Week 10 - Maps, Maps, Maps (and a fun tool for Tallahassee folks!)
I'm an amateur cartophile – I love maps. Political, physical, old, imaginary, abstract, exaggerated; I love them all. So naturally I was excited to see Google Maps as one of our tools this week. I didn't realize there was a Google Earth Education site, but of course it's just about the coolest thing I've heard about this week. This tool has so many learning opportunities baked in, it puts a smile on my face to imagine a kid sitting in front of their computer completely absorbed in a map, like how I was when I was a kid.
This is a history and geography teacher's dream come true. I quality map such as the ones Google provide show us such detailed and rich information. With the maps education tool, that information now expands to historical images. We can see our communities growth over the years, where land is disappearing to water, where water is drying up, and other important topics today. We can collaborate on maps, dropping pins on important historical locations or locations of environmental interest.
To that end, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to share a nifty little site I learned about a few years ago. For Tallahassee locals, folks who have visited here, or anybody who is interested in maps and historical change, the team at Tallahassee-Leon County Geographic Information Systems (TLCGIS) compiled an extremely captivating map of Tallahassee. The site displays a satellite image of Tallahassee from 1954 and lays it next to a recent satellite map from 2019. You can adjust a center scroller to show however much of 1954 and 2019 you want to see. In this way, you can directly compare the change of each neighborhood from two snapshot images. It would be even better to see the change throughout the decades, but believe me, the drastic changes in some places (and no changes in other places) are intriguing enough to check out.
I highly recommend anyone look at this map, available here:
Tallahassee Then and Now - 1954 to 2019
For any local educators, keep this tool in your back pocket. There's no telling when a great instructional opportunity will arise in which you'll want to show what was here 65 years ago. This is just such a cool tool, I'm quite excited to share it with the class. Please, get lost for a while in it!
HI Alex!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this wonderful resource! I have also been "tracking" my activities in Tallahassee - my favourite cafes, eating places, parks, watering holes, hiking places on Google Maps ever since I got introduced to it at the start of the week. I hope to be able to pass this on to future SAF officers who come to Tally to study!
Hey Kelvyn, I'm glad you enjoy the resource! You can really get lost in it, and for history and map lovers it's a really fun tool. So interesting to see the places we hike and eat as they were 65 years ago. Some places were giant fields, other places were neighborhoods lost to time. Cool stuff, please pass it on!
DeleteAlex, thank you so much for sharing! I really enjoyed our class map activity earlier this week (I had no idea about the Google Earth education site either), and while I have a terrible sense of direction, I still appreciate the historical and social impact that can be gleaned from viewing a map.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing that Tallahassee map. I live in Atlanta now, but I lived in Tallahassee for eight years, and I have many fond memories. I also think Tallahassee has a very rich history, and I would like to be reminded of some of the changes it has gone through over the past few decades. I'm excited to take a deep dive into the resource you provided!
Hi Alex, thank you so much for this tool. I have already passed it on to friends who are from families living in Tallahassee since forever. My home didn't exist in 1954. It was built in 1957 as the larger lots were broken up to build homes for the returning GIs. I can see now which homes were original to the neighborhood. I've also owned a home in mid-town and have seen photos of the dirt roads and horse and buggies on the street. I came to Tallahassee in 1970 and anything past I-10 was considered out of town. It's amazing how fast land has been developed in Leon County!
ReplyDeleteI have also used Google Map on a project in Koshkonong, MO where I had to draw the lot line of an 8,000 acre ranch, draw lot lines on specific parcels of property, generate the acreage of each parcel, and set the GPS coordinates. I quickly learned how to become proficient using this tool and it really is a lot of fun. There were instances where I was focusing down to a hedge of bushes to create parcels. It almost felt intrusive but my graphics were critical to getting them licensed to cultivate hemp on an agricultural scale.