Sharing The Spirit Of Place!
This site allows members to make community maps, fill them with stories and media, and even share them with the world.
Our Curriculum section also provides free lesson plans, learning programs and other resources for teachers who want to use location-based media tools in their classrooms.
So if you've ever felt a connection with a place and wanted to share the story with others...then you've come to the right place!
The site is easy to use, and membership is free. When you’re ready to start just hit Create an Account to get mapping!
What's New?
OurMap Soft Launch
guardian — Mon, 10/25/2010 - 20:01
The OurMap site is now officially live and available to teachers, schools and the general public!
After a year of hard work the design and development team of the ART Mobile Lab at the Banff New Media Institute / Banff Centre is thrilled to announce the soft launch of the OurMap interactive mapping platform and learning environment.
We will be having an official public launch event for the system in Calgary sometime in early 2011, in conjunction with the official launch of the Sharing Places classroom learning programs developed by Learning Through the Arts. We'll also be putting out a press release for OurMap very soon.
In the meantime, however, the site is now live, and teachers who are interested in using it to develop mapping projects for their classrooms are welcome to request an account and get mapping!
All viewers are welcome to check out the existing mapping projects in our Shared Projects section, which currently showcases the initiatives developed last year by Calgary and Banff schools as part of our classroom pilot programs.
There's also plenty of other content to browse in the site, for those interested in the OurMap and Sharing places projects. Teachers should in particular check out our downloadable Sharing Places lesson plans and research report in the Curriculum section.
We are still working on finalizing some additional resources for the site, which will be uploaded by mid-November. For example, stay tuned in the very near future for a series of screencast video tutorials which will explain in detail how to use the OurMap system.
As a final note, I would like to send out a special thank you to all of the staff, work studies, collaborators, advisers, friends, artists, teachers, schools, students and others who participated or contributed in some way to the OurMap project over the past year or so. Without you this wouldn't have been possible. I'd also like to offer our sincere appreciation to the Inukshuk Wireless Fund and Telus for their generous support of the project.
Now, get mapping!
Angus Leech, Senior Mobile Researcher and OurMap Project Lead, ART Mobile Lab
Imagine Calgary Presentations
guardian — Fri, 09/24/2010 - 08:50
Olympic Heights Elementary, one of the schools currently participating in the OurMap project, recently approached imagineCALGARY to learn more about its role in creating a sustainable future for the community. Visit the following link to read an article about the conversations and partnerships that ensued: http://www.imaginecalgary.com/news_content/february_2010_3.php
This story is relevant here because the OurMap pilot projects at Olympic Heights are part of a larger project that the school is doing. The Grade Six students are exploring Calgary and how it might look during the next century. Three overarching questions guide this investigation: How can Calgarians develop a sustainable city? What is Calgary’s identity? How do we ensure sustainability for what we value?
In particular, the interactive mapping projects being created by the students using OurMap tie in with another concern shared by both Olympic Heights and Imagine Calgary - the importance of sharing sustainability goals with the next generation of Calgarians.
The maps created using OurMap and published online will potentially help these students to communicate their ideas about Calgary's spirit and identity - and their visions of Calgary's past, present and future sustainability - with other students, Calgary officials, and the wider community.
Though the article doesn't mention the OurMap project specifically by name, it does include the following passages that refer directly to the OurMap pilot project activities:
As part of our process, we have walked the streets of downtown Calgary, recording our observations on paper and film. We have penned poetry, illustrated by photographs that we took, to describe our findings and feelings about our city, as it is now.
Next, our class will generate questions to launch research inquiries about possible ways to make our wonderful city an even better place to live and work. Then we will use GPS software to record on-site observations, impressions and suggestions for improving specific locations in our city. We will deliver our work for this project to our alderman and the city’s planning department for their consideration."
Pilot Projects Underway
guardian — Fri, 02/26/2010 - 16:58
Big News! The first of four OurMap pilot projects has gotten underway in Calgary. The first classes of students from Olympic Heights School in Calgary have started their field trips to the downtown city centre, where they've been using Blackberry Bold devices and GPS to collect photos and audio, create inspirational poetry and imagery, and otherwise document their past, present and future visions of the city.
Soon the students will be adding their creative media to interactive maps, which will ultimately be posted in the projects area of the OurMap web site. Once that happens, these maps will be shareable with other learners, schools, and the wider Calgary community. Fun!
