Creating GIS Data out of a Book Chapter

Learning goals

At the conclusion of this assignment students will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate how to read a history article of book chapter for content.
  2. Demonstrate how to extract GIS data from historical text.
  3. Demonstrate search skills to contextualize information that does not have complete GIS data.

Background

This assignment relates to the first chapter in Water in World History.

Reading history is not like reading a novel. Rather, in history we read with a specific method, which helps us get more information out of a text and make better use of time. Follow these steps when reading:

  1. Read the title and author. Look up the author: what expertise do they have?
  2. Review the entire chapter: how long is it, what are the sections?
    (We want to create a reading map of any chapters or articles before reading them. Knowing your reading route make reading both easier and feel faster)
  3. Read the introduction and conclusion: what is the main point of the chapter.
  4. Read and note each section with a specific purpose (see below). Your assignment determines how you read.
  5. Review your notes and write a one sentence reflection of what you thought of the reading. It should be personal and help you remember what you read. For example: "In chapter 9, Arnold focussed mostly on modern droughts, with only light mention of the ancient through early modern period."

Assignment

In your project teams, working together identify 20 GIS data categories for tabular data. Your categories are:

Myth, story, object, or event related to fresh water. Example: the Palermo stone.
Place of myth/story/event/object – You may have a region, civilization, or city/town.
What does the myth/story/event/object tell us about the past in one sentence.
When was the item. You will have two columns: start data and end date. If the item only has one data (say 2500 BCE), then put that date in the start column. If it’s a range, say the 12th century BCE, then list start as 1200 BCE and end as 1100 BCE (remember dates count down before year 0).
GIS element How would you represent this item on a map: would it be a point, or would you need a point to give a pop-up to show tabular data?
Page number of your item in the book.

For some items, you will need to do a bit of search to understand more about the item. I use the Credo Reference Database through our library as my "written-by-experts" Wikipedia. Credo is especially useful as all listings are short.

You can create a table in Word or you can put the categories in a spreadsheet for your team.

Please label who did what work.

Grading Criteria

  1. The team planned a work strategy before Tuesday to complete the assignment.
  2. The work strategy demonstrates a good faith effort to reach all members of the team.
  3. The 20 items are accurately written.
  4. "What does the myth/story/event/object tell us about the past in one sentence" demonstrates consideration of the context of the item.
  5. The final document is available both in the Teams file system and a link is shared to the individual student files by 10 pm on Thursday.