Blog Work:

By 8 am Monday morning, create a map using Google My Maps or, if you’re ambitious, Google Fusion Tables. You should set aside at least two hours for doing this project.

Remember: no matter which tool you choose, you need data to plot on your map. Data includes photos or videos that you either create or compile from the web (make sure you cite your source), or restaurant reviews that you write yourself. Data also includes datasets like census statistics. You can use any data that you want, including public data you can find via this search and which can easily be integrated with a map using Google Fusion Tables.

Your map can be related to your group’s project, but it doesn’t have to be. You might do a map of voting locations in your borough. Or of votes by age in the election of 1960. Or restaurants in your neighborhood. Or of landmarks you pass on your commute to school. Or of international coffee production. Or of population numbers by county in New York State.

The goal of this project is to choose data, and then to visualize it on a map.

As you create your map, think about how the data you’re plotting might become part of a larger argument. Think about how the spatialization of data deepens your understanding of the data itself.

To use Google My Maps, log in to Google and go to http://maps.google.com.

Then, click on “My Places,” then click “Create Map.”

After doing so, you’ll see an interactive tutorial that will walk you through the process of creating a map.

Here’s a tutorial on using an earlier version of Google My Maps (the first few steps are different, but after that they’re similar)”

And, here’s a tutorial on building maps with Google Fusion Tables:

http://youtu.be/0HdQYl8EBW8

After you’ve created the map, embed it on our blog along with a 2-3 paragraph discussion of the potential value of mapping for your group’s project.  Here are instructions for embedding:

From Google Maps:
-Create map
-In Google Maps, click share icon (next to print icon in upper-left hand corner).  Copy the embed code (e.g., <iframe width …>).
-On our Blogs@Baruch WordPress site, start a new post.
-Choose “HTML” view in upper-right hand corner of post editor (tab next to “Visual”)
-Past embed code in post editor
-Preview or Publish post and you will see your map embedded

From Fusion Tables:
-Create Fusion Table
-Select Visualize/Map from the top menu
-Click “Get embeddable link” in upper-right hand corner of map (e.g., “<iframe width …>”)
-On our Blogs@Baruch WordPress site, start a new post.
-Choose “HTML” view in upper-right hand corner of post editor (tab next to “Visual”)
-Past embed code in post editor
-Preview or Publish post and you will see your map embedded

Reading: 

• Edward Tufte, “PowerPoint is Evil,” Wired, September 2003.