In the final module for Cartographic Skills, we discussed the changing nature of cartography in the 21st century, given advances in technology, new applications, and especially VGI, or volunteered geographic information, meaning spatial information submitted by the public as opposed to collected and compiled by professional cartographers.
For the lab assignment, we looked at ways to explore and share data using Google Earth, which is, of course, freely available to the public and relatively easy to use. The first part of the lab was to return to the dot density map created two modules ago and export it in KML format. KML files can then be opened in Google Earth, overlaid on the standard Google Earth imagery, and shared with other Google Earth users. As a method of simply viewing map layers, this is much more accessible than ArcMap.
In the second part of the lab, we used Google Earth's tour feature to record a tour of places in south Florida. Google Earth allows users to create placemarks that make it easy to zoom in or out and to transition from one view to another, so that you can navigate to a series of places easily. After you've recorded a tour, you can save it along with your map layers and export a package that can, again, be shared with other Google Earth users, who can play the tour as well as explore your map on their own.
The record tour function automatically records every move you make while navigating around the map, so I found it a little tricky to do, as I had a hard time zooming, rotating, and panning smoothly while looking around a stop on the tour. Trying to get the scenes you want without giving the viewer motion sickness might take some practice! My tour for this assignment definitely wasn't perfect. Still, it's a very cool feature that I didn't know how to use before, and I'm now full of ideas for how to use it in the future for sharing maps and places.
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