Sara E. Thomas
The creation of their neighborhood map will be students first interaction with the Google Map program. The maps have a lot of capabilities. Students will go to http://maps.google.com/maps. On the left hand side of the screen is a toolbar. Students will select the “My Maps” tab, and will then select “Create New Map”. They will type New Haven into the search bar, and this will pull up a street map of New Haven. Students will need to zoom in on their particular neighborhood. While many students are familiar with using Internet, directional maps and Google Earth, I doubt if any have created an interactive map before. I anticipate that they will be very excited about it.
The toolbar for editing your own map is located along the top left of the map. The scroll bar with the plus and minus at either end will allow students to zoom in on areas of the map. There are four buttons located to the right of this slide bar that will allow students to edit the map. The little hand allows them to grab the map and move the screen whichever direction they would like.
For this lesson we will focus on the line tool and the shape tool. The line tool looks like a line and will allow students draw lines throughout the map. To start a line students will click anywhere on the map. To continue the line students will click where they would like the line to continue on to. After comparing all of the maps at the Yale Maps collection students will need to choose five different years to represent their neighborhood’s boundaries. We will discuss what things might be important in choosing those five boundaries -- possibly years where a lot of growth occurred, or years where surprising constructions were made. Students will represent each boundary for each separate year with a different colored line. Once students have drawn the line they will have the ability to change the line color, opacity and thickness. They can give a title to the line and include a description about it. This function will allow students to explain what year that particular line is representing, along with any striking changes from the previous year’s boundary.
Finally students will use the shape tool, which works similarly to the line tool in order to create the boundary of their neighborhood as it is today. The shape tool works similarly to the line tool, but once you connect the line to where you started it will fill in the shape. It can also be named, and students can add text, etc. This will be the first step in students creating an online profile of their neighborhood.