I never thought that I would be done the draft of my map by the midway point of the semester. I really thought that I would be working on it through the entirety of the semester. After the rough draft was done, I believed the ‘final draft’ would be more in depth on the map itself. However, what it actually is, according to Dr. Saladin, is essentially the question. I have a map, now what can we DO with it? I originally thought simply building the map was going to be enough, but no, now I get to go even deeper which is an exciting prospect. I’m saying that mostly because I get to finally indulge in more research centric work which I always believed I was much better at.
Essentially there were a few avenues to go down, and while I believe all of them will be explored eventually my next task comes down to using my map as a tool for a Story Map. I didn’t know that ArcGis also had a feature to make story maps, which is exciting because I have always loved doing story maps and already have experience making them. I decided in the end to do a ‘Tour of the Provinces’, in essence going between the different province boundaries in 117 CE, and going through the major cities of the five provinces. It won’t be extremely in-depth like a research paper, but a few facts and other details about the cities and each province. In addition to this, I’ll end up working in images to as many points on the map that I can, so if someone on the map wants to see pictures, they can follow the URL when they click on a point.
I don’t estimate all of this taking me more then two-three weeks of dedicated work, and after that there are a few more things that Dr. Saladin mentioned we can do, including adding pictures he took himself at some of the sites mentioned through the Omeka website.
This last week has taught me how important the question of ‘what’s next’ is to projects like this. It’s important to always be thinking about what else you can do with your project, and only when you finally don’t think there’s anymore you can do, do you finally sit back and say the job is done, but even then most of the time you end up thinking of more you could do down the line.
In addition to all of this, it’s also helping me prepare for the future. My capstone project in the fall is something that has been in the back of my mind since I first heard about it. The plan is a map with the boundaries from the Sengoku Period of Japanese history, with points showing major battles from a recent database I found, and all of this is simply more and more skills to add into my resume so that I can make something great over the summer and in the fall.
Leave a Reply