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Mapping Arguments

Submitted by Jim Brown on July 27, 2007 - 9:40am. |

ddd sent me this story from the New York Times about the proliferation of mapping tools. I've been working on some assignments using Google's new My Maps function and Flickr's geotagging.

There are probably infinite ways these tools can be used in writing classrooms, but the assignment I worked up involves having students map a border that shapes their own life. This assignment was inspired by the book that first-year writing students at UT will be reading this year, The Devil's Highway - a book that explores U.S./Mexico immigration policies. I've worked up an example map that explores a border in my own life (that border is I-35, the highway that divides "East Austin" from Austin) - I plan to use this as an example for students. You can see that map here.

Google's "My Maps" is really easy to use. All you need is a Google Account, and you can point and click your way to a pretty detailed map. You can embed video, images, and audio in maps, and you can draw shapes, insert markers, and draw lines. Very, very easy. I'm currently developing a workshop on mapping assignments for our CWRL orientation, so I'd love to hear about any ideas people have.

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Jim--this is a very cool

Submitted by Ljones on August 1, 2007 - 8:10am.

Jim--this is a very cool assignment.

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Ditto Jones' remark to you,

Submitted by Stephanie O on August 6, 2007 - 4:00pm.

Ditto Jones' remark to you, Jim. Thinking about the two sides of a border will be a central metaphor to the two sides of an issue this year (and seeing those two sides proliferate into multiple viewpoints). I have a couple of questions...I-35 occupies such a central position in the lives of Austinites, and after seeing your map I have a hard time thinking of another border that I or students might use. Would you limit the border to one inside Austin? Maybe they could use some kind of border in their hometowns?

And would your assignment incorporate instructions to articulate how they identify in relation to that border, and what the people on the other side might be thinking? You did that on your jogging path entry, but it seems to me that a central component of RHE 306 will be to research and/or imagine the points of view students don't naturally identify with. Like, they could make two differently colored markers on the MyMaps tool...one is the west side thinking about the east side, and the other is the east side thinking about the west side.

Just brainstorming wi'cha!

Stephanie Odom-Robertson
Newbie Assistant Instructor
UT Austin

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Yes...to all

Submitted by Jim Brown on August 15, 2007 - 11:28am.

I like all of your ideas for expanding and tweaking this assignment. Yes, I would want students to think of borders that operate in any portion of their life (home, school, work, etc.) This assignment is partially taken from Greg Ulmer's book Internet Invention, and he asks students to map out the different institutions that have hailed them/interpellated them. So, it doesn't even have to be a border. For Ulmer, students would look at the different discourses that shaped them: career, entertainment, school, church, "the street." What physical locations represent these discourses? What would students gain from mapping them out on My Maps?

Keep up the Brainstorming.

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I don't know if this would

Submitted by gavinbenke on September 13, 2007 - 9:23pm.

I don't know if this would work for 306, but I'm having my students use Google Maps in my 309 class where we're looking at globalization. As they research towards papers, the students are marking and pasting their research summaries over places and locations that are used as examples in the articles. My hope is that this will serve as a way to think about how place can be rhetorically constructed and rhetorically used. Additionally, the students are locating the authors on the maps to foster a discussion about point of view and what sort of relationship these authors have to places they are writing about.

If anyone else has any ideas as to how mapping can be used in the classroom, I'd love to hear it.

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