Abstract
The term neogeography describes a new approach within GIScience teaching and research whereby geospatial technologies are becoming web-based and increasingly accessible to a broad range of developers and users. Through engaging with the geoweb (geospatial web-based applications), users are creating maps and sharing spatial data that is relevant to their own lives and experiences. The development of geoweb tools has been especially important for students and faculty members who engage in the practice of participatory mapping. In this chapter we describe how, in a university taught neogeography course, undergraduate students created participatory geoweb applications to address local issues. One student constructed a geoweb-based platform for civic dialogue; a second team of students designed and deployed an application to address the logistical challenges faced by a local grassroots organization. We draw on the pedagogic theory of place-based education (PBE) and consider it as an effective approach to teaching and learning neogeography. We observed how a PBE approach empowered students to critically and effectively engage in civic matters, become more invested in ‘place’ and actively learn directly about social justice issues. The approach also supported an increased academic engagement while providing a valuable learning experience in terms of developing technical, critical thinking and other soft skills.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
According to Semken and Freeman (2008), ‘a combined set of place meanings and place attachments, held by a person or a group, constitutes a functional definition of the sense of place’ (1043).
References
Bowers, A. (2008). Why a critical pedagogy of place is an oxymoron. Environmental Education Research, 14(3), 325–335.
Brown, G., & Raymond, C. M. (2014). Methods for identifying land use conflict potential using participatory mapping. Landscape and Urban Planning, 122, 196–208.
Corbett, J. (2009). Good practices in participatory mapping. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Coulson, M. R. C. (1977). Political truth and the graphic image. The Canadian Cartographer, 14(2), 101–111.
Craig, W. J., & Elwood, S. (1998). How and why community groups use maps and geographic information. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 25(2), 95–104.
Crutcher, M., & Zook, M. (2009). Placemarks and waterlines: Racialized cyberscapes in post-Katrina Google Earth. Geoforum, 40(4), 523–534.
Dorling, D. (1998). Human cartography: When it is good to map. Environment and Planning A, 30, 277–288.
Elfer, C. A. (2011). Place-based education: A review of historical precedents in theory and practice. PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, Athens.
Elwood, S. (2002). GIS use in community planning: A multidimensional analysis of empowerment. Environment and Planning A, 34(5), 905–922.
Elwood, S. (2008). Volunteered geographic information: Key questions, concepts and methods to guide emerging research and practice. GeoJournal, 72(3–4), 133–135.
Elwood, S., & Ghose, R. (2001). PPGIS in community development planning: Framing the organizational context. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 38(3), 19–33.
Elwood, S., & Leszczynski, A. (2011). Privacy, reconsidered: New representations, data practices, and the geoweb. Geoforum, 42(1), 6–15.
Elwood, S., Schuurman, N., & Wilson, M. (2011). Critical GIS. In The Sage handbook of GIS and society (pp. 87–106). London: Sage.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books.
Ghose, R. (2007). Politics of scale and networks of association in public participation GIS. Environment and Planning A, 39(8), 1961–1980.
Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69(4), 211–221.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2005). Accountability and collaboration: Institutional barriers and strategic pathways for place-based education. Ethics, Place & Environment, 8(3), 261–283.
Haklay, M., Singleton, A., & Parker, C. (2008). Web mapping 2.0: The neogeography of the Geoweb. Geography Compass, 2(6), 2011–2039.
Hall, G. B., Chipeniuk, R., Feick, R. D., Leahy, M. G., & Deparday, V. (2010). Community-based production of geographic information using open source software and Web 2.0. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 24(5), 761–781.
Harley, J. B. (1989). Deconstructing the map. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 26(2), 1–20.
Jankowski, P. (2011). Designing public participation geographic information systems. In T. Nyerges, H. Couclelis, & R. McMaster (Eds.), The Sage handbook of GIS and society (p. 347). London/Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Jeffery, C. (2014, November 5). More hungry mouths to feed this year in the Okanagan. Kelowna Now. Available from: http://www.kelownanow.com/columns/promotion/news/Promotion/14/11/05/More_Hungry_Mouths_to_Feed_This_Year_in_the_Okanagan. 5 November 2014.
Johnson, P. A., & Sieber, R. E. (2011). Motivations driving government adoption of the geoweb. GeoJournal, 1–14.
Keen, A. (2007). The cult of the amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values. New York: Broadway Business.
Kienberger, S. (2014). Participatory mapping of flood hazard risk in Munamicua, District of Búzi, Mozambique. Journal of Maps, 1–7.
Kingston, R. (2011). Online public participation GIS for spatial planning. In T. Nyerges, H. Couclelis, & R. McMaster (Eds.), The Sage handbook of GIS and society (p. 361). London/Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Kwan, M. P. (2002). Feminist visualization: re-envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), 645–661.
Laituri, M. (2003). The issue of access: An assessment guide for evaluating public participation geographic information science case studies. Urisa Journal, 15(2), 25–32.
Leitner, H., McMaster, R. B., Elwood, S., McMaster, S., & Sheppard, E. (2002). Models for making GIS available to community organizations: Dimensions of difference and appropriateness. In W. Craig, T. Harris, & D. Weiner (Eds.), Community participation and geographic information systems (pp. 37–52). London: Taylor and Francis.
Lewthwaite, B. (2007). From school to community-based school: The influence of an aboriginal principal on culture-based school development. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, (64), 1–18.
Livingstone, D. (1992). The geographers tradition. Oxford: Blackwells.
Macintyre, B. (2008, March 14). Whatever next: A map of Utopia – Thanks to the internet we are living in a golden age of cartography. Times of London.
McCall, K., Martínez, J. A., & Verplanke J. J. (2014). Shifting boundaries of volunteered geographic information systems and modalities: learning from PGIS. ACME: An International E–journal for Critical Geographies: Open Access, 36.
McInerney, P., Smyth, J., & Down, B. (2011). ‘Coming to a place near you?’ The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 3–16.
Michaels, K. (2014). Close up: Kelowna farm to table movement flourishing. Kelowna Capital News. Available from: http://www.kelownacapnews.com/news/265833601.html. 4 November 2014.
Panek, J. (2014). How participatory mapping can drive community empowerment--a case study of Koffiekraal, South Africa. South African Geographical Journal (ahead-of-print), 1–13.
Parker, B. (2006). Constructing community through maps? Power and praxis in community mapping. The Professional Geographer, 58(4), 470–484.
Poole, P. (1995). Geomatics, who needs it? Cultural Survival Quarterly, 18, 1–77.
Powers, A. L. (2004). An evaluation of four place-based education programs. Journal of Environmental Education, 35(4), 17–32.
Rambaldi, G., Chambers, R., McCall, M., & Fox, J. (2006). Practical ethics for PGIS practitioners, facilitators, technology intermediaries and researchers. Participatory Learning and Action, 54(1), 106–113.
Scharl, A., & Tochtermann, K. (2007). The geospatial web: How geobrowsers, social software and the web 2.0 are shaping the network society. London: Springer.
Schlottmann, C. (2005). Introduction: Place-based and environmental education. Ethics, Place & Environment, 8(3), 257–259.
Semken, S., & Freeman, C. B. (2008). Sense of place in the practice and assessment of place-based science teaching. Science Education, 92(6), 1042–1057.
Sieber, R. E. (2006). Public participation geographic information systems: A literature review and framework. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(3), 491–507.
Sieber, R. E. (2007). Spatial data access by the grassroots. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 34(1), 47–62.
Smith, G. A. (2007). Place-based education: Breaking through the constraining regularities of public school. Environmental Education Research, 13(2), 189–207.
Stephens, M. (2013). Gender and the GeoWeb: Divisions in the production of user-generated cartographic information. GeoJournal, 78(6), 981–996.
Sui, D., & DeLyser, D. (2012). Crossing the qualitative-quantitative chasm I Hybrid geographies, the spatial turn, and volunteered geographic information (VGI). Progress in Human Geography, 36(1), 111–124.
Sui, D. Z., & Holt, J. B. (2008). Visualizing and analysing public-health data using value-by-area cartograms: Toward a new synthetic framework. Cartographica, 43(1), 3–20.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1990). Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values. Columbia University Press.
Tulloch, D. (2008). Is VGI participation? From vernal pools to video games. GeoJournal, 72, 161–171.
Turner, A. (2006). Introduction to neogeography. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Warf, B., & Sui, D. (2010). From GIS to neogeography: Ontological implications and theories of truth. Annals of GIS, 16(4), 197–209.
Wood, D. (1992). The power of maps. New York: The Guildford Press.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Andrew Barton, author of the Places and Pipelines project, as well as Travis Eek, Stevie Frew, Liz Waterfield and Alex Rutledge, the creators of the Okanagan Fruit Tree Project web map. We would also like to acknowledge Casey Hamilton and Ailsa Beischer from the Okanagan Fruit Tree Project for their input, ideas and support of the geoweb project. Finally we would like to thank Nick Blackwell, the head Geolive programmer, and Joanne Carey, the Centre for Social, Spatial and Economic Justice administrator.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Corbett, J., Legault, G. (2019). Neogeography: Rethinking Participatory Mapping and Place-Based Learning in the Age of the Geoweb. In: Balram, S., Boxall, J. (eds) GIScience Teaching and Learning Perspectives. Advances in Geographic Information Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06058-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06058-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06057-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06058-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)