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kclinton
eggplant group
Eggplant group—what is a map?
Maps can do a lot more in geography
Why do we map? What is the impulse
Mapping as a skill or mechanism to interpret the world
Motives for Mapping:
-interpret the world
-make an argument
-to understand something
-to give someone information
Different kinds of maps
-to locate kids metacognitively in a domain(LEARNING MAPS)’’; mapping nonphysical spaces like a person’s learning trajectory. Maps of learning over time: 1) things that matter to them; 2) things that matter to the world. Helping kids see where they are in a nonphysical space. New kinds of maps give kids a mechanism for picturing this.
Q: can we make maps of our experience that are meaningful?
“to map or be mapped”
-The need to get away from map as product. Does it help to think about why people created these things in the first place?
Q: why are we so hung up on creating these things? Is this normative to how we’ve been raised (do other cultures—for instance, perhaps an Asian culture—think about maps in fundamentally different ways? Are we being U.S-centric in how we’re thinking about maps.
Google maps are great, but they don’t show HOW THINGS CAME TO BE how they are, doesn’t show how things came to be. How things got there/ political and economic movements, for instance.
To understand all maps as historical. Map-making as a basis for an ongoing conversation about history and how new tools can let them be constantly revised and reworked.
How about perspective? Like a map version of wikipedia. This was an idea that was returned to a few times, how wikipedia has multiple perspectives, can maps do this?
The dynamic nature of maps now and what they allow us to see.. there are variable properties to digital maps that are changing how we see the world.. so these new ways of seeing the world should change how we teach about the world.
Maps can “hit you in the gut” help you make sense (both when reading maps and when creating maps)
Perspective-taking; the dizzying version..
No big T truths, learning to read a map as defined from a particular perspective
How teach, if no absolute? What would be the teacher’s role? Give students a chance to challenge and interrogate their own perspective. What’s shown? What’s not?
Not saying: here’s a map & here’s what it means. Rather, teaching maps as a process.
BIG IDEA: not just where are terrorist organizations, but why are there terrorist organizations? What might a map answering this question look like? What maps would let you explore the question?
Have kids use data sets that make sense to them (Jonathan Harris has a site that lets you do this)
Levels of what is permanent? what is up for discussion?
Topographical mapsà there’s maps that show a physical reality (where the mountains are), but maps can also show a conceptual reality. How different realities can be overlaid.
Discussion of the overlay metaphor
What does this metaphor “buy” us for ways of thinking about mapping? What does it obscure?
Transmutation as a metaphor for mapping. Example is the Microsoft Pivot Tables/ infinitely flipping foreground and background
Google has a map showing queries of google. How there’s just this deluge of “data”. Interestingly, it’s not a created map, it’s interepreting this data surge that creates a “map” of it, that “makes sense” of it. (the info constantly changes, too). So the google technology is providing a snapshot of something; you have to figure out what it means (so it’s like the reader/viewer that is creating/writing the map)
How maps, themselves, are a metaphor. There is no automatic knowing of what a map is. Making a map is critical to “get” this connection of how one thing is saying something about something else. You have to build a level of understanding of what a map is.
FOR KIDS.. developing conceptual and vocabulary for creating and interpreting maps.
Are there limits on what is a map?
Where is the boundary betw/ maps and visualizations
So many of the communication devices we use in our era confuse spatial logic. For example cell phones break down spatial relationships (9-11 example the parents in Poland giving the man the crucial information to leave the building even though he was right there; here it is the virtual that is giving the vital information; we can’t automatically privilege the physical)
A FASCINATING POTENTIAL MAP:
How are biology majors created? I really like this idea. To get to see people’s maps of how they got to be where they are.
Skills as metacognitive overlay to talk about what’s going on, and also, ideally to augment what’s going on. skills are just as often sensibilities.
