Professional Blogs:
Based on my research of the links provided to other blogs, it is clear that individual blogs varry based on topic, purpose of blogging, and the bloger themself. This may seem rather obvious but by comparing blogs side by side the different elemnets to each blog become quite clear.
For example, the "professional" blogs such as those on the ESRI website are often verry informational. Many of them were written as a reporter would on a given story. Blogs about technology and software usually gave the 411 on the plus's, minus's, and attributes to them, as well comparisons to older models.
Other "professional" blogs were somewhat more casual and they conveyed the writers personal opinions on a given GIS based topic, or hints on using software treat they had played around with. Yet whatever the topic was on the ESRI blogs, they all had some common themes such as higly organized thoughts and in depth information. Additionally they all ultimatley were designed to help the veiwer in some way shape or form on the given topic. Purpose and direction in these blogs were easy to identify.
Student Blogs:
The "student" based blogs differed from the "professional" blogs and also had several similar qualities. Since the student blogs are all of college level quality, they were usually well written, coherent, and had screenshots that helped to visually connect the topic being discussed just as the professionals had done. The main differnce between the two was the purpose of the blog. Since the professional blogs often had more information to convey, they were slightly more organized since they had to be for the reader to easilly view all the information. However in my opinion, the most obvious differnce was the collective organization of all of the blogs. The more professional bloggers had their blogs organized by topic rather than by the author. This appeared to be a direct result of all of their blogs being informational based. Whereas the student bloggers had their blogs organized by auther, which then forced the reader to sift through each individual's blogs for the a given topic. The simple fact that these blogs were completed for a grade with a focus on being comfortable with blogging and learning about relevant mapping topics drove the student blogs to be the way they are.
Conclusion:
The student blogs and the professional blogs were quite similar and only differed due to the purpose for the blog. Had the purposes been the same they may have been more similar. From Researching this I personally have determined that one of the major aspects that my blogs lack are the visuals accompanying them.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Maps And Games
Map Games:
There are several map games on line, most of them are geared toward the grade school age bracket. All of the ones that I found were trying to teach the target students something, usually geography. These educational map games varied in complexity depending on the age bracket for the target students. Some were quite simple and were focused around simply understanding map basics such as symbology. One map game in particular had a quirky guide that helped the child playing the game to identify symbols on a map and what they represented. These appeared to be targeting a younger crowd, while other games were designed for a highschool understanding level. The games for older students often were designed to teach the students capitals of states and countries, something that only older children would be able to learn and have the patience to try to understand the given material.
Some of the games that I found seemed to have little to no educational value, they were simply games. An example of this was a puzzle map game that was essentially a digital map puzzle where the peices were jumbled up and the player needed to fit all the peices back together. This game simply used a maping theme to entertain the player while trying to get all the epices back together.
Games Using Maps:
Unfoutunatley there were not a lot of examples online of games that used maps or mapping in the process of playing. I was however lucky enough to partake in such a game last semester. The game was called geospatial disc golf. Each group went out and created a disc golf course hole that encorporated structures and obstacles present on campus. We then created maps using GIS that were to scale with the real life golf course. The purpose of the execise was to learn the techniques used in creating digital maps that could be created and edited in GIS. It also taught us the practicality of doing so, in this case it allowed us to create a digital "booklet" of every hole on our class golf course. The actual gaming aspect of the project was when we were able to play the holes that other groups made and then challenge that group to play our course as well.
There are several map games on line, most of them are geared toward the grade school age bracket. All of the ones that I found were trying to teach the target students something, usually geography. These educational map games varied in complexity depending on the age bracket for the target students. Some were quite simple and were focused around simply understanding map basics such as symbology. One map game in particular had a quirky guide that helped the child playing the game to identify symbols on a map and what they represented. These appeared to be targeting a younger crowd, while other games were designed for a highschool understanding level. The games for older students often were designed to teach the students capitals of states and countries, something that only older children would be able to learn and have the patience to try to understand the given material.
Some of the games that I found seemed to have little to no educational value, they were simply games. An example of this was a puzzle map game that was essentially a digital map puzzle where the peices were jumbled up and the player needed to fit all the peices back together. This game simply used a maping theme to entertain the player while trying to get all the epices back together.
Games Using Maps:
Unfoutunatley there were not a lot of examples online of games that used maps or mapping in the process of playing. I was however lucky enough to partake in such a game last semester. The game was called geospatial disc golf. Each group went out and created a disc golf course hole that encorporated structures and obstacles present on campus. We then created maps using GIS that were to scale with the real life golf course. The purpose of the execise was to learn the techniques used in creating digital maps that could be created and edited in GIS. It also taught us the practicality of doing so, in this case it allowed us to create a digital "booklet" of every hole on our class golf course. The actual gaming aspect of the project was when we were able to play the holes that other groups made and then challenge that group to play our course as well.
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