CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (1)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

DESCRIPTION:

As a fun addition to my course on medieval travel, I asked students each week to tag a place that

appeared in our sources with a quick (one to two sentence) description of the significance of that place

and their name (so I knew who did which tags). I created and embedded a separate map for each week

on the university-hosted course website for that week, and then at the end combined them all into a

master map. This was part of my larger use of my course website to post readings, discussion questions,

and discussion boards.

ASSESSMENT:

This was not an explicitly graded part of this course; I didn’t even have it on my syllabus. “Participation”

counted for 10% of the students’ grades, and I took into account whether they had tagged a place on

the map during some or all of the weeks. I expected this to take 5-10 minutes each week. I didn’t

explain what made a good tag; this was intended just to get them to look at a map for a few seconds to

see where on earth some of these places were. Some examples of typical tags:

Maldives

Ibn Battutah traveled here on his journey east. Here, he served as qadi for a short time. He implemented

new laws according to the Qu'ran before continuing his journey. (STUDENT’S NAME)

Lombardy

The religious movement of the Waldensians extended to all the cities of Lombardy. Here, they preached

in houses and schools in attempt to overtake the power of the Roman Church. (STUDENT’S NAME)

TECHNOLOGY:

I figured out myself how to do the technological side of things. My university uses Blackboard, which

has a course website created for every class subdivided by week. I hope that the following will be useful

to at least those using Blackboard. That said, you could embed a map on any website, but you will need

a Google account to create and host the maps. In reality, the embedding (Step One) is entirely optional;

it just allows you to see the map on the course website. The process of having students tag places and

combining into a master map (Steps Two and Three) are separate.

DISCLAIMER:

I did this before the “new” Google Maps replaced Classic. I found classic Maps a more useful and

intuitive tool, but they have discontinued support and so we are stuck with the new version. I find

annoying but not impossible to use for serious purposes once you find out where they hid the buttons.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (2)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

STEP ONE: CREATING AND EMBEDDING A MAP

IN THE COURSE WEBSITE

I embedded a map each week into the course

website (which I was also using to host weekly

discussion boards, in addition to the posted

readings and guiding questions for the week).

To the left is what my embedded map for Week

2 looked like (after students had done tags)

My university uses the Blackboard system, so

this may be different for CANVAS or other

systems. First, you will need to create a map

for the week using your own Google account (or

one set up especially for the purpose). I used

my university Google account

(kmcraig@g.ucla.edu). If you go to Google

Maps, there should be a “My Maps” link under

the search dialog box once you put your cursor

into it. Click it, and you should be able to Create

a New Map.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (3)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

Once you have created a map, you can name it and do a quick description. I named my maps by week

(e.g. “History 98T Week 6 Map”) and had the following description: (“This collaborative map tracks the

places and journeys mentioned in the Week 6 readings.”).

You will also need to change who can edit this map so that your students can add tags (you do this using

the “Share” button). This is where you may want to consider the map’s role in your class. For ease of

editing, I made my maps publicly editable. This meant that my students didn’t need a Google account to

edit the map, but that (in theory) anyone on the web could find and edit the map. I didn’t think that this

would be a problem for me, because this was not a major graded component of the class, but it is

something to consider. Making the map not public will mean that the tags will not show up on the

embedded version, because the website will not have that exclusive access. You may choose to just skip

the embedding altogether and just add a link to the map on your course website, which will give you

more flexibility in restricting who can edit the map.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (4)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

Time to embed! If you click on the three vertical dots to the right of the Share button, you will see a

drop down menu. One of the options will be “Embed this Map”. Click it and you will get the following:

This is where things get Blackboard-specific . Head over to your course

website. Turn editing on on the course website (right image), then click

on the “Add an activity or resource” at the bottom of the page.

Then when the dialog box pops up, scroll down the list to the very

bottom, until you see that you can add a “URL”. Add that.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (5)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

Adding a URL will bring you to the following. This is the slightly tricky part. Type a name in the Name

section (I called mine “Week # Collaborative Map”). In the Description section, click the button that

looks like this : <> This will gray out all the other buttons and let you edit in HTML. Copy and paste the

text from the “Embed Map” box from Google Maps.

Click the checkbox for “Display description on course page”. Then, in the External URL, copy and paste

the link to the Google Map. You get this from the “Link to Share” under the Sharing Settings in Google

Maps (the same dialog box you used to edit the permissions). This means that when students click on

the title of the embedded map, they will go to the map in Google Maps. “Save and return to course”.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (6)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

If you see a map embedded on your website, hooray! If not:

TROUBLESHOOTING

No map! --> Hit “Edit” and click “Edit Settings” to get back to the editing page. You may have forgotten

to click the “Display the description on course webpage” checkbox.

The text of the embedding code, but no map! --> Hit “Edit” and click “Edit Settings” to get back to the

editing page. Go back, clear the description, and click the HTML button (the one that looks like <>)

BEFORE you copy paste the embedding code.

Before moving on, check that if you click the name of the map, it brings you to the map in Google Maps.

Your students will NOT be able to edit in the embedded map on the course website (it is for viewing

only). They will have to click on the name of the map to be taken to the actual map.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (7)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

STEP TWO: HOW STUDENTS CAN

ADD TAGS TO THE MAP

Your students can click on the

name of the map on the course

website to be taken to the

editable map. Once there, they

can search for a place (to give a

random example, London).

Clicking the green placemarker,

then “Add to map” will add the

place to the map!

Students can then click the tiny

pencil in the lower left to edit

and write a description of London

(or whatever you would like them

to record about that place)

Particularly enterprising students

can also add pictures or videos

using the camera icon while they

are editing the place tag.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (8)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

Quick disclaimer: You may have noticed that in my maps, my tags appear in a layer called “Places”. This

is just the basic “Untitled Layer” renamed to “Places”. In what follows I am pretty simplistic with my

layers, there is a lot more you can do with them!

STEP THREE: CREATING A COMBINED “MASTER” MAP

When all your week-by-week maps are fully tagged, you can combine them into a master map to show

your students the full geographical scope of the course. Here’s how to do it.

I’ve got two example maps, “Example Map A”

and “Example Map B” that I want to combine.

Example Map A has three tags: London, Paris,

and Lisbon. Click on the three vertical dots in

Example Map A, and select the option “Export to

KML”. Export the Entire map. This will let you

download a KMZ file. Save it somewhere you can

find it again!

Then, create what will become the master map. I

called mine “Master Map C”. Under the Untitled

Layer, click “Import”. When the dialog comes up,

select the downloaded Example Map A file. That

layer will then contain the data from Example

Map A. Rename it so you remember where that

data comes from!

So, let’s add Example Map B (Madrid, Dublin, and

Brussels). Do the same process of saving a KMZ

file for Map B. Then, in Master Map C, click “Add

layer” (circled in image above). Again, Google

will let you “Import”. The “Choose a file to

import” dialog will pop up again, and now you

can choose the saved KMZ file for Map B.

CREATING A BASIC MAPPING ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE MAPS (9)

Created by Kate M. Craig, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

And now, you should have a Master Map with the data from the individual maps as separate layers

(again, I renamed the layers to represent where the data came from). In my class, then, I imported the

individual week maps as separate layers into the Master Map. I showed them the master map on the

last day of class, when we had a mini-conference for them to present their research.

My class’ master map is here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z2W25NvAJITY.k-

IukoNRZ_ZY. As you can see, some of my students had fun with choosing different icons and putting in

images.

I’m sure more can be done with this pedagogically, and I hope that this walkthrough helps with the

technical aspects!