Developing an interview script

Think about your interview, this will help us lead up to the Direct-to-Digital techniques we will use (interview techniques start on page 8 of the guide).

Your interview questions should be organized around places; marking the map will be your technique for organizing the material. Take a few minutes to work with your partner to develop a script you will both use.

Here is one possible example of an interview script for a general audience - you might have a list of questions that are focused on a specific project instead:

Family and local culture

1. Where do your ancestors come from?

2. Where were your grandparents born?

3. Where were your parents born?

4. Where were you and your siblings born?

5. What place in the world do you identify with as your real home?

What are the nonhuman influences in your life?

1. What is your favorite place?

2. Where is your favorite mountain, body of water, etc.?

3. Where was your favorite place to play (or hide) when you were 5 years old? 10 years old? 15? Today?

4. Who were the most important animals and plants in your life and where did you encounter them?

5. Where did you see the most interesting, unusual, or otherwise important, animal or plant you have ever seen?

Beliefs that help shape your thinking

1. Where are the spots that are important to your beliefs located? (only share what you want to)

2. Where are the places that are important to you personally? (only share what you want to)

Download Google Earth Pro here.

Google Earth Pro is the most like a GIS of the tools we are using in today's workshop. It is a desktop platform that requires you to download it to your computer; although it uses imagery that is on the web it does not upload your layers to the web, user content is stored locally on your laptop. As a result, it is the preferred platform when you work with culturally sensitive information that you do not wish stored on a server. Google Earth Pro is now free, but you must make sure that you are able to download it onto your work computer, which may require permission from your IT department.

Google Earth Pro has a lot of functionality not found on lightweight platforms like My Maps, and not yet found on Google Earth Web. For example, there are measurement tools, and the ability to import SHP files from ESRI ArcGIS and GPX tracks from your GPS device. It also allows you to create complex folder structures with large amounts of data to organize large projects.

Another feature of Google Earth Pro that can be effectively used in projects involving cultural knowledge is the ability to create animated tours, which control the way viewers move through a landscape. This allows you to show the viewer the orientation you want to a location, and move them in certain directions (for example clockwise or counter clockwise) through the landscape.

You can create image overlays for things like historic maps, drawings, drone imagery or photographs, and use screen overlays to add legends, logos and explanations. One of the most useful tools in Google Earth Pro is the timeslider, which allows you to choose the imagery used for the basemap; depending on the location and the zoom level you can access satellite imagery going back to the early 1980's Landsat archive, and in some cases, aerial imagery going back to the 1930's. The image resolution is limited to the technology available at the time it was taken, so older imagery generally has poorer resolution and most likely will be in black and white rather than color.

Since user content is stored locally (as with ESRI ArcGIS desktop) you have the highest level of security, but are responsible for backing it up yourself, and the only way you can share it is through KML files that need to be opened by another user on their own version of Google Earth Pro (or ArcGIS). If your main purpose is sharing your project publicly it is better to use Google My Maps or Google Earth Web; however, you can record a video of your tour and share that through an outlet such as YouTube or Vimeo. A good example of this approach is the Surui Cultural Map in Google Earth. You can download the map file to open on your own Google Earth Pro using this link https://mw1.google.com › blog › nl_surui_en