Month: September 2014

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts-I am on the “SIF Outreach and Documentation” team. This group was created after I pitched during my SIF interview the idea that communication on GSU’s campus could be improved. I, to my slight embarrassment, realized I had fallen victim to this challenge when, during my interview, I answered the “what would you do with a giant bag of money” question by basically explaining things that are already taking place in The Exchange, and the Digital Aquarium. I had no idea, and to be honest-still don’t have a clear understanding, of what those spaces offer students and faculty. And as I’ve been working with the rest of the SIF O&D team, it is becoming clear why that would be the case.

The first task the team has set out to accomplish is creating a collective list of technology spaces on campus ( think computer labs, the digital aquarium, etc) that are open to all students. Once we complete this collection, our team will make some web-based maps, a series of short informational videos, and any other promotional items we may think of along the way as a resource to share with all of GSU. The idea here is that we create a visual, informational advertisement that is consistent across  resources that students, faculty, and staff can utilize to simply familiarize themselves with the resources. In my attempts to collect information for this list-I started to find myself in a vortex of confusion and frustration.

Why the heck don’t these open hours match the last webpage I saw?

Why does another website say this location is no longer open?

Where even IS this building that this supposed lab is? Why is it not on the campus map?

The Exhange and CII-their merging? So now what do they offer me?

Through these questions-arose frustration. If it wasn’t my specific responsibility to find and record information about these resources-I would have thrown my hands up in the air (and not to say aaaahh ohhh). This, my friends, is the beast that the digital information age has created. Old pages are left out there to provide false information.

And here we are-the SIFs-with our mops and buckets, prepared to clean up this mess.

Urban Gardening, Food Deserts, and Mapping was the title of the presentation Nicole Ryerson and I gave during this week’s Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for CURVE. Nicole and I are both M.S. students in the department of Geosciences and, between the two of us, we have a diverse collection of original maps. These maps have been produced from the simplest of web mapping services to the heftiest spacial analyst desktop software. As we sat at Workstation II, there was a pleasantly consistent flow of curious administrators, librarians, faculty members, and students stopping by to ask us about our work. As we presented, we offered what I now reflect on to be a gracefully orchestrated dialogue:I would give a short overview of the different mapping tools that were used to make the maps surrounding food topics that we had on display and Nicole (who has constructed an awesome thesis surrounding urban agriculture in Atlanta) shared her wealth of knowledge surrounding food from “the plant to the policy.”

Conversations around urban food are extremely “sexy” in research right now and, because these conversations lend themselves to spatial considerations, easily translate into related discussion around cartographic representations. Cartography is becoming increasingly accessible to non-experts with the advancement of technology. You can hardly search through a newsfeed on Facebook without seeing some colorful map of the US declaring each state’s allegiance to a certain product or habit. The one that I’ve seen most frequently is this one showing Facebook fans of the NFL.

Both at my undergraduate institution and during my graduate studies here at GSU, I’ve been required to take a cartography and visualization course. These courses focused heavily on the production of maps in the ArcGIS environment. ArcGIS is a software produced by a company called ESRI which markets itself as “a platform for designing and managing solutions through the application of geographic knowledge.” In class we are taught how every map needs a north arrow, a scale bar, an informative title, supplementary text, and most importantly-source information. Source information includes the name of the person who made the map, the date it was made, and the source and date of the data used to create the map. While students would get points taken off for excluding any of these elements in a map produced for class-the maps you see on the internet will rarely include them.  It is more common on web maps to see this information in the text of the article somewhere. As the images of the maps are shared, they are often at risk of becoming separated from their source text.

You might be thinking to yourself “Who cares?! The map gets separated from the source information-so what?” Well, take a moment to consider what sources you most commonly read to get caught up on the daily news. Do you prefer CNN? Fox News? MSNBC? HLN? NPR? BBC? Al Jazeera?  Reuters? The Onion? Regardless of the one you choose-we can likely agree that each source has a certain lens through which they filter the information they share. Although maps are often assumed to simply be representations of reality-just like news stories, they are often carefully constructed to support an argument that the organization producing the maps is in favor of.

Lets take an example of a hypothetical natural disaster and a map that shows the area a year later and the amount of recovery efforts the areas still requires. Maps produced by FEMA, the Red Cross, the local city planner, and the local Catholic church would likely all present different stories: some want to send the message of near completion, some want to say that there is still a lot of work to be done, and some just want to display all of the work that can be accomplished when communities come together during a tragedy. Organizations can do this by using different quantities of measurement, grouping the quantities in different ways (think natural breaks vs equal intervals), or presenting information at differing scales.

As I was talking to a good friend of mine about maps, she said to me, “You’re the only one I know who cares about maps this much. I don’t think people think about the power of maps. They just take them as fact.” Ding ding ding!! She wins the prize!!!

As the year progresses, I’d like to continue to use my role as a SIF as a platform to increase the cartographic literacy on GSU’s campus. We’ve started in a place where we are using the work that’s already been done in the hot topic of food to simply make people aware of mapping efforts in Atlanta and the types of mapping tools that are available to the GSU community. Next, we’ll expand the efforts to assist people who want to use maps in their own work by teaching about data collection methods and making professional looking maps. Most of all, I’d like to start a dialogue surrounding the power of maps and how technology has played a role in increasing their power.

This was a busy second week full of meetings and presentations for this SIF. Nicole and I presented our first iteration of our Spatial Symposium series on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. We had a total of four of our SIF/Honors Students colleges join us for those events. There were also kickoff meetings for both the GSU 1010 eText & Study Skills Assessment and the SIF Outreach & Documenting. Here is a little break down of the tasks assigned to each of these groups.

GSU 1010 eText & Study Skills Assessment  For some context: “The GSU 1010 course serves as the academic orientation course provided for first semester college students to assist them in the acquisition of fundamental skills essential for academic success. This course is offered primarily through the Freshmen Learning Community (FLC) program and serves as the anchor course among the cluster of classes offered to each FLC cohort. In addition to the academic orientation topics is the expectation that there will be class discussions and lectures related to the theme of the learning community” (First Year Programs website). We have been tasked with taking the textbook for this course, which is currently in PDF form, and making it interactive. During our meeting, we discussed adding a series of short videos as a quick and easy way to provide information about campus life (using the library, advisement, financial aid, how to become involved, etc) to the newest additions to the GSU community.  In addition, we will explore ways to assist students in moving through campus spatially through maps and video campus tours.

SIF Outreach & Documenting  During my interview for this position, I strongly advocated for increasing communication across GSU’s entire campus surrounding the resources and projects that are taking place across disciplines. Through this group, we would like to create a hub for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff, to learn about the places and opportunities the university offers as ways to fit their technological needs.  The group is taking its first steps by creating a collective list of technology spaces on campus ( think computer labs, the digital aquarium, etc) that are open to all students. Once we make this collection, our team will make some web-based maps, a series of short informational videos, and any other promotional items we may think of along the way as a resource to share with all of GSU. From there, we will work towards finding ways to communicate with the GSU community about what is taking place at CURVE and with the SIF program and how those who are interested can become involved.

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One of the questions that has been coming to mind for me during these conversations is “why?” Why is it that there is a need to increase the engagement between GSU’s freshmen and the step by step guide to campus life. Why would students, faculty, and staff on campus not already aware of the technological resources that are available? Why is it important that these individuals have access to these resources? It is through the answer to this nagging “why” that purpose, drive, and focus will emerge. In order to attempt to answer these questions, I took a moment to take a step back and examine the environment that I am working in.

Georgia State Facts: Georgia State University, which was founded in 1913,  offers 250 degree programs in over 100 fields of study throughout the 50+acres of land that make up this urban campus. With over 32,000 graduate and undergraduate students or enact ways everyone could become informed on topics in an accurate, timely, meaningful manner. Now add the roads, overpasses, green spaces, office spaces, shops, restaurants-not to mention the distance people travel to even get onto campus-into the mix, and it becomes clear the significant challenges one could face in creating a community and sharing messages with them.

Taking a moment to examine this larger picture is an important step for me because, in my life as a graduate student, I’ve spent 99.99% of my time spent downtown in my office, working with the same group of people on the same scope of projects.  For the other 0.01% I will leave Kell Hall to go to Sensational Subs for lunch. But really-that about sums it up. As I move forward into the third week, I will take with me the idea of these other 32,000 people -what would it mean if all of them were prepared to transition into campus life? What would it mean if they all knew about the enriching resources they have available to them just by being a member of the GSU community?

What kind of impact does this program, does this SIF, have the potential to have?