Who made this website?

My name is Amos, and I am a student in the IslandWood Graduate Program in Education for Environment and Community Class of 2023 through the University of Washington College of Education. I love maps, and beyond exploring this website and learning to read topographical and highway maps, I encourage you to search "counter-mapping" on your preferred search engine to engage with mapping to challenge dominant sociopolitical power structures. Feel free to contact me at apomp@uw.edu with any feedback or questions.

Why did I undertake this endeavor?

The easy answer to this question is that I did this project for class in the fall of 2022. EDC&I 508A - Technology In Practice, to be exact. When tasked with the assignment of creating an educational/learning tool while engaging with new technologies, I thought that it would be great see if there were a way to create a street-view map of IslandWood's trails. Discovering the Google Street View app felt like fate. My main goal is to help current and future grads in each of two situations:

1. Explaining how to get to a specific trail, intersection, or location like Mist Net North or the Lower Loop Log Circle.

2. Out on the trails and unsure of which way to turn or how to find the east side of the Lower Loop Trail or, like I once struggled to do while on the way back to Main Campus from Blakely Harbor with a group of students, to find the entrance to campus on the Cemetery Trail.

Some other benefits to my project are:

1. It can support accessibility and inclusion efforts on IslandWood's trails.

2. It's fun to zoom around the trails on Google Maps street view.

3. You can play your own custom games of IslandWood GeoGuessr with friends.

4. The public can see IslandWood's trails even if they are unable to access them physically.

5. It offers assistance in planning out lessons for IslandWood's school overnight program or a hike for a group of wedding guests.

How did I create this project?

Using an iPhone XR and the Google Street View App, I walked around IslandWood's trails and took 11,726 individual images to create 286 photo spheres (and that's only for the completed sections up on the site, not counting bloopers). After publishing the 360-degree photos to Google Maps and properly aligning and connecting them to allow viewers to navigate from sphere to sphere, I used Google Sites to create the "Hitting the Highlights" tour of campus--the crucial, user-facing aspect of my project--which you can find here.

When will I complete the Main Campus and Harbor sections of the website?

Unfortunately, the Google Street View app went away on March 21, 2023. If IslandWood can access a 360-degree camera, someone could take more photos and upload them on https://streetviewstudio.maps.google.com/. I also think some of the longer sections of trail, like the Lower Loop Trail, could use more images to fill in the gaps.

How long did this project take to make?

Many, many hours! But I really enjoyed being out on the trails, moving very slowly and a only a bit at a time, even though I did have to stare at my phone for much of it. It was sometimes difficult to decide which sections of trail needed more photos, and you can certainly tell that many desire more than I was able or willing to capture. And I was always limited by some combination of phone battery, daylight, my own stamina and hunger levels, and various other commitments. While the time on the trails was my favorite, I definitely also enjoyed the puzzle of connecting the dots to make the navigable Google Maps tour and writing the text for this website.

Next steps:

• Continue to make this site easily accessible to staff and grads as well as partner schools and SOP students and families.

• Add more trail descriptions and information about trail accessibility throughout campus.

• Connect this site to IslandWood's Learn site.

• Add references to little tips and tools around campus, like "this box has sit pads in it" or "the lighter for Campfire on Wednesdays lives in this spot."

• Incorporate feedback from users.

• Find people to continue to update this site into the future.