Teaching cartography on the web with a multimedia GIS: A new solution

Abstract

This chapter reports on the creation of a new technology for the delivery of GIS data on the Web using multimedia technology. The path that led to the development of the new technology started in the mid ’90s with The Power of Place, a Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television and videocassette telecourse for teaching World Regional Geography, and continued with the Interactive World Issues CD-ROM, which was bundled with McGraw-Hill Higher Education regional geography textbooks. Underlining the earlier projects was the stated objective of using GIS to teach geography. The objective of the project discussed here — funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) — is the opposite: to use geography to teach principles of Geographic Information Science (GIScience). Using data on Mexican immigration to the US, we created a prototype that teaches basic cartographic design techniques — choropleth maps and graduated circles maps — using a new Web-based multimedia GIS. The prototype, which is built around segments of a documentary video case study, includes a series of narrated graphics and GIS-based exercises, and will eventually fit into a larger GIScience introductory course with a targeted audience of community college students. From a technical point of view, the prototype integrates a multimedia approach to online GIS requiring only a Flash player in the Web browser. The Flash client combines base map raster services, vector-based maps, and compact attribute data to produce interactive lessons integrated with audio/text instructions. The materials stream very quickly without the need for return trips to the server for map refreshes.