Unsure on where to start on mapping your learning spaces? Below find a few example on how a few individuals tackled the assignment.  You can also always find inspiration by check out #mapmyedu. We are excited to see what you come up with!

Student A: Reflecting on Identity through Voyant and Google Maps

What did I do?

I engaged in free writing as a technique to compile personal data and ideas. I then used this brief writing assignment to create a conceptual map, using Voyant-Cirrus, and a spatial map, using Google Maps.

How did I do it?

1. I began with a 10-minute free write and I considered these prompts to stimulate my writing:
   1. Where do I go to learn (alone)?
   2. Where do I go to learn (collectively)?
   3. Where do I go before or after learning?
   4. How do I journey from one place to the next? Walk? Bike? Transit? Car?
   5. A day in my life: Where does it begin? Where does it end? Are there significant places I visit in between?
   6. When do I visit particular places? How long am I there?
2. Using the places, modes of transport, and timeline I developed during the free write, I generated a word cloud in Voyant-Cirrus.
   
3. Next, I took my free write, highlighted all of the physical places that appeared, and arrange them in a sequential order. Using Google Maps, I created a personal map of these locations.
4. Finally, I shared these maps using the hashtag #mapmyedu!

Student B: Food for Thought Map with Voyant and Google Earth Tour Builder

Thinking about place and learning and identity and how these interact, I decided to map my learning place according to the places on campus that I eat. As busy student (or conference goer, in this case) I am often eating and reading in close proximity. What, how, and when I eat affects my brain, and thus my capacity to learn!

I jumped into mapping right away using Google Earth Tour Builder, thinking about the places that I’ve eaten and what I’ve learned there/what type of learning I’ve done there. I chose to use Google Earth Tour Builder, which allowed me to drop pins and add annotations to a “tour” that can be shared and followed linearly. I got really into adding annotations, videos, and links to my locations — my learning expanded far beyond the physical place I was considering, but was kind of “rooted” in my experiences at the places I was writing about. One thing that I was disappointed about was the fact that Google Earth Tour Builder is rather linear and fixed — I’m not able to ask others to add their own annotations or comments.

Next, I cut and pasted the text of these annotations and put them into Voyant to see the frequency of the words I’d used.  It was really interesting to see the proximity of the words to each other — of course, reading and eating-related words like food emerged as prominent and close. Indeed, in my mind, eating and reading analogies abound!  Finally, I shared both maps as different tweets using #mapmyedu.

I’ve not yet completed the entire reflection part of the assignment, but this exercise definitely help me feel more connected to the physical place I’m learning in this week. I’ve also been thinking about how food is very much a part of a place’s identity and how that roots us (or not) and might become a part of our own identity, too. The exercise also let me far beyond this campus — to other places and thought. I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to experience, through this assignment, to consider these different “places” as part of my learning.

Student C: Voyant and Canva

For the assignment, I started thinking about my daily routine and, through a 10 minute free-writing, I was able to describe what I do and where I go on a regular day. As a bilingual and Spanish teacher,  “translanguaging” is part of my daily writing and, since I decided to create my first conceptual map using Voyant (you just need to copy and paste your text – less than a minute!), it was very engaging to visually be able to see how I used my linguistic repertoire.

For my second map, after my brief writing assignment, I thought about the diverse identities that I perform and my daily experience around my learning environment. By creating a relational map using Canva, I was able to connect the different environments and identities. It was really easy to create this map following the instructions (After creating an account, I just simply chose a template in which I was able to modify colors, shapes, and lines. I added different labels and I had a  Venn diagram!).

Finally, I shared both maps using the hashtag #mapmyedu!