Technology for Learning
Mapping Community History
by BOB COULTER
Technology opens many ways to enhance connections with your local community. Video recording devices can capture stories from community elders or interviews with local environmental experts. Websites like YouTube allow sharing of your students’ perspec- tives with the community and the world. For that matter, making a basic website has become so easy that students can quickly share their work and invite collaborators. In addition to these resources that allow your kids to link outwards, there are also opportu- nities to link backwards, forging a historical link to your community’s past. As they do so, students can build their mathematical and critical thinking skills. While this work has been possible for a while with geographic information system (GIS) software, the increasing capacity of Web-based tools allows online mapping of how your community has changed. Even better, these maps can be converted quickly into slide shows for easy sharing with parents and other community members.
Starting with the Census
To start, navigate to the Social Explorer website, managed by Queens College and the City University of New York. While you can subscribe to the site’s premium features, all of the work done here uses the “Free Edition” of the website. As of this writing (Feb- ruary, 2012), the default map that appears shows the population density for the United States at the level of a Census Tract (a geographic area that contains a few thousand people). Data are also available at other levels of detail (such as county-level) as far back as the first United States census in 1790. Before jumping into a historical look at your community’s past, you can use this map to assess your students’ map reading and data analysis skills. For starters, can your students identify your community on the national map? Do they under- stand what “population density” mea- sures? (How is density different from a total count of the population?) It may be helpful to zoom in and study your nearest metropolitan area. Density will likely become lower as you move away from the urban core. You can also probe students’ under-
standing by asking questions such as how the population density in your community compares to the rest of the United States. After you have a handle on the kids’
geographic and mathematical skills, it’s time to get in your metaphorical time capsule and travel back into your com- munity’s history. What your students
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©SYNERGY LEARNING • 800-769-6199 • MARCH/APRIL 2012
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