Looking at GIS

I have always loved maps, and looking into GIS this week has been really cool. All the different things that you can do with existing maps and Google Maps, and even old maps, to make a visual representation of research is very intriguing. I especially find this helpful because I am a visual learner. Seeing the actual places of a historical event or seeing the geography of a region, etc., helps me to better understand and internalize the subject matter. Maps and other visual representations can deliver information about lots of different things, not just where things are. It is also cool to see the change over time of something. For class I looked at The Atlas for Early Printing (http://t.co/D5iAKX1odX) and it shows the growth of the printing press and related entities such as paper mills. This site did have some issues, but the idea was good. Animating change is extremely helpful. I don’t know if or how we could do this for our ABQ Airport project, but I think we need to do something to show change, whether through animation (if we’re ambitious) or through a chronological slideshow of pictures. These could be of the airport layout, popular destinations people go to in or from or through Albuquerque and New Mexico, tourism in general (like the postcards we saw in the library), tourism in general, etc. This would maybe show the reasons people come here and would be like a travel brochure too in that way. And then adding in pictures would not only make it more aesthetically appealing, but also more informative. But our main focus would of course be the history of the airport. And with all of the GIS we have been looking into I think we could really do some cool things with mapping. A map of Albuquerque would of course be our base picture and we could lay our data points on top to show data such as where the airport is and where the flights go to and from it. With all of us working together we could even make one map with different categories of data to lay over it, like the one in The Atlas for Early Printing. However, it turns out, it will be cool to see the collaboration of so many people on one project!