Maps Projects

Because I have been promoting the XO Map Activity and olpcMAP.net, I thought it'd be good to write about a couple of other map projects.



I'm running a course on Online Maps with OpenLayers. The idea behind OpenLayers is that you have many sources of maps, such as ESRI, Google, and Ushahidi, and you want one open system to combine them. That makes it a good fit for Mozilla's School of Webcraft: a new initiative for techies to teach the open web and publish helpful guides for self-learners. Out of the 20 Webcraft courses, this one stands out as one about goals and projects rather than code.

Why am I doing this? Well, maps were the first webpages I wrote on my own. It lets you make something visual and powerful even if you're just a newbie. We'll get some cool projects and true believers out of this course, I'm sure of it.



I'm also making maps for RAIN, an environmental group keeping tabs on everything water-related (except rain, ironically). The maps get used by the state's environmental protection office and the city of Pittsburgh. The map itself isn't that special, but it turns their numbers into a live picture of the environment. When I worked on a water research project, it was clear that we need more of these, to take good public data and match it with good visuals. Plus, there's something futuristic about seeing this from hundreds of miles away:

Bonjour from Montreal

The Montreal customs guy asked me questions in French because of my name.

I managed to participate in the Uganda conference call. I need to make doubly sure to document all of my projects, which activities interest students, and find more ways to connect our sensors and mapping to a future conservation project. But that's been my intention from the start - all of my materials are linked on the blog's right sidebar.

Then I patch my research work maps sites, and send them in over e-mail. I'm on the XO and need to do all sorts of crazy workarounds to code and then submit the code over e-mail. The software should allow direct selection of files to upload (instead of the sanitized view which is called the Journal). Journal confuses students too - I saw a Vietnamese school attach the file which said they'd run Record, instead of the photos they took with it.

I'm about to make frantic edits to wiki pages for my Boston-area non-profit, in the last 20 min before boarding the flight to Brussels. Unfortunately I'm missing some of the sensor-using action shots I took earlier, but I ought to have a whole lot of new ones, right? ;)