Last week, Henry, Erin, Kelly, Deb (who is back as a staff researcher), and I had our very first meeting to talk about our new Teachers' Strategy Guide project, which will be all about mapping...
A map of the internet circa 2003 showing the connections between different internet routers, from the Opte Project.
Randall Munroe's 2007 map of the internet, from
xkcd.
Because the meeting was so interesting and I'm so excited about this project, I thought I'd blog about it. You know how much we NMLers like to keep everyone updated on our projects at every phase. Sometimes watching things unfold is the coolest part!
As we quickly discovered, mapping is a huge topic! Right now, we're still trying to get the lay of the land (har har... yeah, there are lots of mapping puns and idioms... I advised Henry that we better just get them out of our system now!) and see what's happening with mapping in pop culture, in academia and in industry. We definitely want to get a broad sense of what cool stuff it out there!
But what does this have to do with the New Media Literacies?
Well, this Teachers' Strategy Guide will probably focus on the skills of simulation, collective intelligence, negotiation, distributed cognition. Here are just a few of the applications we've been thinking about. Remember, these thoughts are all very provisional:
Simulation
The ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
When we play a game like SimCity, we are building a model of a city that runs of a simulation of how a city might successfully run. We zone areas and build roads, and the game's internal simulation determines how our choices effect the city we're trying to build. (Oh and as a sidenote, has everyone heard that the source code for the original SimCity has been release in open source under the name Micropolis? Check it out!)
Collective Intelligence
The ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
One my favorite projects that I found while poking around the world of mapping was Participatory Avenues, a project that seeks to get at the the spatial knowledge of stakeholders-- such as people living in a given environment-- who may not typical have has much of a voice in development issues, and present that they know in 3D models to lead to more participation in the process. Here's a great video describing their work.
Negotiation
The ability to travel across diverse communities,discerning and respecting multiple perspectives,and grasping and following alternative norms.
Let's say I were able to map an area-- whether it's a forested region in a developing country as with Participatory Avenues or, say, the grounds of school-- from the perspective of many different groups, how would that impact your behavior as you walked through it? Check out this map of childhood memories, illustrated in flickr and google maps. Does it matter that someone remembers where there was once an orange grove? Would it make you maybe slightly less likely to litter there?
Distributed Cognition
The ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
Everytime we use any kind of map, we are using certain kinds of intelligence-- the ability to read a particular kind of map-- to access another kind of intelligence-- the information that maps can provide. Mobile technologies are allowing us to access different kinds of information when out in the world. For example, But It Like You Mean is a project that allows people to write reviews about products, particularly concerning ethical concerns, and then access those ratings from their cell phone while they're actually in stores.
Got something to add? We're definitely interested in talking to a wide range of people in the coming months. Are you part of a group that does neato work with maps, either for work, play, or school? Are you a middle school math or social studies teacher who'd like to talk to us about what you'd like to see in a such a teacher's strategy guide? Are you a young person who has questions or comments about mapping and thoughts about how you'd like to see it brought into your school? We'd love to hear from you!
