decision makers. In general story maps use the tool of GIS to present the results of
spatial analysis that does not require their users to have any special
knowledge or skills in GIS.
Story maps use interactive web maps created with ArcGIS Online,
Esri's cloud-based mapping and GIS system. ArcGIS web maps let you
combine your own data, including spreadsheets and GIS data, with
authoritative content and thematic maps from Esri and the GIS community,
on top of Esri basemaps. The web maps support visualization,
queries, analytics, and pop-ups for map features with rich content
including photos and graphs.
People who are creating story maps to tell their geographic stories
include GIS professionals, planners, communications specialists,
knowledge workers, journalists, activists, web designers, bloggers,
educators, students, amateur geographers and hopefully school students!
The Story Map Gallery is an excellent resource for students to explore and see the power of maps to tell a geographical and/or historical story. Some fascinating and informative maps!
The Titanic Story map is especially fascinating for those with an historical bent.
Image above: The Global Peace Index map
Related links to Spatialworlds
GeogSplace (a teaching blog for Year 12 geography)
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
manning@chariot.net.au
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
Using maps to analyse peace
After
the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney and terror attacks in Paris and Denmark,
acts of terror continue to be at the centre of much of our news in
2015. The Vision of Humanity mapping initiative helps us to get an understanding of the relative danger of such attacks across the world.
The Vision of Humanity site
also provides maps showing a Global Peace Index, as well as peace
information specifically for the United States, Mexico and the United
Kingdom. Click here to watch a brief video on the Peace Index Project.
Vision of Humanity is a strong proponent of the need to further
study, advocate and act on peace. The website
focusses on the major issues facing the 21st century and aims to bring a balanced approach with factual information that
is positive and solution based.
As
seen above, the site provides a huge amount of information on
countries, in terms of peace indicators such as violent crime,
homicide, military expenditure etc. Just click on the "Specify
Indicator" button. The site also enables you to see the change in peace
status between 2009-2014 by using the date slider below the map. It is
worth spending some time navigating around this amazingly rich site to
see what it offers your political/social geography studies.
Some information gleaned from analysing the Terrorism Index map
"Of the 17,958 people who died in terrorist attacks in 2013, 82 percent
were in one of five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria,
and Syria. That's one finding from this year's Global Terrorism Index report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The report is based on data from the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, which has information on more than 125,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2013.
The report found a 61-percent jump in terrorism fatalities between
2012 and 2013. "Over the same period," the authors wrote, "the number of
countries that experienced more than 50 [terrorism-related] deaths rose
from 15 to 24"—an indication that the problem of terrorism was getting
both more fatal and more widespread a year before ISIS declared a new caliphate. But it's also striking where terrorism didn't occur. Much of the
increase in terrorism-related fatalities in 2013 took place in Iraq,
where terrorists claimed nearly 4,000 lives—a 168-percent increase over
2012. Worldwide, Iraq was the worst-affected country, accounting for 34
percent of terrorism-related fatalities in 2013, with Afghanistan ranked
next with 17.3 percent. Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2013, the report
found, around 5 percent of terrorism-related fatalities occurred in the
34 wealthy countries of the OECD. In 2013 specifically, there were 113
terrorism-related deaths in OECD countries—0.6 percent of the worldwide
total. Six of these took place in the United States."
