Mapping Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Housing and Environmental Planning

The maps linked below provide examples of different ways to share culturally significant information. Map layers of this type can be added to more typical GIS layers used in planning for housing, economic redevelopment, and environmental impact assessment and remediation.

The first activity in today's workshop will be to introduce yourself and tell us about places in your community that you are proud of and that you are concerned about. This activity can be easily modified for use in your community; you may wish to hear from your community about places that need to be protected or are of special importance, for example. Jamboards are in virtual space similar to the real world use of paper, markers, print outs and sticky notes.

Google Jamboards are part of Google Drive. You can use Jamboards to work with collaborators and participants from your community without the need for Google Accounts - just set the sharing to "anyone with link can edit" and provide the link. The good thing about using Jamboards (in contrast to Zoom whiteboards) is that they continue to be accessible after the meeting and can be publicly shared.

If you wish to add photos, however, you will need to sign into a Google Account (if you don't have one use the link below to create one for the remainder of the workshop).

We will also use the publicly available Google Map (the same one you typically use to find a restaurant). You do not need a Google Account to use the map. There are a lot of tools built into Google Maps that we can use in our discussion, and it is a simple way for people in your community to go on virtual site visits with you.

We would like you to use the Jamboards to introduce yourself (see example on the first page), and then tell us about a place in your community that you are proud of (page 2) and a place in your community that you are concerned about. We can have up to 20 people on each Jamboard and if we run out of space we will add more pages. Please be respectful and do not put private information such as home addresses on the Jamboards. We will use Google Maps to take screenshots of our locations using Streetview, creating a virtual site visit.

Please look at what others say and feel free to respectfully comment using sticky notes. Think about how you might use these tools in your own work.

Below you will find step-by-step instructions for both Jamboards and Google Maps, along with helpful links.

Go to Google Maps

Google Maps help

We will now use Google My Maps to build a map for our communities. Each breakout room will have a map with 10 layers, and each participant will work on their own layer in the shared group map. You will be able to see everyone's work (periodically refresh your screen) and we ask that you respect others. Please do not put private information such as home addresses on these public maps.

If we were conducting an interview, we would ask questions and add content directly to the map while the interviewee answers (you may wish to have one person ask questions, a second to find the locations and drop pins, and a third person to type the answers). Since we are working in a group in a virtual environment we will answer the questions ourselves and create our own maps.

Go to your group map for your breakout room in the folder below, find the layer that is assigned to you, click on it and make sure you see the blue bar on the left margin of your layer. Now you are ready to add points, lines and polygons, as well as text, photos and videos to your layer. If you accidentally add content to the wrong layer you can drag and drop it to the correct layer. There is a slide presentation below with step-by-step directions for creating and using Google My Maps.

For your map today we would like you to add content to your layer that addresses the following:

1. Add three important resources for your community to the map. You can use points, lines or polygons:

• Adding a point - There are two ways to do this:

Find the place you want to mark on the map (pan and zoom). Click the placemark button (under the Search bar), then click the map where you want to add the marker. Add a title (place name) and description (what is this place?), then click "Save".

Search for the place in the search bar by name, address or lat long. Click on the correct search result, then in the pop up that appears click "+Add to map". In the pop up that appears, the title (place name) has already been filled out by the search results, but you need to add a description (what is this place?). To do this, click the pencil icon in the pop up to make the point editable, then type in the description. Click "Save".

• Adding a line. Click the "Draw a line" button under the search bar and select "Add a line or shape" from the drop down box. Click on the map to draw your line. Double-click the end point to end your line. Then add a title and description and click "Save".

• Adding a polygon / shape. Click the "Draw a line" button under the search bar and select "Add a line or shape" from the drop down box. Click on the map to draw your line. Finish by clicking on the first point to end the polygon drawing. Then add a title and description and click "Save".

2. Give each resource a title and description.

3. Add photos and videos.

Click on the camera icon below the description box. Images (and videos) will be added as a slideshow. There are two ways to add images:

• Search for an image (or YouTube)

• Upload an image from your own files

• To add more images (or YouTubes) click on the + button below the images.

4. Change the style of your icon, line or polygon.

• • Change your icon style. Hover over a placemark and click the paint bucket that appears. Then click "More icons". Choose an icon and click "OK". Then color the icon by selecting from the color palette.

  • Change your line or polygon style. Hover over a line or polygon and click the paint bucket that appears. Select a new color from the color palette and move the width slider to see the width of the line or border change.