Home > About > News & Events > Story Maps for Education
Featured News

Story Maps for Education

February 28, 2020

Link to downloadable document:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VmFsyUxwsngBkEVk1iufg4CDniDafHYb/view?usp=sharing

GLAM: ESRI Story Maps (Classic)

Justin de la Cruz, E-Learning Technology

404-978-2064 | [email protected] 

Story Maps Classic is an online software offered by the geography company ESRI as a way to tell stories visually. The idea is to embed multimedia content (maps, videos, pictures, data visualizations) into essays to create an exciting, interactive experience for the reader.

https://storymaps-classic.arcgis.com/en/

 

 

DISCUSSION: How could you use this in the classroom? What information could your students represent visually in your field? Which Story Map layout would they use?

Datawrapper.de

Datawrapper is a free tool to show data visualizations. You can create or upload your own datasets (usually via spreadsheets or CSV files) and edit the tables and graphs to your liking. Then the site will host your graph and you can embed it in other websites, including in Story Maps. You can create a free login to save, edit, and share your visualizations.

There are a lot of open datasets from government and other sources. CSV files tend to work best for uploading to Datawrapper. Check out:

https://www.data.gov/

https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/

I took data from FRED and Yahoo! Finance to make a graph comparing median household income to the Dow Jones: 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI/history/

DISCUSSION: What data could your students look for in your field? Do you know of open datasets you’d like to share with everyone?

Story Maps Exercise: Building a “Map Journal” story

Black Interiors: Envisioning a Place of Our Own

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=2676bda2e3a04f7fa587903e700cabfb

https://storymaps-classic.arcgis.com/en/

    • Sign In > Create A Public Account. Creating an account takes you to Arcgis.com. Go back to Story Maps: https://storymaps-classic.arcgis.com/en/ 
    • From Story Maps, click Apps to create a story map. 
    • Then click the “Create A New Story” button and choose the “Map Tour” template.
    • When it asks you “Where are your images or videos?” choose “Advanced Options” on the left, under “They are already online.” Choose “Start a new Tour.”
    • Open a new internet tab / window. Search out pictures for three places you’ve lived or visited that are within one city. These can be random pictures of the city, a landmark, or anything. Just open them up in a separate window.
    • View the pictures directly to save their direct URLs, or save them to your computer.
    • In Story Maps, edit your title and description.
    • Click the “Add” button and fill out all of the information to add a photo: copy and paste the direct URL of the photo for both the photo and thumbnail fields (or upload from the computer), write a title and description of the photo, and search the map for a location for the photo (general, like “Atlanta, GA” or specific, like “111 James P Brawley St SW”).
    • Add at least three places.
    • Click “Settings” to change the appearance of your Story Map.

 

  • Click “Save.”

 

Tips for Story Maps:

  • Before you even begin your Story Map, outline your essay and note any areas that could have strong visuals as support: photos, videos, stats (graphs), maps. Write out everything you can think of for the sections of your essay, and write down every kind of visual you can imagine for your support. You can cut things out later, but adding things in later may be harder to do.
  • Collect your media (pictures, videos, sounds) in advance and save them online. Collect more than you need and edit them down to the best ones as you work on your Story Map.
  • You will need a place to host photos for your Story Map. You can link to photos already online, but it would be better to make your own copies of the photos and host them online yourself. You can go to www.flickr.com and sign up for a free account: Flickr works directly with Story Maps, though you can use other photo services with some extra work. If you already have a Yahoo! Mail account, you can use that to start a Flickr account. Otherwise, use any email address to sign up.
  • You will want to provide the source for every multimedia item you use. If possible, list the photographer, videographer, creator, organization that made it, etc. If not possible, at least find the official location of the item and link to it.
  • Use a Story Map template appropriate to your project. This could be different for everyone. 
    • If you’re assembling a set of pictures within a city, state, or country, you can choose the “Tour” template. 
    • If you have a lot of text with a few embedded pictures and videos placed on a map, you can choose the “Journal” template. (And so on.)
  • After you write and edit your Story Map, show it to someone else to see if they understand what you made. Ask them about what doesn’t make sense – What’s out of context? What needs more support? What is there too much of?
  • Look at your Story Map on both a computer and smart phone to see how it looks.

 

Resources:

“How to make a story map”

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/how-to/ 

“Tell your story using a map”

http://learn.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-book/chapter3/#learn-more

“Nine steps to great storytelling”

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/429bc4eed5f145109e603c9711a33407

“Ten essential steps for story map success”

https://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2016/10/11/10-essential-steps-story-map-success/ 

Datawrapper: data visualization software, free online:

https://www.datawrapper.de/

Topics: E-Learning Technology
You may also be interested in
E-Learning Technology
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19)
Art
Art Crawl at AUC Woodruff Library
E-Learning Technology
Augmented Reality
Ask a Librarian

Do you have questions about our recent news or upcoming events? Let us know.

Learn How