1. Home
  2. Peer Review: Story Maps

Peer Review

Story Maps

Reviewed:

Dec 27, 2018 by Teacher Education
Bookmark

Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.8 stars
Content Quality: 5.0 stars
Effectiveness: 4.5 stars
Ease of Use: 4.5 stars
Overview:

Esri Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content. They make it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story. As part of ArcGIS, Esri Story Maps let you use the full power of the world's leading mapping and GIS platform to create your maps.

Type of Material:

Development Tool

Recommended Uses:

  • Use in science courses such as epidemiology to show the potential spread of disease
  • Use in history courses to show change over time and spatio-temporal context
  • Use in graphics design to illustrate concepts for users/ students
  • Use in math courses to visualize data points and quantitative data
Technical Requirements:

None, although folks who want to create their own custom maps may need access to ArcGIS.  Access to data in spreadsheeets is needed to enter into the maps (qualitative and quantitative).

Identify Major Learning Goals:

  1. Tell a story through the use of maps
  2. Represent data to users to convey a variety of information
  3. Provide context for qualitative and quantitative data
  4. Visualize information for better decision-making
  5. Work with a team (via the Cloud) to incorprate data into a single presentation
Target Student Population:

High School, College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

None, but having an understanding of ArcGIS may be helpful

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

  • Powerful data analytics tied to location allow for clear and concise data analysis and visualization
  • Can be used in a variety of contexts and disciplines
  • Adequately robust to include a substantial amount of quantitative and qualitative data
Concerns:

An outside assignment would be required. 

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

There are no set learning objectives presented other than the ability to compile mixed media into a scrolling, parallax learning object.  This is a useful tool to supplement instruction where students are required to synthesize complex topics into a cohesive format.

  • Reinforces concepts based on data and displays them visually, allowing students to see numbers and information come to life
  • Maps help to demonstrate relationship between time and space
Concerns:

There is a cost associated with anything other than the Basic Story Maps.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

The interface is incredibly simple to use, from creating an account, to assembling scenes in your story, to bringing in media content from external libraries or your own files.

  • High quality graphics are created based on data entered from a spreadsheet
  • Interactive program allows you to display data In maps in several presentation formats, depending on your desired outcomes
  • Can be shared in the cloud amongst team members and later shared with the public over the web.

The interface is incredibly simple to use, from creating an account, to assembling scenes in your story, to bringing in media content from external libraries or your own files.

  • High quality graphics are created based on data entered from a spreadsheet
  • Interactive program allows you to display data In maps in several presentation formats, depending on your desired outcomes
  • Can be shared in the cloud amongst team members and later shared with the public over the web.
Concerns:

While using maps that already exist is a simple process, for those not familiar with ArcGIS, there may be a steep learning curve for bringing in maps that the user wants to create.

Creative Commons:
creative-commonscreative-commons by