Final Projects
At the end of the semester, every student produced some form of map as part of their final projects. The nature of these choices varied extremely widely as you will see below. If the map has an online component, the links are also listed below. If there is not a link accompanying the description, the maps are either printed or hand done and can be seen in person but not online.
Maps Made by Hand
A couple of students decided the best sorts of maps can still be done completely by hand - without the aid of a computer.
Kelly Hickey designed several maps based on historical models...
Eliza Rudegeair used spacial concepts to envision how individuals in a group make their mark on the abstract "space" between and around them through speech. She mapped Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet.
Neatline
One mapping system we used is really a way to display a variety of interactive data on a map overlay. The software, Neatline, offers some of the same sorts of capabilities that google or bing maps provide, but is more flexible and can store and display a wider variety of types of files. In both of these projects, the students included images and sounds as you can see.
Ian Hitchcock created an interactive map of some of the Marlboro trail system...
Kara Hamilton created the beginnings of a "soundscape" of the college, where you can click on a room or building...
GIS Maps
The main software we used in class is called
Q-GIS. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is a type of software that is designed to display a wide variety of statistical or other data in a map overlay. The techniques of statistical display in map format (known as "Thematic mapping") is an extremely common way to communicate large amounts of data with a spacial component as clearly as possible. These projects make use of a variety of common thematic map styles, including choropleth (Eddie Higgins) or proportional symbol (Anna Goren and Jonah Nonomaque).
Anna Goren designed maps of US National Parks and Shorelines showing the total number of visitors to each location in contiguous US in 2012 as well as a comparison of overnight stays (e.g. camping vs lodging) at parks and shorelines in the Eastern US.
Eddie Higgins made three chloropleth maps charting the deaths in the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge along provincial lines.
Ben Glatt created maps showing different military travel times in China...
Cassy Anderson took data supplied by the Arts Council of Windham County and plotted the locations and contact information of arts organizations and projects in the Brattleboro area.
Jonah Nonomaque gather his own census data from across the Marlboro campus and, using shapefiles designed as a group by the class, created maps showing...
Kelsey Gibson also used the class designed shapefiles and data collected by the library to show student use...
