0% found this document useful (0 votes)

82 views

Orleans 2011

Uploaded by

BrunoK2013

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

82 views

Orleans 2011

Uploaded by

BrunoK2013

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 356

International Cartographic Association

Association Cartographique Internationale

Maps for the Future:

Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium
Event organized within the activities previous to
the 25th International Cartographic Conference

30 June–1 July 2011

University of Orléans, France
Participating ICA Commissions and Working Group

Commission on Cartography and Children

Commission on Education and Training
Commission on Maps and the Internet
Commission on Planetary Cartography
Working Group on Cartography on Early Warning and Crisis Management

Editors: László Zentai, José Jesús Reyes Nuñez

Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Design and Layout: Krisztina Irás
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

© 2011 International Cartographic Association, Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics,

Eötvös Loránd University and chapter authors. All rights reserved.
ORGANIZERS

Organizer Institutions

artographic Association
graphique Internationale
International Cartographic Association

Laboratory CEDETE (Centre d’Etudes pour le developpement des

territoires et l’environnement)
University of Orléans, France

Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics,

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Scientific Organizing Committee

Jesús Reyes, Co-Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children (Hungary)
Temenoujka Bandrova, Co-Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children (Bulgaria)
David Fraser, Chairman, ICA Commission on Education and Training (Australia)
László Zentai, Vice-Chair, ICA Commission on Education and Training (Hungary)
Michael Peterson, Chairman, ICA Commission on Maps and the Internet (USA)
Georg Gartner, Vice-Chairman, ICA Commission on Maps and the Internet (Austria)
Kira B. Shingareva, Chairperson, ICA Commission on Planetary Cartography (Russia)
James R. Zimbelman, Vice-Chairman, ICA Commission on Planetary Cartography (USA)
Henrik Hargitai, ICA Commission on Planetary Cartography (Hungary)
ê
Milan Konecny, í ICA Past President and Chairman, ICA Working Group on Cartography on Early
Warning and Crisis Management (Czech Republic)

Local Organizing Committee

Annabelle Boffet Mas, Laboratory CEDETE, University of Orléans
Josée Bouyer, Secretary of Human Sciences, University of Orléans
Guillaume Giroir, Laboratory CEDETE, University of Orléans
Matthieu Lee, Laboratory CEDETE, University of Orléans
Philippe Quodverte, Laboratory CEDETE, University of Orléans
Vanda Turczi, Laboratory CEDETE, University of Orléans
CONTENTS

Organizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Papers
William Cartwright:
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for
Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Ferjan Ormeling:
Exercises in Cartography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Temenoujka Bandrova:
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School 26
Curriculums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eszter Simonné Dombóvári:
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas:
The Cartography in Studies of Environment: Bilingual Practice Aiming
Inclusion of Deaf Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
László Zentai:
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Michael P. Peterson:
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó:
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Rex Cammack:
Internet Mapping Education: Curriculum Technology and Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai:
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt:
Comparison of Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in the Context of GPS-Based
Pedestrian Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Barbara Gomes Flaire Jordão,
Cristiano Gimenez, Mariane Ravagio Catelli:
Inclusive Education in Geography: Municipal Atlas and the Group of Tactile
Maps in UNESP Ourinhos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas:
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually
Impaired People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo:
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

III
Rizka Windiastuti:
Map Drawing Competition for Children in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Shimshon Livni:
Children’s Mental Maps of the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Henrik Hargitai, Pál Gábor Vizi:
Cartographic Elements in Children’s Drawings as a Response to the Red
Sludge Industrial Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida:
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Marli Cigagna Wiefels, Jonas da Costa Sampaio:
Teaching Cartography to Children through Interactive Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Marcello Martinelli:
The Transition from the Analytic to Synthesis Reasoning in the Maps of
Geographic School Atlases for Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas:
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers
and Experiences in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Rosângela Doin de Almeida:
Research on Cartography for School Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Henrik Hargitai:
Interpretation of Surface Features of Mars as a Function of the Language of
Placenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Georgi Zhelezov:
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related
Ecosystem Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák:
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Rufino Pérez Gómez:
Using Raster Techniques in the Lacunarity Analysis of Spatial Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ê 297
Otakar Cerba:
Ontologies in Cartography: Power of Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Posters
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Eszter Simonné Dombovári:
Survey on Chernoff Faces in Hungary and Austria: Further Research and
Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Veerle Vandelacluze:
The World in their Minds – A Multi-Scale Approach of Children’s
Representations of Geographical Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Regina Araujo de Almeida, Alexandre Vítor de Lima Fonsêca:
A Cartographic Journey with Students from a Small Fisherman Town School
in Maranhão State, Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Regina Araujo de Almeida, José Camilo Ramos de Souza:
A Case Study On School Cartography And Amazonian Riverine Communities . . . . . . . . . .
Ê ê ê ê 319
Václav Cada, Radek Fiala, Karel Janecka, Karel Jedlicka, Jan Jezek,
Martina Vichrová:
Teaching Geomatics with Web 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

IV
E. Kersten, Th. Roatsch, M. Wählisch, A. Hoffmeister, P. C. Thomas:
Cartographic Mapping of the Icy Saturnian Satellites Based on Cassini ISS Data . . . . . . . . . 324
Efstathios Arapostathis, Eleni Gkadolou, Emmanuel Stefanakis,
Georgios Kritikos:
Studying the History of the Battleship «Georgios Averof»: A Projection in
Space and Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Henrik Hargitai, Pál Gábor Vizi:
An Exhibition of Children’s Drawing of the Red Sludge Disaster: Cartography,
Art and a Shocking Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

Bibliography of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

V
FOREWORD

The biannual International Cartographic Conference is one of the most important

events for cartographers. After the 1st General Assembly held in Paris, cartograph-
ers of the World are going to meet again in the capital of France.
It is quite common to organize events (seminars, joint meetings, workshops)
that are connected to the main conference. In 2005, before the XXIIIrd Interna-
tional Cartography Conference in A Coruña (Spain), five ICA Commissions met
in Madrid to have a Joint ICA Seminar. This year, almost the same commissions
and a working group organized a similar symposium at the University of Orléans.
The participants are Commission on Cartography and Children, Commission
on Education and Training, Commission on Maps and the Internet, Commission
on Planetary Cartography and Working Group on Cartography on Early Warn-
ing and Crisis Management. The submitted papers from all participating commis-
sions were considered equal; organizers did not intend to emphasize specific top-
ics. This is the reason why a short title was selected for the event: “Maps for the Fu-
ture”.
The papers of this symposium deal with a wide range of cartography. The topic
of most papers was not directly related to certain commissions, but they were in-
terdisciplinary. This makes these joint seminars, symposiums worthwhile: present-
ing new ideas to the participants and helping us to follow the development of our
science.
Organizing a symposium is not just collecting abstracts and papers and pub-
lishing them on CD-ROM and later in the Proceedings. The most difficult and
time-consuming task is to organize the event itself (including all logistic elements:
accommodation, meeting place etc.). A small group of people from the University
of Orléans undertook this busy job to host more than 50 participants during the
symposium. Many thanks for their efforts that let us realize this meeting here, in
Orléans.
The diversity of research topics being developed by the members of the ICA
commissions and working groups all over the world is clearly demonstrated in the
papers to be presented during these two days and in the proceedings published
digitally.
Organizers would like to thank the commission chairs for their support and ac-
tive collaboration. We also thank the support of the ICA Executive Committee for
their participation either as authors or as just visitors.

Orléans – Budapest, 20th June 2011

Guillaume Giroir László Zentai Jesús Reyes

Director of CEDETE ICA Commission on ICA Commission on
Laboratory Education and Training Cartography and Children
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Keynote Speech

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND

THE PROVISION OF OUTREACH
PROGRAMMES FOR EDUCATION
AND TRAINING

William Cartwright
President, International Cartographic Association
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
[email protected]

Abstract: The cartographic profession has changed to one that is supported by contem-
porary digital production, storage and distribution devices and communication resour-
ces. What has also changed are the organisations that conduct mapping programmes and
‘build’ repositories of geographical knowledge, digital and material. Long gone are the
days of large governmental mapping agencies that had their ‘tried and true’ methods of
data capture, processing and dissemination. Today is the workplace of small government
agency; contractors (large and small); regional, national and global publishing collabora-
tions; and map producer/user. This, in turn, has led to changes in cartographic education
courses, from what could be described as focused courses to more generalist courses.
Gone are the days when a graduate could accommodate the in-house practices and pro-
cedures on day one of a job. Everything has changed, but the underlying need for useful
(and usable), accurate and timely geospatial products remains as the essential underpin-
nings for what we do. In order for students to have access to relevant courses and for
industry to keep abrest with developments in technology and contemporary cartography
and GI Science thinking it is important for relevant educational courses to be offered.
This can be done through face-to-face courses or via online delivery. The International
Cartographic Association (ICA) is committed to supporting existing educational courses
and providing specialist courses wherre needed. This paper provides an overview of the
ICA’s strategies towards the provision of education, internationally. It also gives exam-
ples about how educational courses have been presented by the ICA’s international carto-
graphy and GI Science community.
William Cartwright

Introduction

The International Cartographic Association is the world authoritative body for

cartography, the discipline dealing with the conception, production, dissemi-
nation and study of maps. The ICA was founded on June 9, 1959, in Bern,
Switzerland. The first General Assembly was held in Paris in 1961. The mission
of the International Cartographic Association is to promote the discipline and
profession of Cartography and GIScience in an international context.
The activities of the ICA are important for promoting and advancing the the-
ory and praxis of cartography. Throughout its 50-year history, ICA has brought
together researchers, government mapping agencies, commercial cartographic
publishers, software developers, educators, earth and environmental scientists,
and those with a passion for maps.
The International Cartographic Association exists:

• to contribute to the understanding and solution of world-wide problems

through the use of cartography in decision-making processes,
• to foster the international dissemination of environmental, economic,
social and spatial information through mapping,
• to provide a global forum for discussion of the role and status of carto-
graphy,
• to facilitate the transfer of new cartographic technology and knowledge
between nations, especially to the developing nations,
• to carry out or to promote multi-national cartographic research in order
to solve scientific and applied problems,
• to enhance cartographic education in the broadest sense through publi-
cations, seminars and conferences,
• to promote the use of professional and technical standards in carto-
graphy.

The Association works with national and international governmental and

commercial bodies and with other international scientific societies to achieve
these aims. (Adopted by the 10th General Assembly of the International Carto-
graphic Association, Barcelona, Spain, 3 September 1995.)
An important contribution that ICA makes through its international commu-
nity is outreach and technology transfer. This is supported through direct ICA
initiatives, the activities of Commissions and Working Groups and programmes
conducted with ICA Affiliates.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 4
Joint ICA Symposium
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for Education
and Training

The ICA Strategic Plan

The ICA Strategic Plan (ICA, 2010) provides a number of guidelines for imple-
menting an Education plan. It covers both Education and Professional Practice.

Professional Practice

It notes that “Amateur and professional practice within the Geospatial sciences
will change in nature, increasing the necessity for Continuing Professional Devel-
opment”.

Education

The Strategy Plan proposes that the ICA should:

• investigate ways to strengthen and monitor education programmes in

Cartography, GIScience and related subjects at all levels: university; high
school; elementary; and life-long learning,
• providing fora for discussions of education programs and curricula in
Cartography and GIScience,
• develop information networks and virtual universities on Cartography
and GIScience,
• organise educational courses on Cartography and GIScience in develop-
ing countries and for regional purposes,
• offer ‘master classes’ in GISystems/mapping to guide managers in spatial
decision-making,
• investigate methods (and funding sources) to encourage the participa-
tion of students and other young members in ICA work.

It proposed the following actions:

• to analyse existing university curricula in Cartography and GIScience,

and encourage promotion of the goals contained in the ICA mission,
• to help widen the Cartographic/GIScience knowledge base and skills into
new segments of Society,
• to increase efforts directed to capacity-building, especially in developing
countries, especially with reference to human resource development,
• in co-operation with commercial suppliers, to develop virtual academy
courses on Cartography and GIScience to support and complement what
is currently available,
• to provide geospatial data for educational use,
• to establish a network of university/school teachers to provide a forum
for discussion and the possibility for support,
• to extend travel awards for young scientists; lower conference participa-
tion fees for students.

This paper reports on some of these actions being carried out by the ICA, its
member nations, Commissions and Working Groups and affiliates.

The International Cartographic Association and education

The ICA’s Strategic Plan proposes a number of actions related to Ideas and
Actions for the Organisation and in the Wider Operational Environments. Some
of these actions that relate to education are:

• to help widen the Cartographic/GIScience knowledge base and skills into

new segments of society,
• to increase efforts directed to capacity-building, especially in developing
countries, especially with reference to human resource development,
• in co-operation with commercial suppliers, to develop virtual academy
courses on Cartography and GIScience to support and complement what
is on offer.

The ICA addresses these and other issues through direct ICA initiatives
through its Executive and member organisations and with partners from ICA
affiliates, sister societies and industry. The activities of Commissions and Work-
ing Groups and programmes provide the ‘powerhouse’ that supports these en-
deavours.

Commissions and Working Groups outreach activities

To achieve its aims the ICA operates through a number of Commissions and
Working Groups. Commissions and Working Groups carry out the general
operations of the ICA. They address the full range of scientific, technical and
social research that is the mark of ICA activity. They achieve the transfer of
knowledge about Cartography and GIScience and GI Science by publishing
books and special editions of journals and running workshops and educational
courses. Colleagues from the ICA community conduct these workshops on a vol-
unteer basis, generally with the support of the national member organisation of
ICA or the national mapping body.

Courses and workshops by ICA Commissions and Working Groups

ICA Commissions and Working Groups have conducted many outreach courses.
Here, examples of some of the courses are provided.
The ICA Commission on Education and Training, in collaboration with the
National Cartographic Center of Iran, ran a workshop on Cartography in Teh-
ran, Iran in May 2009. Figure 1 shows some of the thirty participants at the work-
shop.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 6
Joint ICA Symposium
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for Education
and Training

Figure 1. Participants in the Workshop on Cartography, Tehran, Iran, May

2009. Photograph courtesy ICA Commission on Education and
Training

This course followed a successful course run in 2008 – a hands-on web-mapping

technologies – conducted by the ICA Commission on Maps and the Internet and
organised by the National Cartographic Center of Iran. The workshop focused
on the technological and methodological basics of delivering maps on the web,
including such topics as basic tools, design questions, interactive functions and
using map server technology. In July/August 2010 the ICA Commission on Edu-
cation and Training will run training courses in in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and
Jakarta, Indonesia.
The ICA Commission on Management and Economics of Map Production
has regularly organised workshops in Urumchi and at the Intercarto-conference
and an ICA-sponsored workshop in Gent in 2009.
Through their input in the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical
Names, ICA cartographers have regularly participated in the toponymy course
programme of UNGEGN. Courses have been held in Khartoum (2003), Bathurst
(2004), Maputo (2004, 2006), Malang (2005), Tunis (2007), Ouagadougou (2008),
Vienna (2008), Timisoara (2008), and Nairobi (2009). The major item in these
courses is the conveyance of the awareness of the importance of geographical
names as part of a nation’s spatial data infrastructure, and the need to collect
these names correctly and efficiently for use on maps and in gazetteers.

Figure 2. Participants preparing for the names-collecting fieldwork UNGEGN

toponymy course. At left Tunis 2007 at right Malang 2005.
Photographs courtesy of Ferjan Ormeling

The ICA Commission on Education and Training has developed a virtual

course on Cartography and GIScience in collaboration with contributions from
universities and individual academics. The courses have been provided by aca-
demics and practisioners from the international cartographic community. They
can be accesed and used free of charge. The courses can be accessed via the
Commission Web site at: http://lazarus.elte.hu/cet/. The image in figure 3 shows
the interface to one of the courses – Map projections – that are offered on-line.

Figure 3. Commission on Education and Training on-line course on map

projections. Source: http://lazarus.elte.hu/cet/

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 8
Joint ICA Symposium
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for Education
and Training

The ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies promotes

multi-national holistic research in free and open source geospatial technologies
in order to make accessible the latest developments in open source tools to the
wider cartographic community. The WG attempts to enhance the usage of free
and open source geospatial tools among the cartographic community worldwide,
especially for education. The WG organises workshops with the aim to capacity
building participants by providing hands on experience to develop skills in the
application of open source geospatial software.

Figure 4. ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

course on open source geospatial software. Photograph courtesy
of Suchith Anand

Courses in collaboration with industry

In collaboration with ESRI, Inc., a major sponsor of ICC2009 in Santiago-Chile,

the Cartography with ArcGIS course was taught after the ICC2009 in November
2009. Mr. Makram Murad-al-shaikh, a Senior Instructor in GIS and Cartogra-
phy at ESRI’s Educational Services Department, taught the course. The course
was offered free to all candidates attending the ICC2009 conference and later
was opened to lead Chilean cartographic organisations. Nineteen attendees were
trained for three days on both basic cartographic design principles together with
hands-on training on ESRI’s ArcGIS software tools for mapping design and
production. All of the cartographic tools available in ArcGIS were explored with
best practices taught on how to use them in hands-on exercises.

Figure 5. ESRI’s ArcGIS course, Santiago, Chile, November 2009.

Photograph courtesy of Makram Murad-al-shaikh

Seminars for students

In November 2009, in collaboration with SNIT (Sistema Nacional de Coordi-

nación de Información Territorial), Chile, members of the ICA Commission on
Geospatial Data Standards presented a seminar for Cartography and GIScience
students and staff at Universidad Technológica Metropolitana del Estado de
Chile (UTEM) in Santiago, Chile. Presentations covered the areas of ‘INSPIRE’,
quality standards for the spatial data modeling, ‘SNIT’ national spatial data infra-
structure of Chile and standards for geographical information. Participants at the
seminar are shown in figure 6.

Figure 6. ICA Commission on Geospatial Data Standards presented a seminar

for Cartography and GIScience students, Santiago, Chile, November
2010. Photograph courtesy of Antony Cooper

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 10
Joint ICA Symposium
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for Education
and Training

Graduate students’ seminars

At the first ICA Symposium on Cartography for Central and Eastern Europe, in
Vienna, Austria, in February 2009 included a special session where junior scien-
tists presented their research work in a dedicated PhD/Master Forum. PhD stu-
dents presented the results of their research and a panel of experienced research-
ers provided feedback to student presenters.

Figure 7. Panel session at the PhD/Master Forum at the CEE Symposium 2009,
Vienna. From left ICA Vice-President Prof. Dr. Georg Gartner, ICA
President Prof. Dr. William Cartwright, Prof. Dr. Necla Ulugtuken,
Prof. Dr. Ferjan Ormeling and ICA Immediate Past-President Prof.
Dr. Milan Konečný. Photograph courtesy Géza Simon

Education for children

The Barbara Petchenik Children’s World Map Competition is organised every

second year to coincide with biennial International Conference of the Associa-
tion. This is a map design competition for children ages 15 years and younger. It
is held to honor of the late Dr. Barbara Bartz Petchenik, a past Vice President of
the ICA who was extremely interested in maps for children and children as car-
tographers. The competition is organised by the ICA Commission on Children in
Cartography.
This competition has been taken-up by teachers around the world to involve
their students in the world of mapping. One example of the local support to
children to enter the competition in South Africa, where staff members from the
Department of Geography of UNISA (University of South Africa) in Pretoria vi-
sited schools throughout the country to liaise with teachers and children and
explain the competition theme – “Living in a globalized world”. The photograph
in figure 8 shows Professor Elri Liebenberg, Chair of the ICA Commission on the
History of Cartography, and former ICA Vice-President, in one of these classes
conducted by UNISA.

Figure 8. Mapping class for children at the Department of Geography at the

University of South Africa. Photograph courtesy of Elri Liebenberg

The ICA Commission on Children in Cartography has worked with ESRI

Press to publish books containing winning entries from the competition. In No-
vember 2009 a second book – Children Map the World (Figure 9) was published.
It features 100 selected drawings from the 2005 and 2007 Barbara Petchenik
Children’s World Map Competition.

Figure 9. Children Map the World - Temenoujka Bandrova, José Jesús Reyes
Nuñez, Milan Konečný and Jeet Atwal. Image courtesy ICA Com-
mission on Children in Cartography

Conclusion

The activities of the ICA are important for promoting and advancing the theory
and praxis of cartography. Throughout its 50-year history, ICA has brought to-
gether researchers, government mapping agencies, commercial cartographic pub-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 12
Joint ICA Symposium
International Associations and the Provision of Outreach Programmes for Education
and Training

lishers, software developers, educators, earth and environmental scientists, and

those with a passion for maps. The Cartography and GIScience world has
changed significantly since 1959 – the role and impact of ICA has been steadfast.
Its mission is to support and promote Cartography and GIScience – globally. Its
outreach programmes, in many instances conducted with national member or-
ganisations, affiliates and industry, are conducted to contribute to the transfer of
knowledge and to foster the advancement of the discipline.

Acknowledgements

This paper was prepared with inputs from colleagues from the ICA international
community. Thanks to Dr. Suchith Anand (Chair, ICA Open Source Geospatial
Technologies Working Group), Dr. Antony Cooper (Chair, ICA Geospatial Data
Standards Commission), Professor Dr. Philippe de Maeyer (Chair, ICA Manage-
ment and Economics of Map Production Commission), Dr. David Fairbairn
(ICA Secretary–General/Treasurer), Assoc. Professor Dr. David Fraser (Chair,
ICA Education and Training Commission), Professor Dr. Georg Gartner (Vice-
President ICA), Professor Elri Liebenberg (Chair, ICA History of Cartography
Commission and former Vice-President of ICA), Makram Murad-al-shaikh
(ESRI, Inc.), Professor Dr. Ferjan Ormeling (Former Secretary- General/Treasur-
er ICA, Vice-Chairman of the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names
(UNGEN) and Convenor of the UNGEGN Working Group for Training Courses
in Toponymy) and Professor Dr. Michael Peterson (Chair, ICA maps and the In-
ternet Commission).

References

ICA (2003) “Strategic Plan”

http://www.icaci.org/documents/reference_docs/ICA_Strategic_Plan_2003-08-
16.pdf

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 13
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Keynote Speech

EXERCISES IN CARTOGRAPHY
Ferjan Ormeling
Utrecht University

Cartographic apprentice

When I first started as an apprentice atlas editor, in 1961, I had to learn how to
apply lettering to maps, and I spent many evenings just drawing the letter o.
After a week I graduated to variations of o, such as a, b, d, g, q, c and e or p.
Then I moved on to n, and varied it with h, u and m the next month would be
focused on i and l, f, j, t and odd letters like k, r, s, v, w, y and z. The next step
would be to combine these letters and to get used to the differing distances be-
tween them. I did not feel particularly enriched by these long evenings and I
merely wondered whether I had opted for the right profession. Fortunately, now-
adays this lettering is done digitally and cartography students won’t loose time in
doing lettering exercises – at least not on lettering itself, but they still have to do
exercises in the application of geographical names to maps.
Here they have to apply the theories of Imhof, Bonacker or Spiess to the map,
in order to make sure that there is no ambiguity regarding the symbols a name
refers to, to ensure the shortest possible time to find a name on the map, by
using variations in type styles, sizes, boldness, spacing and colour (see figure 1).
Ferjan Ormeling

Figure 1. Exercise in map lettering from the Basic Cartography Exercise Manual

In my cartography classes at the university at the same time I had to be able

to operate geodetically or photogrammetrical equipment, and map contour lines
from pairs of aerial photographs, using both hands and feet. So I had to do map-
ping exercises with the equipment. Again, this was not particularly stimulating.
As my main subject was geography we also had to engage in statistical exercises,
do sums in order to compute the number of observations needed to end up with
results that were 99% significant, or compute different kind of averages. The
course in statistics was used as a threshold to keep out those without a head for
mathematics although I never later on perceived any need why such a head was
required in geography, nor in cartography. Fortunately for me, the looming on-
set of computers had obliterated – in the mind of the teaching staff – the need to
do exercises in the plotting of map projections, with coordinatographs and the
assistance of goniometric tables. As part of geography we also had to do geomor-
phology courses, and here we had to learn to draw all kinds of diagrams, cross
sections, block diagrams and longitudinal sections. As we were interested in vi-
sualization we taught ourselves how to draw panoramic maps, based on topogra-
phic maps (see figure 2).

Figure 2. Producing a panorama from a topographic map

Cartography courses

But the real interest in cartographic exercises only started when I had graduated
and, as a member of Utrecht university staff, helped to start up a master’s pro-
gramme in cartography in 1971. Then we got to know a French publication
called “La cartographie thematique comme methode de recherche”, by Claval
and Wieber, which finally presented some intellectual challenge. It contained
statistics on point, linear or areal data and base maps on which these data had to
be visualised. Here at least there also was an opportunity to apply one’s geogra-
phical knowledge, as doing these exercises frequently called for judgement re-
garding what was most important from a geographical point of view. As an ex-
ample, in figure 3, I show an assignment to map statistical data on agriculture for
Indonesia, where one has to pick the most important aspect of the table (based
on one’s geographical knowledge of the country) and visualise it.

Figure 3. Exercise on agricultural mapping from the Basic Cartography Exercise

Manual, 1991, with relevant base map. For solution see below:

The textbook by Claval and Wieber also showed us that – at least within Eu-
rope – there were different schools of cartographic design, using different map-
ping techniques. For instance, in France in the 1970s the areal cartogram method
devised by Aimé Perpillou was en vogue. This was a quite elaborate method of
showing different percentages of land use, per enumeration unit, by using col-
oured bands that together made up 100%. The method called for extreme gener-
alisation of the data and the resulting images were not altogether straightforward.
This method was never used in Germany or in the United Kingdom. In Germa-
ny, isoline maps were only used for physical phenomena, and the United
Kingdom was an early advocate of anamorphosis maps, which were rather
frowned upon in Germany. And it was only in Czechoslovakia that a particular
time-related diagram type ever occurred.

Figure 4. Diagram map following the Aimé Perpillou method (from Claval
and Wieber)

ICA’s Basic Cartography programme

In the 1970s, there was already an ICA project under way to produce a textbook
for cartographers. This endeavour was supported by UNESCO, and it resulted in
the “Basic Cartography manual series”, containing 3 manuals (with contributions
from France, FRG, GDR, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, UK, USA and
Sweden) and an exercise book. I travelled all over Europe to visit cartographic
establishments in order to solicit 500 printed copies each of their best exercises,
framed in a uniform ICA template and to put together this exercise manual,
which finally consisted of contributions from, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France,
Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Figure 5. Map exercises to assess the accessibility of urban services; the

cumulative number of steps it takes to get from one service
point to all others is used as input for an accessibility isoline
map (from Basic Cartography Exercise Manual, 1991)

Apart from map construction exercises, the geographers in our faculty also had
to do map use exercises, for analytical purposes, and these existed for instance of
assessing accessibility, nearest neighbour values or quantifying patterns and
shapes (see figure 5, for instance).
What is especially significant in doing most of these exercises is that the stu-
dents see the effects of their design decisions by comparing their results with
those of their colleagues and perceive how these differences affect or boost the
information transfer: which method is best, pie graphs or columns to render ab-
solute statistical values? Is it better to render the absolute values of the data or to
link them to other data, so as to normalize them? (See figure 6). In a dot map ex-
ercise, where a base map and a description of the residential housing character-
istics for a campus would be provided and the students asked to work out the
best representative value and size of the dots with which to render the population
pattern, again comparing the results always was as much of an eye-opener to the
students as doing the exercise themselves.

Figure 6. Unemployment in the Netherlands, left rendered with pro-

portional symbols, and at right normalised, i.e. expressed as a
proportion of the total labour force

Next to map lettering, the most important exercises before the advent of the
computer surely were those of rendering information according to a standard-
ised legend, in which all the symbols and their measurements, and the various
line widths were prescribed in a master legend. This part was rather repetitive,
tiresome and disappointing, as the teachers always seemed to be able to discern
who had drawn which map, in spite of us all adhering to the prescribed legend
and specifications.
As my country is rather small there seemed not to be enough potential carto-
graphic draughtsmen to start a regular cartography course for, so we opted for a
correspondence course, in which the participants had to do exercises and had to
send them in, and would receive them back within a week, annotated with the
comments of the teachers (PBNA cursus). On the exercise sheets the planimetry
to be inked in was rendered in blue, and with special drawing pens and India ink
the map detail had to be applied. In my first presentation to an ICA conference,
in Moscow 35 years ago, I reported on our experience with setting up this corre-
spondence course.

Meta-exercises

Next to map drawing and map lettering came map generalization, and here it
was again important that one developed a feeling of hierarchy, a feeling of what
was important and should be retained, even if this activity was closely outlined as
well, so as to render the differences between the results of individual cartogra-
phers as small as possible. Legend-sheets with the exact dimensions of the sym-
bols and lines to be used served as examples, but even when these specifications
were adhered to as strictly as possible students still ended up with a wide range of
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 19
Joint ICA Symposium
Exercises in Cartography

different results. When we confronted the students with the variation in their re-
sults, there was a meta-effect in this exercise – as the students could see that the
results of their colleagues would deviate to some degree from their own, and this
showed them a bandwidth of cartographic licence, it showed them that different
results based on the same original data still were acceptable to a certain degree
(see figure 7).
Another drawing technique that had to be mastered through exercises where
some geographic knowledge came in handy was hill-shading, which we would do
with pencil, but which Swiss and Austrian experts would apply with airbrushes.

Figure 7. Generalisation exercise with results (by Prof. Spiess, Basic Cartography)

Picking the correct colour schemes or colour ramps is another item to do ex-
ercises in, in order to make sure that students see for themselves which colour
combinations work or not, when diverging hues should be opted for, or how a
colour ramp can be extended to accommodate a larger number of classes.
Cynthia Brewer here helps students doing exercises on these items enor-
mously with her Colorbrewer website (http://colorbrewer2.org).
For myself I have found much profit for the students in an exercise in which
they are asked to render a same phenomenon, using the same figures in as
threatening a way and in as inconspicuous a way, just by manipulating colours
and class boundaries. By doing this exercise they realize the impact of their selec-
tion of class boundaries and colour schemes.
For the map reproduction classes we had in Utrecht University in the 1980s,
prior to the advent of digital techniques, we did a simple exercise to produce a
map of the university campus. Students could select their own target audience
for this campus map, and customize the spatial information to convey accord-
ingly. Here again the results are most instructive when compared. That is be-
cause they show how – even with very simple data, as on the function of build-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 20
Joint ICA Symposium
Ferjan Ormeling

ings, their number of floors or the transport facilities – a host of different images
will emerge, based on different decisions regarding information hierarchy, pref-
erential colour schemes or student outlook – even differences between car-own-
ing students and public transport advocating students would stand out on the
maps (see figure 8).
Part of the Utrecht cartography programme consisted of fieldwork, in France,
where one of the assignments was to update an existing topomap, and another to
do a land use survey of a small area. Apart from the generalization aspect, the
results here provided another example of the impact of individual land use classi-
fication decisions, and of the generalization rules followed, even if the assign-
ment, to produce a land-use based map 1 : 15 000 for the area for cyclists and
hikers would let us to expect rather homogeneous results. The realization that
the same reality, to be mapped to the same specifications, could be reflected in so
many different, but valid views of the same reality certainly was an eye-opener
for the students.

A3b

Explokart, Geowetenschappen,
5/16/2011 25
Universiteit Utrecht

Figure 8. Student maps of Utrecht University campus, based on aerial photograph

Computer classes

The map drawing exercises that replaced the manual ones took place on the
computer, using specific drawing programmes like Aldus Freehand in the 1990s,
and now perhaps Adobe Illustrator. I suppose every university cartography de-
partment would train its students with exercises to become familiar with these
mapping packages, learn to deal with the various layers, at least before the advent

of GIS software programmes, when boundary files could just be matched with
statistical data sets, and many students do not get beyond learning how to com-
bine data sets in EXCEL and deal with shape files in ArcGIS.
Of course the new digital environment also affected reproduction. The repro-
duction exercises contained in the ICA Basic Cartography Exercise manual, like
those on the production of small-scale topographic maps, or of tourist maps no
longer were relevant, and would have to be restructured. The same was valid for
the production diagrams. A fair amount of time used to be spent on exercises on
their compilation; I remember ICA workshops all over Asia where we trained
students to find the least expensive ways of reproducing maps through these
exercises that now had to be reworked, necessitating new sets of symbols for the
new digital techniques required.

Atlas production exercises

Atlas production exercises simulate many aspects of the cartographic profession,

as they would train both the design and the production planning aspects. I
reported on them at the Tokyo ICA conference (1980). In Atlas production
classes e.g. layout exercises were done, to establish a template for the individual
atlas sheets, and for finding the best sequence of map subjects. An example here
is the exercise how to structure a school atlas of Turkey, to be printed on both
sides of a single printing sheet, one side in colour and the other in black and
white. The sequence had to make sense and be thought logical; the most impor-
tant maps would have to be coloured, but also the chorochromatic maps that
would not be legible in black and white. For all individual atlas maps, prelimina-
ry drawings or mock-ups would be made, before starting with their digital pro-
duction, in order to be sure all necessary elements would be incorporated (see
figure 9).
Superior examples of atlas production exercises would be the atlases com-
piled at Oxford Brookes University where Roger Anson would take his students
to the continent each year in order to gather the information to visualise in the
next term.

Figure 9. Mock-up for an atlas map exercise, from ‘Ausbildungsleitfaden’

Toponymy is another area of atlas cartography where exercises are used in

order to speed up the student’s grasp of the subject matter. We would ask them,
for instance, to do an exercise in script conversion, or to compare geographical
names on a map of Spain from a Spanish school atlas and from a British school
atlas, and then ask them to work out the rules the editor of the British atlas
would have followed in order to adjust the toponyms to his British audience.
Production of a place names index from a map would teach students how to deal
with generic name parts like Rio or Cape in a names index, what to do with ho-
monyms and allonyms. First they would have to copy all names from a map, i-
dentifying their object category and location, and then reordering them accord-
ing to a specific alphabet.
A final aspect of map production would be an annotation exercise: how to
prepare one’s map or atlas in such a way through adding marginal information
that an independent librarian would be able to list all the relevant information
(impressum, publisher, author, date and place of publication) for a web bibliog-
raphy or catalogue.

Map Use exercises

Interpretation of maps or doing measurements on them is the other half of carto-

graphy, and although map use exercises are not primarily oriented at cartograph-
ers, they are still very suitable to increase the cartographers’ awareness of how
map users react to their products. Doing these kinds of exercises, they would for
instance find out to which degree different measurement outcomes thought to be
relevant by map users are just a consequence of generalisation.
Some examples of map use exercises are e.g. how to prepare a slope map
(where, per grid cell the difference between the highest and lowest point is as-
sessed first and then converted in a slope value, assigned to the grid cell centre,
and followed by interpolation to produce an isoline slope map), drainage density
assessment (here the length of rivers per km2 grid cell would be computed, and
the grid cell data categorised) or an exercise to interpret landforms from a con-
tour line map.

Map Exercises for the future

The framework of all these cartographic exercises described here has been
different in scope – there were those meant for in-house training for apprentices,
there were exercises that were part of the training of geographers and exercises
meant for cartographic draughtsmen. There were higher education or university
cartography courses that had exercises in a classroom environment, and there
were exercises that formed part of correspondence courses, or of manuals devel-
oped by cartographic societies or individual teachers. The Netherlands Carto-
graphic Society used to invite foreign experts for its courses on specific tech-
niques like map lettering or hill shading, for the benefit of their members who
had to do exercises in order to master these techniques.

All of these exercises were meant to train, for the participants to practice the
theoretical aspects, to pass on knowledge and experience. The ICA tries to con-
tinue this training work globally with the hands-on courses it has been organ-
izing for some 30 years, not only through its Commission on Education and
Training (CET) but also through the Commission on Management and Econo-
mics of Map Production and the Commission on Maps and the Internet, fre-
quently also jointly.
As only a small audience can be reached, however enthusiast these commis-
sions are, with lecturing teams only within the last two years flying in into
Central Asia, Iran, Indonesia or Vietnam, developing web courses are a way to
reach larger audiences, even if interaction and feed-back still present problems.
Already an enormous variety of cartography courses is being offered on the web,
and the ICA Commission on Education and Training under Laszlo Zentai and
David Fraser has selected the best ones and incorporated them on the CET web-
site, a major job that deserves acknowledgement. The only aspect perhaps
lacking in these web courses are exercises. I think the best and most challenging
exercises that we have devised for our own students should be incorporated onto
the CET website next to the current lessons or lectures that have already been
stored there, just as we collected the best paper exercises in the past for the ICA
Basic Cartography Exercise manual.
These best and most challenging exercises should show students how many-
sided and intellectually stimulating cartography is, and they might thus be
induced to follow a career in our discipline. With these exercises we would vi-
sualise the challenges of our profession, to adapt geospatial data to the objectives
and the target groups of information transfer, to support spatial decision making
now and in the future.

Literature

Anson, R. E. and Ormeling, F.J.: Basic cartography for students and technicians.
3 volumes, 1st edition 1984–1996 and the second edition 1993–2002.
Anson, R. E. and F. J. Ormeling: (1991) Basic Cartography for students and
technicians. Exercise Manual. Oxford: Elsevier Applied Science.
Claval, Paul et Jean-Claude Wieber (1969) La cartographie thematique comme
methode de recherche. Paris: Annales litteraires de l’Université de Besançon.
Kommissionn Aus- und Weiterbildung, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kartographie
e.V. (2000) Ausbildungsleitfaden Kartograph/Kartographin.
PBNA cursus Cartografisch tekenen. Arnhem: Nederlandse Vereniging voor
Kartografie and Koninklijke PBNA 1973–1976.
Schulz, Georg: (1995) Lexikon zur Bestimmung der Geländeformen in Karten.
Berliner geographische Studien Band 28. 3rd ed. Berlin: Institut für Geographie
der Technischen Universität Berlin.
Warn, Chris: (1980) The Ordnance Survey Map Skills Book. London: Nelson.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 24
Joint ICA Symposium
Ferjan Ormeling

Annex — Overview of cartographic exercises

A) Map production exercises

A1 Information analysis
1a establish information/parameter hierarchy
1b establish parameter characteristics
1c establish rules for language-dependent toponymy
A2 Exercises in mapping technique
2a map lettering
2b hill shading
2c generalisation
2d drawing panoramic maps/block diagrams
2e line drawing exercises
A3 Exercises in design
3a selecting map types
3b classification/characterization
3c classification/manipulation
3d colour ramp/colour scheme exercises

B) Exercises in map reproduction

B1 Devise optimal reproduction method
B2 Construct reproduction diagrams
B3 Devise optimal atlas structure (Turkey)
B4 Prepare (atlas) map annotation to enable proper documentation
B5 Prepare map names index
B6 Produce standard lay-out and specifications
B7 Produce a mock-up of an atlas (sheet)

C) Map use/analysis exercises

C1 Recognise symbology
C2 Assess accessibility
C3 Determine patterns: nearest neighbour
C4 Recognise terrain forms (geomorphology)
C5 Working with grids
C6 Find position, in degrees, minutes and seconds or in decimal degrees,
C7 Convert decimal degrees into degrees, minutes and seconds
C8 Establish directions, describe way points
C9 Assess network densities
C10 Assess terrain changes in-between successive map editions
C11 Assess slopes/gradients; describe expected relief on a route
C12 Establish distances and time needed to reach a destination
C13 Compute areas and distances
C14 Establish profiles, visibility analyses
C15 Establish spatial association (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient)
C16 Compute the map scale

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 25
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Cartography in Education

CARTOGRAPHIC RESPONSE OF CHANGES IN

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL SCHOOL
CURRICULUMS

Temenoujka Bandrova
University of Architecture, Civil engineering and Geodesy (Bulgaria)
[email protected]

Abstract: We are living in the time when many GI specialists will recommend usage of
electronic maps and atlases and will not develop traditional cartography based on paper
version products. The report consider both aspects: why we are not ready to use only elec-
tronic version of maps and atlases; how we can improve the traditional cartography – by
new topics and modern visualization. Several examples are given by the latest school at-
lases, which are used in Bulgarian education in geography and history.
Some new aspects in cartographic products and visualization were created because of
permanent changes in school curriculum and in the content of the geography and history
atlases. Working by experiences and research in the schools, cartographers try to be better
in all steps in maps’ and atlases’ creation and compiling.

Introduction

Working in cartography field the specialists should respond to every day changes
of the life. But several months or years are necessary to change school curricu-
lums. Meanwhile new important topics appear and cartographic products be-
come outdated ones before their creation. Were we ready to respond to Haiti
children after the earthquake that struck on Jan. 10, 2010? “A study by the Inter-
American Development Bank estimated that the total cost of the disaster was
between $8 billion to $14 billion, based on a death toll from 200,000 to 250,000.
That number was revised in 2011 by Haiti's government to 316,000” (The New
York Times, 2011). Are we ready to respond to the technically most developed
Temenoujka Bandrova

nation and its children – Japanese children? Let’s think about what happened for
the first three months of 2011: floods, earthquakes, landslides! Some scientists
and journalist already defined 2011 as “a year of disasters”. McKibben B., 2011
gives us some data which is used to complete Table 1.

Table 1. Natural Disasters in 2011 (January–March)

by data of McKibben B., 2011

Types of Time, Human Economic

Place
disaster 2011 cost cost
Earthquake of Japan, north- March More than € 215bn
magnitude 9.0, east coast 10,000 dead;
followed by 17,000 missing
a 15–20 m
high tsunami
Landslide Brazil January 916 dead; € 213m
345 missing
Floods Australia Nov. 2010– 37 dead; € 22bn –
Jan., 2011 nine missing Australia's
costliest
natural
disaster ever
Earthquake of New Zealand February 166 dead € 5bn –
magnitude 6.3 € 7.6bn
hit the city of
Christchurch
Devastating Sri Lanka January– 62 dead; € 340m
floods February 1.1 million displaced
Earthquake of Myanmar March At least 75 dead; Not known in
magnitude 6.8 (Burma), more than 3 April, 2011
30 miles north 110 injured
of Tachileik
on the Thai–
Burma border
Floods, heavy Philippines January– At least 75 dead € 30m
rains continued March
from December
last year
Severe storms, South Africa January 91 dead; € 83m
lightning and 321 injured
floods

During the last 3 months amount of countries and millions of people were af-
fected (see Table 1). How cartographers will respond to children from Japan,
Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Philippines and South Africa?
In such moments it is visible that we are not ready to give response, it is visible
that we are too slow to change something, that we are not ready with standards
and visualization of all process that are happening around us in the nowadays
geography All these comments make evident the need of more scientists to work
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 27
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

on the topics, of more projects to be financed and developed, of more govern-

ments to help the scientists to develop standards and fast responses to everyday
changes and to prepare our children and students for right behavior and give
them enough information and knowledge.
Natural disasters are only one the many topics such as globalization, sustaina-
ble development, environmental protection that should appear in geography and
history subjects in school curriculums. They are relatively new and find places in
school curriculum’s changes. Cartographers try to respond by including such
themes in their new cartographical products illustrating that way geography and
history lessons. The problem is that these cartographical products need to be up-
dated more often that it is doing now.

Changes in geography and history contents

The Ministry of Education in Bulgaria is responsible for the creation and ap-
proval of school curriculum for all subjects in elementary, secondary and high
education. Here I will describe the situation in geography and history subjects.
The changes are happening every 5 to 10 years. This situation is not typical only
for Bulgaria. Zhang and Foskett (2003) declare for UK that the changes are in
subject matter in 15 sets of British geographical text-books from 1907–1993.
Some of changes are from general to regional aspects similar as concepts “re-
gions” in elementary and secondary schools in USA (Stoltman, 1992). These
changes lead to new aspects, details and topics in teaching problems. Every new
curriculum is made to improve educations and give children more new aspects of
modern society. In many countries this is done to provoke independent and
active learning (Paris and Byrne, 1989).
A new law about elementary, secondary and high education in Bulgaria is
preparing in the moment. This will bring new changes in geographical and
historical curriculum. Many changes were done also in last few decades. The
largest ones were in the general context of the mentioned subjects. The school
subject of Geography changed its name to “Geography and economics” and Hist-
ory one – to “History and civilizations. These new scopes developed many top-
ics which enlarged simply subjects ‘geography’ and ‘history’ to more broad ones
including sustainable development of the society. The content in geography was
enriched with some new topics like risk management, environmental protection
and ecology. New topics also arisen in history field. As example we could present
a visualization of Troy war and brigade distributions in socialistic time among
others.

Cartographical response to the new aspects in geography and

history subjects

To help geographical and historical education, cartographers propose different

types of cartographical products: wall maps, atlases, electronic atlases, contour
blind maps, globes, virtual cartographic representations, etc.

Kindergarten

The first questions could be “when we should start?” There was a discussion be-
tween old cartographic generation keeping positions in state cartographic com-
pany and new generations, working for different private companies. Before 1990
students faces with the first map in the geography lessons in 3rd grade (10 years
old children). Nowadays children receive everyday information by media, radio,
TV, Internet and they start to use and read maps in their kindergarten ages. The
fact that young kids are able to use maps was proved by experiences with child-ren
in 15 kindergartens in Sofia. Children had knowledge about the continents’ names,
Bulgarian boundaries and cities, the names of the biggest mountains and rivers.
They have been very active and accepted the questionnaire as a pleasant game. On
the base of this experiment we created 2 posters for kindergarten: 1. Plants and
animals in the World and in the opposite side of the poster: Plants and animals in
Bulgaria (see Figure 1). 2. The major sights in Bulgaria and in the opposite side of
the poster: 6 great Bulgarians important for our history (see Figure 2).

Figure 1. Plants and Animals in Figure 2. Major Sights in Bulgaria

the World

Our work for and with children in kindergartens aims to achieve results in
several aspects:

• prepare children for first lessons in school which need use of maps;
• improve their geography culture;
• give them additional knowledge in distracting way: by playing games and
drawing pictures;
• show them art aspect of the maps and train them in aesthetical view of
the maps.

All participants in this initiative believe that these kids will learn how to use
maps in an appropriate way Facing with maps of high quality teachers and kids
will be able to distinguish the good and useful products from the low quality
ones which are sold on our free market.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 29
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

Electronic variants of cartographic products

Students and kids share the values of a new generation who is using computers
every day for every need. That is way the most appropriate solution is to propose
geographical and historical mapping visualization through the medium of elec-
tronic cartographic products. Several ideas have been realized worldwide. An e-
lectronic school atlas of Quebec is a good example of product which archi-
tecture and content is connected to the child (Anderson, Carriere, LeSann, 2003).
Other research (Pfander, Kollen and Greenfield, 2004) represents the Arizona E-
lectronic Atlas (http://atlas.library.arizona.edu) as an interactive Web-based state
atlas which allow users to create, print or download maps and data. The efforts of
its creators are focused on the integration of the Atlas into the university class-
room.
There are different opportunities for students training in organizing infor-
mation according to classification schemes, understanding intellectual property
rights and mastering the use of Internet based tools in the Norwegian GeoAtlas
(http://www.avinet.no/). A lot of examples of electronic Atlases are available on
the market and in the web. Nevertheless only few of them are developed for
children and students use. There are large numbers of advantages of these atlases.
They are well described by Uluğtekin and Bildirici (1997). One of the biggest ad-
vantages is shown by the same authors as they wrote “Atlas publishing in elec-
tronic form will become financially interesting more and more”.

Figure 3. A possibilitiy of electronic atlas for data combining and use

After this short introduction about electronic atlases development in the world,
we could pay attention to Bulgarian version of such atlas, called “MaxInfo”, pro-
duct of Datamap-Europe Ltd. It contains a lot of information about Bulgaria, Sofia
and other Bulgarian cities: maps, legend, photos and texts (see Figure 3). This in-

formation could be visualized in computer screen and printed after that. Teachers
and students could include the necessary objects by interactively chosen symbols
and automatically situate them on the base map. The students can search the ne-
cessary information by taping a keyword and situate or see it in pictorial and/or
text form. In such a way they get knowledge about GIS function in the first step of
their education. The Atlas is working in user-friendly way, so the students will
begin to use GIS questions and will understand the productivity and usefulness of
the real GIS (Bandrova, 2001).

The training with electronic atlas could be directed in 3 points:

• Work with data. Different kind of tasks can be given to students. They
can select a list of type objects, classify objects, examine some details of
every object and connect them with information for other objects. It is
flexible system for object searching according to different criteria: name,
type, address, key words and others. Every reference can be saved for
future usage.
• Work with maps. There is a possibility for scaling maps, move map im-
ages, switch on or off the visibility of layers, choose a symbol system for
object mapping.
• Work with data and maps. Students can add data on a map as a separate
map layer, receive information for objects, find the object situation from
a data list, etc. Examples of teachers tasks can be the following according
to Ormeling F., (1996):
1. What is on a map (identifying);
2. What is where on the map (classifying);
3. Do you see a relationship on the map (relating);
4. Check if this relationship is valid for each region on the map (check-
ing, monitoring, validating).

This electronic atlas has CD version and it is sold in Bulgarian market. This
makes it difficult for use by teachers and students. Main users came by business
field. Students are using free version of another Bulgarian web based atlas. It can
be found on www.bgmaps.com. Its main purpose is to give the possibility to find
address in the city situation. It is not adopted for student or children use.

Compromises?

Compiling and mapping geography and history information which we needed

for school atlases and wall maps provided us with enough data which allow us to
produce electronic or virtual variants of these cartographic products. From car-
tographer’s point of view this will not be a problem. Also in these days many
variants of electronic text-books appeared. It is clear that this will be the future of
the school cartography development. However, the situation is still bad because
of the poor computer equipment in school rooms. Only one room per a school is
equipped with computers. This room is all time occupied by students studding
computer science. There are no possibilities for geography teachers to use this

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 31
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

room for their lessons. For this reason we still propose only paper atlases and
wall maps in Bulgarian market. However, in outline maps and in some atlases
there are tasks that require from users to perform an Internet research. Other
reason is the open issues in terms of legacy. The students will use their personal
notebooks we cannot allow usage of illegal software. Unfortunately, the necessary
software for cartographic applications is too expensive. This point of view has
been developed in the work of Gold (2008). He states that „However, where van-
dalism, or irresponsible use such as software piracy, are perceived to be problems
with the result that the machines may only be used when staff supervision is
available, then even a large number of microcomputers in a laboratory may pro-
vide extremely limited access to students taking computer cartography courses”.
A good idea is that geography and history lessons could be developed as
computer games apropriate for different ages. Such experiment could be found
in The Serious Games Institute (SGI) at Coventry University. Wortley (2008)
says that it is established to „create an international centre of excellence for seri-
ous games and virtual worlds. The SGI has been pioneering the use of virtual en-
vironments for a range of applications which include e-learning, simulation, dis-
aster management, virtual conferencing and social and business networking”.
Here, the issue is how to make such product cheep enough or free of charge for
teachers and students and how to make it attractive enough for students’ needs.

Modern visualization

The visualization of geographic and historic information on the school atlases is

one of the main topics of modern cartography. Mapmakers should reach stu-
dents’ attention and provoke map reading and analysis. How do children think
in terms of cartographic aspects? We can find different responses on this ques-
tion as well as a lot of proposals. Many of these proposals are the result of ques-
tionnaire research. Reyes Nuñez at al (2005 and 2008) on the base of interna-
tional research and questionnaire propose to be used “satellite images in the text-
books and atlases..., which help the pupils to understand the content of the phys-
ical maps by visualizing the represented territories in their natural dimensions”
(Reyes Nuñez et al., 2008).
How to visualize the necessary information; how to choose the appropriate
symbol system, what colours we should use? The answers of these questions need
experiments with children to understand their maps’ perception (Konecny and
Svancara, 1996). To work with students and to be close to their thinking is one of
the main steps of proposed technology for atlases creation in the work of Ban-
drova (2007). After many experiments, conducted mainly by questionnaire the
prepared maps and atlases were approved and later published (Bandrova, 2010).

Figure. 4. Use of photos and drawings

in map’s design

Figure. 5. Use of diagrams and text

in map’s design

Figure. 6. Visualization of different

kinds of maps and mapping

There are several main differences in comparison with the old atlases proposed
on the Bulgarian market:

• Usage of many photos and drawings in maps’ and atlases’ design (see
Figure 4). This attracts students and direct their attention towards the
topic of the maps;
• Use of different diagrams, statistics and text like in encyclopedia style
(see Figure 5). These not only textual but also visual elements capture
students’ attention, provide them with more specific and curious infor-
mation which is easy to understand and memorize. Use of examples in
topic explanations. On Figure 6 this method was used to explain different
types of mapping and maps;
• Use of colors on the borders of the pages or under the title to separate
different parts of atlases.

All these improvements accompanied by the high quality printing and pub-
lishing make the atlases popular and attractive for students, parents and teachers.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 33
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

New topics

The adoption of the new topics in the atlases and wall maps is related to the new
curriculums in geography and history. Cartographers must adjust their products
to the new curriculums because their cartographic assets should be approved by
the Ministry of education. Thereby, these products could be used in Bulgarian
schools.

New ideas and maps in the Geographical Atlases

Some the new topics are included in order to facilitate the teaching of other top-
ics that the students find difficult to understand. For example different kinds of
mapping and maps (see Figure 6) or map projections (see Figure 7).
Another reason is to help teachers and students to understand more compli-
cated themes in their lessons. Map projections represent such a challenge. We try
to show students how we manage to display the sphere on the plane. Different
kinds of deformations appear (area, linear, angular) as a consequence of this trans-
formation. This is visible in the map-play included as a separate part of the Atlas
on geography – a puzzle or an icosahedron (volumetric map of the world with 20
equal triangular parts in gnomonic projections). The play with them is multifunc-
tional in terms of geographical, cartographical and mathematical aspects (Fig. 7).

Figure 7. Map puzzle is used in lessons on map projection and deformations

Other new topics which appear in the geographical atlases are related to na-
tural risks and disasters, natural resources, ecology and others.

Figure 8. Maps from school atlases representing nature risks and disasters

Such examples could be seen on Figure 8. Children and teachers are prompted
to describe and analyze the most affected territories and spots where disasters are
likely to happen or some consequences that have already appeared. On the base of
such maps some preventive activities could be planed and discussed.
The cartographer’s role is to help children, students and teachers in their edu-
cational process. Another goal is to direct students attention to the global and re-
gional problems and to the ways to improve and safe the environment. The next
tasks are to find data and represent it in regional atlases in larger scales and thus
we will help also regional geography items.

New ideas and maps in the Historical Atlases

The old historical atlases were criticized by teachers mainly in the following di-
rections: too many represented objects from general geographic base, a lot of infor-
mation represented in atlases for young students (for example, the history maps of
Bulgaria for school years 5. and 11. have similar contents), too many symbols in
common legend. The authors tried to avoid these difficulties and the new historical
atlases are compiled on different way:

• clear general geographical base: only the biggest and relevant to the map’s
topic rivers are represented, the shade relief has replaced a lot of moun-
tains names;
• different representation of one and the same theme for different school
years: maps, compiling atlases for high school have richer content needed
to studied topics;
• not so many symbols (only the most associative ones, for example, sym-
bols represented state border, city, capital, etc.) are represented in the ge-
neral legend.

The new idea for atlas compiling is related to representation of specific themes
in the Atlases. Such theme is the Trojan War which is not represented in old at-
lases. It is mapped based on the information taken from the Homer’s poem “Iliad”.
The result could be seen on Figure 9.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 35
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

Figure 9. A map for the Trojan War published in the Historical Atlas for
school year 7

1. 2.

3. 4.

Figure 10. Different maps of Trojan War

Source:
1. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/ashp/NEWhp252/portnov/trojanwar.html
2. http://www.raremapsandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_
info&products_id=12628
3. http://sillysoft.net/lux/maps/Trojan%20War%20-%20Year%2010
4. http://mmtaylor.net/Holiday2000/Legends/trojan.war.html

The existing maps representing Trojan War (see Figure 10) did not provide
us with the necessary information. The war was partly represented or with insuf-
ficient information. The explanations in text books should be expended with de-
scriptions taken by literature. The teachers are very positively surprised when
they receive such maps and can visualize their explanations.
Other new topics in historical atlases are related to the newest history. Bri-
gade movement is one of the topics which are newly developed. These new maps
regroup the distribution and localization of different meetings, grouping activi-
ties, protests and others are represented. The students have visualized topics and
they can use the maps to connect historical lessons to situational facts.

Conclusions and directions for future works

The idea of this research was to find topics in school curriculum in geography
and history where cartographers should react on fast way. The best variant is
when people in responsible ministers react also on time and don’t take a year or
more but if it is not possible cartographers could propose some new themes as
additional topics. This is allowed because the school atlases should contains
about 20% additional contents than this one in school text books. Such examples
are shown and the most important topics in these days are crises respond and

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 37
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Response of Changes in Geographical and Historical School Curriculums

disaster management. In the new Bulgarian atlases of geography some maps of

these themes are already done.
Other decision could be if electronic variants of the atlases will be produced.
Then the updating and including of the new themes could be easy and faster. The
main problem for countries as Bulgaria is the possibility to use computers labor-
atories in the school in geography and history lessons. These laboratories are oc-
cupied by the lessons of electronic sciences and informatics. Teachers have not
possibility to use them but students could use such atlases for home works and
studying.
To help teachers in difficult topics cartographers could be ready to supply
them with additional materials, maps, cartographic products. Such example is
icoahedron product which will help teachers in explanation of map projection
topic. Some new ideas for visualization of topics which are did not propose up to
now will also help teachers and students in their educational process. Such ex-
ample was a Trojan War.
The modern visualization in the new cartographic products (paper and
digital) will be cartographers’ target to reach students’ attention and better un-
derstanding of all topics which should be studied. The electronic variants of at-
lases and maps give cartographers most power tools to do this by animation,
sound and videos, 3D presentations and allowing users to produce their own
products. This will be our tasks in the very close future to supply schools, teach-
ers and students with such new cartographical products. This will be our respond
to school curriculum changes.

References

Anderson, J., Carriere, C., LeSann, J.: 2003. A Pilot Electronic School Atlas of
Quebec. International Research in geographical Environmental education, Vol.
12 : 4. p. 383–390.
Bandrova, T.: 2001. The first Bulgarian Electronic Atlas – A Possibility for Carto-
graphic Teaching in Schools. E-mail Seminar of Cartography, Vol. 3, p. 93–98,
Sofia, Bulgaria.
Bandrova T.: 2007. Cartography – Close to Users: A Technology for Compiling
of School Atlases for Education on Geography in Bulgaria, XXIII International
Cartographic Conference, 4–10 August, Moscow, Russia, CD proceedings.
Bandrova T.: 2010. Bulgarian Cartography: From Paper To Virtual Reality. 3rd
International Conference on Cartography and GIS, CD Proceedings, Nessebar,
Bulgaria, ISSN:1314-0604 (keynote presentation).
Gold, C.: 2008. Cartographic Education in Canada, [online] Available at:
<http://www.voronoi.com/wiki/images/6/66/Cartographic_education_in_canada.
pdf> [Accessed 09 March 2011].
Konecny, M., Svancara J.: 1996. (A)Perception of the Maps by Czech School
Children. Children and Education in Cartograpy. pp. 137–146, ICA, Gifu, Japan.
McKibben B.: 2011. Natural disasters? The Guardian [online] Available at:
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 38
Joint ICA Symposium
Temenoujka Bandrova

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/02/natural-disasters-floods-
earthquakes-landslides> [Accessed 03 April 2011].
Ormeling, F.: 1996. Teaching Map Use Concepts to Children. Seminar on Cogni-
tive Map, Children and Education in Cartography. Gifu, Japan.
Paris, S.G., Byrne, J. P.: 1989. The Constructivis Approach to Self-regulation and
Learning in the Classroom. Zimmerman B.J., Schunk, h. (eds.) Self-regulated
Learning and Academic Achievement: Theory, Research and Practice. New York,
Springer, p. 169–200.
Pfander, J., Kollen, C., Greenfield, L.: 2004. The Geographic Literate Student: The
Arizona Electronic Atlas Experiment. [online] Available at:
<http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/educ04/papers/pap5050.pdf>
[Accessed 09 March 2011].
Reyes Nuñez, J., de Moretti, C., Garra, A., Erika, G., Rey, C., de Castro, V., Di-
biase, A.: 2005. Reading thematic maps in Argentine and Hungarian schools:
experiences in both countries. Mapping Approaches into a Changing World. 22.
ICC 2005 conference CD Proceedings. A Coruña, Spain.
Reyes Nuñez, J., de Moretti, C., Garra, A., Erika, G. Rey, C., de Castro, V., Di-
biase, A.: 2008. Resuming an international project: Map use in Argentine and
Hungarian schools. Second International Conference on Cartography & GIS, p.
113–122. ISBN: 978-954-724-036-0. Borovets, Bulgaria.
Stoltman, J.: 1992. Geographic Education in the United States: The renaissance of
the 1980s. Naish M. (ed.) Geography and Education. London University: Insti-
tute of Education.
The New York Times, 2011. Haiti, Overview, World. [online] Available at:
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/haiti/
index.html> [Accessed 03 April 2011].
Uluğtekin, N., Bildirici, İ.: 1997. Advanced Mapping Technologies: Electronic At-
lases. Second Turkish-German Joint Geodetic Days, p. 641–649, Berlin, Ger-
many.
Wortley, D.: 2008 GIS And Virtual Worlds The Importance Of Place And
Community, Bandrova, T. (ed.), 2nd International Conference on Cartography
and GIS, Vol. 1 p. 317–322, UACEG, Sofia, Bulgaria, ISBN: 978-954-724-036-0.
Zhanng, H., Foskett N.: 2003. Changes in the Subject Matter of Geography Text-
books: 1907–1993. International Research in geographical Environmental edu-
cation, p. 312–329, Vol. 12 : 4.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 39
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Cartography in Education

TEACHING CARTOGRAPHICAL SKILLS

IN DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EU
Eszter Simonné Dombóvári
Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
[email protected]

Abstract: The European Union means a union of countries with different past and devel-
opment, various national traditions, customs and educational systems. The main aim of
these educational systems is to import growing and basic knowledge in a socially institu-
tionalized way. Teaching cartography is one little piece of these systems and it appears at
different level of these education systems. We can obtain this knowledge in many ways
with the help of numberless educational tools. With the new possibilities of the web map-
ping 2.0, method and content of teaching expands and a new quality in teaching and
training comes into life. The aim of this research is to find the answer on the questions
what the role of new media in education is and beside traditional tools what new tech-
niques are offered in the field of cartography teaching. These experiences of comparisons
can help us to improve cartographic education in schools.

1. Introduction

The European Union means a union of countries with different past and devel-
opment, various educational systems, national traditions and customs. The mem-
ber states pay great attention to care for cultural diversity and preservation of
national values (Ormándi, 2006). These differences give the multicolourness of
the Union.
The European Union was an economic cooperation until the 1990s but it is a
lot more now, a global economic and political integration which also affects
education. A kind of globalization can be observed in this field as well. The role
of the community is growing. In the interest of faster development, the inner
Eszter Simonné Dombóvári

educational politics of the member countries are coordinated. As standards u-

nify, it needs unifying teaching that leads to unified compulsory education (Koz-
ma, 1997).
The competitive and continuous knowledge renewal, the role of skills and
competencies appreciate which is the primary source of education and training
(OKM, 2009). Nowadays the goal is an education and a training system of high
quality. A competitive and knowledge-based society has brought “lifelong learn-
ing” as well as the competency-based education (appropriate for student’s skills)
for the last decade, and also has posed challenges to the traditional educational
systems.
The EU recommendations deal with education, training, adult learning, life-
long learning, mobility and e-learning (OKM, 2010). Nowadays the member
states decide only on their own educational politics (compiling teaching material
as well as their school systems). Their task is the implementing of the European
Union programs and they are responsible to revamp their education system. The
Union is responsible for promoting cooperation, supporting the process and en-
couraging additional community programs to achieve a competitive union (Or-
mándi, 2006).
The differences of the educational systems enhance the role of international
comparisons. The base of the comparison may be e.g. the length of compulsory
education and of teaching periods, the structure of pre-school, primary, secon-
dary and tertiary education and educational means (Ormándi, 2006). My aim of
the resource is to show the educational systems and teaching of geographical and
cartographical knowledge in a few member states of the EU.

2. Educational systems in european union

One of the most important tasks of public education is knowledge transfer based
on educational systems with several different layers of learning and training. The
educational systems of a given country include all the schools of the country and
show an organization where schools (of different type, level, function, mainten-
ance) are connected horizontally and vertically (Mezei and Szebenyi, 1998). Its
main aim is to import growing and basic knowledge in a socially institutionalized
way.
Every single school system has evolved and developed differently in the influ-
ence of different factors (e.g. traditions, historical, social and economic develop-
ment) shaping them. Therefore there are similarities and differences between
them. Differences may not only be in maintaining schools but also in education –
such as the length of compulsory education, the age of school beginning, differ-
ent school types, school system and interoperability between schools, the level of
state influence.
To examine every single different method we need a homogeneous scheme.
UNESCO, OECD, EU have formed international standard classification of educa-
tion (ISCED) in order to interpret educational training forms and programs ho-
mogeneously (UNESCO, 1997). With its help the different educational systems
can be compared easily. There are seven levels determined within educational
systems (Figure 1).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 41
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

Figure 1. ISCED levels

The Eurydice Network contains information and analysis of educational sys-

tems and policies in 31 of the members of the EU Lifelong Learning Programme
in Europe: the 27 EU countries, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland (as member
of the European Economic Area, EEA) and Turkey. The publications and the
databases of the member states’ education and its comparison are organised by
the EU Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency in Brussels (Eury-
dice, 2011) which formed the basis for this comparison.
The compulsory education lasts 9–10 years in most EU states (in Luxem-
bourg, Malta and UK 11 years, in the Netherlands and North Ireland 12 years
and in Hungary 13 years). It is between the ages of 6–16. In Luxembourg, Ireland
and the Netherlands compulsory education starts at the age of 4, while in
Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Denmark and Sweden only at the age of 7.
Usually the start of the compulsory education coincides with the start of the
primary education. In case of earlier start, the pre-school program is part of the
primary education. Primary education is generally completed at the age of 12,
but it is linked up to lower secondary education in some countries and it can take
to the age of 15–16 and the upper secondary education to the age of 18–19.
In most countries the school pathways for pupils are generally identical up to
the end of the lower secondary level (14 or 15 of age). Malta, Poland and the
United Kingdom have core curriculum up to the age of 16. In some countries,
pupils can choose a specific type of school at the beginning of lower secondary
education (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). In other coun-
tries compulsory general education is organized in single-structure schools up to
the age of 14 or 15 without a transition between primary level and lower secon-
dary levels. But from the age of 10 or 11, pupils in some countries can attend an-
other school – Czech Republic, Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia (Herodot, 2007).
Different levels have developed differently in the countries of the European
Union, but structural similarities can be recognized (Figure 2 and 3). We can dis-
tinguish three models where different levels – elementary, lower and upper
secondary – are connected or separated (Lannert and Mártonfi, 2003):

• the model with two cycles (elementary + lower and upper secondary) has
a 4–6 year first period and a 6-9 year second period (4 + 8, 6 + 6, 4 + 9)
e.g. in Austria, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland etc,

___________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 42
Joint ICA Symposium
Eszter Simonné Dombóvári

• the model with two cycles (elementary and lower secondary + upper se-
condary) where the first period is longer and the second one is shorter. It
can be 8 + 4, 9 + 3, 9 + 4. The countries are e.g. Portugal, Scandinavian
countries and countries in East-Europe,
• The model with three cycles (elementary + lower secondary + upper se-
condary) can be 5 + 4 + 3 (e.g. in Italy) or 6 + 3 + 3 (e.g. in France).

Figure 2. Types of school systems in the European Union (with ISCED levels)

Different models influence learners. The model with three periods in differ-
ent schools means more changes for children. When the first period is short, se-
lection is too early. (The early selection process means, the children of the largest
segment of the population are underrepresented at higher schools. Educational
systems tend to reproduce traditional social structures instead of being a vehicle
of opportunity or social mobility). If the first period is longer, foundation of
teaching is better. For the last years, emphasis is on openness and individualiza-
tion of education, on the process of teaching and learning, on developing claim
for learning, on improving learning abilities, on attaining active learning strate-
gies, on forming abilities to cooperative learning. Learning has expanded both in
space and time and it takes place more and more outside school building. These
changes need foundation of good quality where formal schooling is in dominant
position (Lannert and Mártonfi, 2003).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 43
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

Figure 3. Types of school system in the European Union

3. Curriculum in european union

The curriculum is a partly pedagogical, partly educational guidance document

which consists of general teaching and training aims, aids of didactics, offered
teaching method, lesson plans, teaching material for subjects and grades (OKM,
2003). The aim of the curriculum for each school type is to develop subject-spe-
cific and new competences (new competences: e.g. information and communica-
tion technology – ICT, foreign languages, entrepreneurship, social skills and
technical culture). There are five separate areas of studying: language and com-
munication, individual and society, nature and technical sciences, creativity and
planning, knowledge of health and physical education (Eurydice, 2002).
The digital technology is transforming every aspect of people’s lives. The edu-
cational systems must adapt to these individual needs and requirements. Today,
the goal is the skills and the competencies required for practical life rather than
factual knowledge (Ormándi, 2006). The two main topics of the European educa-
tional policies are the foreign languages and digital knowledge. The purpose is to
develop skills to a knowledge-based society, to ensure an access to ICT, to in-
crease the number of students in scientific and technical studies, to open learn-
ing environment, to make teach more attractive (Eurydice, 2002).
The general trend in EU member states is keeping students for a long time in
school to obtain the necessary skills and to prepare “lifelong learning”. The peri-
od of the compulsory education increases. The time devoted to nature and social

science subjects as well as foreign language education is growing. The following

disciplines are emphasized in the different stages of the educational systems
(Eurydice, 2009):

• the curriculum of primary education is almost the same in all member

states. The differences are only in flexible timetables and obligation to
provide ICT instruction and religious or moral instruction. The main
subjects are the language of instruction (one-quarter and one-third of
teaching time), mathematics, sciences and social sciences (9–15% of
teaching time), physical education (7–12%), foreign language (less than
10%), religious and moral instruction (4–8%). The information and com-
munication technology (ICT) education as a subject takes very little time
and often belongs to other disciplines,
• The timetable of the subjects is changing in the secondary school: almost
every member state reduced the proportion of the native language and
mathematics, respectively increased the proportion of natural and social
sciences. The natural science will find the largest number of lessons in
some countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Fin-
land). 10–20% consists of teaching foreign languages, mother tongue,
mathematics, natural and social sciences. Foreign language education is
the same ratio compared to the primary education but the education of
arts is less at this level,
• in upper secondary education general education and vocational educa-
tion are separated.

3.1. Teaching geography

Teaching geography in each member state is characterized by autonomy in the

subject, changes in content, attitude and number of lessons. Teaching cartogra-
phy is one little piece of geography education but this is one of the most impor-
tant knowledge to show the spatial and temporal trends of geographical phenom-
ena and processes. The geographical content is an important part of the curricu-
la, such as cartography. This is a compulsory curriculum either it is a separate
subject or it is integrated in another subject. It is taught at least in two years be-
tween level 4 to 11 (Curić, et al., 2007).
Geography is required for different long time in each member states. In most
countries it is a compulsory subject between the age of 15-16 (Austria, Czech Re-
public, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania,
the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden). In Cyprus, Greece, Italy,
Slovenia and the United Kingdom it is the age of 13-14, in Belgium, Malta and
Slovakia from age of 10-12, but in Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Poland and Roma-
nia, it must be studied to final exam of the secondary school (Herodot, 2007).
The role and the teaching time of geography has been reduced both in prima-
ry and secondary education. Some progress can be observed in Estonia, Slovenia
and Sweden (Herodot, 2007). The decrease of the lesson number is observed in
all countries. Lessons per week: primary last secondary education Hungary (7),
Slovakia (16), Slovenia (12), Romania (12 to 17, depends on school), Poland (12)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 45
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

and Austria (16) (Ütőné, 2009). But in many cases only the curriculum deter-
mines the teaching time of individual subjects and each school can decide the ex-
act curriculum: e.g.

• in Sweden the government provides the teaching time of the subjects for
the duration of 9 years education,
• in Ireland there is the minimum amount of time,
• in the Netherlands schools have the largest autonomy. Schools them-
selves decide the number of lessons,
• in England the teachers can decide this, but the theme should be tailored
to the curriculum.

In some countries the theory and related knowledge acquisition is important,

but less attention is paid to practical cognition. Such are the countries in Central
and Eastern Europe, e.g. Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, which have a
so-called traditional way of science teaching. However, the Anglo-Saxon and
Nordic countries have a major role in the experiments and practical tasks. In the
latter countries, science or integrated science courses appear in general (TIMSS,
2007).
In every country: the preparation of educational content, the use of different
teaching methods and forms, different types of student work (individual work,
testing, pair and group work, discussion, field work, project, presentations,
essays, posters, projects, presentations) is important. Furthermore, it is important
to connect geographical knowledge to other subjects. In the 1990s, Geography, as
a subject, began to be independent. It is an integrated subject in primary
education in most cases and later it is an independent subject in the curriculum
(e.g. the situation of the geography depends on the type of the upper secondary
school). It is an independent subject in Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Finland, Germany and Great Britain. In some countries, geograph-
ical knowledge is part of social sciences (Germany, Sweden) or natural sciences
(Finland), or both (e.g. Slovenia, Great Britain, Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands,
Hungary). Therefore often not the specialized teachers educate the geographical
knowledge and they pay less attention to geography. In some countries geo-
graphic knowledge is taught with other topics at some educational levels (Curić,
et al., 2007), e.g.

• in Austria with economics in the lower and upper secondary level,

• in France and Ireland with history at the upper secondary level,
• in Finland with biology at the lower secondary level,
• in Sweden it is included in the social sciences like history, religion and
society.

3.2. Cartographical themes in the curriculum

Cartography is “the art, science and technology of making maps, together with
their study as scientific documents and works of art” (Neumann 1997, p. 29.).
Cartography in schools, as a section of cartography, deals with making maps or
map-like representation for school purpose and forming the criteria and the base
of didactic-methodical use (Bollmann, Koch 2002). School cartography is map-
making for school use (Neumann, 1997) and includes not only the cartographical
skills but also the use of maps and map reading and the topographic knowledge.
The aim of topographic education is not collecting pieces of information, but de-
veloping ability and independent search and arranging knowledge. The topo-
graphic fundamentals, location, explanation of places, attaching geographic
knowledge are also important.
European Schoolnet (EUN), a virtual learning network, has got 31 members
of Ministries of Education in Europe since 1996. Its aim is to bring about
cooperation, innovation and exchange in teaching and learning to its key stake-
holders: Ministries of Education, schools, teachers and researchers. The main
educational portals and the Ministries of Education of the member states can be
found in it. The basis for this comparison is this website and some school books
(Figure 4, 5 and 8). The open and free educational contents are available from
the Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) portal for schools from many different
countries and providers, including 18 Ministries of Education.

Table 1. Cartographical themes and topic in schools

Cartographical Cartographical
themes topics
The map • definition of the map, map types, globe, atlas, scales
and scale bar, units
• history of cartography
Cartographical • generalization, methods of representation, colours
representation on the map
• representation of relief, symbols, geographical names
• projections, distortions
Orientation • directions, compass, north and their determination,
orientation of the map
• determining the position
• coordinate systems: geographic coordinate systems,
• km grid
Measurements on • determining the amount and coordinates
the map • measurement of distances, distance, areas and angles
• use of maps and atlases (finder grid, telemetry)
• gathering information from maps (earth grid, points
of compass, GPS, compasses)
• creating topographic profiles
Remote sensing • satellites, satellite images

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 47
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

If we focus on cartographic topic in schools of e.g. Austria and Hungary (Table 1,

Figure 4–5), we can declare that:

• In primary school, 3rd–4th grades (at the age of 8–10), pupils learn about
orientation in time and space for the first time.
• In lower secondary education, in the 5–6th grade, cartographical themes
are taught with the help of globe, maps, atlases and pictures during the
first 5–10 lessons. Students learn most important fundamental elements:
such as map types, direction and distance, orientation, map symbols, re-
lief, use of maps and atlases (finder grid, telemetry) and gathering infor-
mation from maps (earth grid, points of compass, GPS, compasses). In
all themes local complements are added. Topography plays a role in pro-
cessing school work. According to valid curriculum its task is connecting
topographic knowledge with geographic content.
• In the upper secondary education, the 9th grade, pupils mostly revise
cartographical knowledge learnt at earlier stages, but mainly make use of
map reading and analyses. They use maps, air and space photos in study-
ing different themes. Requirements are map reading, comparative analy-
sis of thematic maps and explanation of space photos, different geo-
graphical exercises (e.g. determining northern direction and height, ori-
entation on maps, code and measurement of distance, zone and standard
time).
• In the next years there are no cartographic fundamentals taught at this
level but orientation and use of maps in Geography lessons become
important, expression of ideas on the basis of obtained knowledge, logi-
cal comparative analysis and identification of phenomena of nature on
contour maps are important. As the amount of topographic events grows
and time in school is little, extra lessons are needed in spare time.

Figure 4. Some illustrations from different Hungarian school books

(Jónás, dr. Kovács and Vízvári, 2001)
___________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 48
Joint ICA Symposium
Eszter Simonné Dombóvári

The final exam at the end of upper secondary school is different in the mem-
ber states. In some countries there is only a written exam (Bulgaria, Greece, Cyp-
rus, Lithuania, Portugal and Finland). But in most countries, it has both written
and oral parts. Often an external authority compiles and values the written exam.
But the same (internal or external) committee organizes always both parts of the
final exam, e.g. (Eurydice, 2009):

• in the Netherlands, internal written and/or oral exam is set by the school,
the external written exam is organized by external authority,
• in Belgium, in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Iceland the written exam
is set by the teachers within the school,
• an internal and an external exam is obligatory in Greece,
• in Portugal there is only an external final exam,
• in Austria the school supervisor sets the questions for the written exam,
and the teachers do it for the oral exam.

Figure 5. Some illustrations from different Austrian school books

(Zeugner, 2006)

In some countries, e.g. Austria there is no uniform final exam. Geography

can be chosen. Cartographical fundamentals are out of question. Only map read-
ing and local knowledge are important. In other countries, e.g. in Hungary there
is a new, uniform, two-tier system of secondary school final examination. Beside
the original secondary school final examination, students can choose a raised
level exam which serves as an entry exam to universities and colleges. One of the
most popular optional subjects is geography. The written exam contains topo-
graphic knowledge (15% in medium level, 20% in raised level – Figure 6) and ex-
ercises (determining place and height, scales, local and zone time). To answer test
questions, school atlases can be used. Spoken exam also has cartographic and as-
tronomical topics. The requirements of the exam are: the use of maps, analysis

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 49
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

with the help of atlases. Topographic knowledge is based on a list issued by the
Ministry of National Resources (OKM, 2005).

2006
2005

2008
2007

Figure 6. Some tasks from Hungarian written school leaving exams

(OKM, 2005)

4. New media in education

We can obtain this knowledge in many ways with the help of numberless educa-
tional tools. Schools use great number of traditional means. Nowadays we can
choose from wide range of educational tools taking into consideration the oppor-
tunities of informatics. As internet and especially interactive web pages are new
resources to help our daily lives. Since students in today’s classes tend to sur-
round themselves with modern technology, beside simple classroom aids (books,
workbooks, visual aids: maps, atlases, globes, foils, slides etc.) they may in-
creasingly expect it in the classroom as well. The various digital sources play
more and more important role in the education of geographic and cartographic
knowledge. The numbers of CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs have increased which
can be used successfully for teaching continents, countries and some topics (as-
tronomy, meteorology and topography). The problem is that only a few suit the
demand and content of geography teaching.

Figure 7. Web Mapping software, techniques and standards

(Simonné-Dombóvári, Schmidt and Gartner, 2010)

Internet is becoming more and more important. The web cartography can
also distinguish different types of maps according to their complexity (Figure 7).
We can find plenty of geographical portals, databases or web pages containing
tests, puzzles, quizzes and blank maps which can be used to prepare for the
school lesson or tests. The web cartography can have different roles and advan-
tages in the geography and cartography education:

• simple, fast and cheap source in internet,

• it ensures a permanent presence all over the world,
• more effective communication with its multi-media, interactive and 3D
elements,
• with the popular mapping service and entertainment components arouse
pupil’s attention,
• educational content in the form of tasks and games,
• you can not only read, see, hear, but also try it,
• available both at home and at school.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 51
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

With the new possibilities of the web mapping 2.0, method and content of
teaching expands and a new quality in teaching and training comes into life.
These websites can be founded on a concept of edutainment (education and en-
tertainment), which is the method of attractive teaching and learning with multi-
media applications. On the other hand, it can be used to enhance the attractive-
ness of cartography in different age groups. These can be used universally but
with their help it is playful and stainless to memorize, deepen, test knowledge
(Figure 8).

a) Work with Google Maps b) Relief (Interactive Geography for

(Geohra – Czeh Republic) primary schools – Hungary)

c) Scale (Skala mapy – Poland) d) Legend (Tirol 4 Kids – Austria)

Figure 8. Examples for cartographical educational tools in EU

a) http://env.kraj-lbc.cz/mapserv/geohra/;
b) http://www.cartographia.org/demo/frajz_demo.exe;
c) http://www.scholaris.pl/cms/index.php/resources/ekran_skala_mapy.html;
d) http://tirolatlas.uibk.ac.at/kids/modules/learnmaps/index.py/index?lang=de
[Accessed 18 April 2011].)

5. Conclusion

Countries with dissimilar past, development and tradition have joined the Euro-
pean Union and have come closer while regional differences are going to disap-
pear. Their aim is the approach to uniform compulsory education, teaching com-
petences, openness and individualization of learning. Unifying systems value in-
ternational comparisons. Studying and comparing the everyday practice in these
countries can help with finding better ways to teaching.
The first things that can be easily compared are the models how different lev-
els of compulsory education follow one another, when they join, when they split.
We can recognize three variations. As far as I see, for students too short first pe-
riod or too many changes bring early selection, while a longer first period means
“better foundation”, a solid knowledge.
The more number of lessons guarantee the more experience. But the role and
the teaching time of geography has been reduced both in primary and secondary
education in some of the member states. Nowadays the main aim of teaching is
giving competitive and renewable knowledge. Its sense is put into the curricu-
lum. If it is controlled, every school has the same possibility. If it is defined by
schools, teachers of different schools offer different knowledge for students. They
may cause principal differences.
Teaching cartography is one little piece of these systems and geography edu-
cation. If Geography, Cartography is integrated, it suits lower levels of education.
It may be not enough at higher level, when detailed knowledge of Geography is
needed with the help of specified teachers. Teaching focuses on skills, preparing
lifelong learning these days. In schools practice has greater value than paper
knowledge. We can obtain this knowledge in many ways with the help of num-
berless educational tools. New techniques, active learning strategies are needed
such as cartographical educational tools on the web.
With the new possibilities of the web mapping 2.0, method and content of
teaching expands and a new quality in teaching and training comes into life. The
role of new technologies and web cartography is becoming more and more im-
portant in our daily lives as well as in education. It brings new possibilities in
learning and practicing in school or at home. It can help to teach one of the most
important knowledge in geography to show the spatial and temporal trends of
geographical phenomena and processes.

References

Bollmann J. and Koch W.: 2002. Lexikon der Kartograpie und Geomatik. Heidel-
berg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, p. 313–314.
Curić Z., Vuk R. and Jakovčić M.: 2007. Geography curricula for compulsory
education in 11 European countries – comparative analysis. [online] Available at:
<http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/39111> [Accessed 29 March 2010].

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 53
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartographical Skills in Different Educational Systems of EU

Eurydice, 2002. Structures of education, vocational training and adult education

systems in Europe. [online] Available at:
<http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/ressources/eurydice/pdf/041DN/041_AT_EN.pdf>
[Accessed 08 January 2009].
Eurydice, 2009. Key Data on Education in Europe 2009. [online] Available at:
<http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/key_data_series/105E
N.pdf > [Accessed 03 February 2011].
Eurydice, 2011. Information on Education Systems and Policies in Europe.
[online] Available at:
<http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/ education/eurydice/index_en.php>
[Accessed 03 February 2011].
Herodot, 2007. Aspects of the State of Geography in European higher education.
[online] Available at:
<http://www.herodot.net/state/state-geog-report.pdf>
[Accessed 10 October 2009].
Jónás I., dr. Kovács L. and Vízvári A.: 2001. Földrajz 9 – Kozmikus és természet-
földrajzi környezetünk. Szeged: Mozaik Kiadó.
Kozma T.: 1997. Például Ausztria. [online] Available at:
http://www.oki.hu/oldal.php?tipus=cikk&kod=1997-10-vt-Kozma-Peldaul#top
[Accessed 11 October 2008].
Lannert J. and Mártonfi Gy.: 2003. Az oktatási rendszer és a tanulói tovább-
haladás. [online] Available at:
<http://www.oki.hu/oldal.php?tipus=cikk&kod=Jelentes2003-Tovabbhaladas>
[Accessed 11 October 2008].
Mezei Gy. and Szebenyi P.: 1998. A közoktatás rendszere. Budapest: OKKER
Kiadó.
Neumann J.: 1997. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cartography in 25 languages.
München: K G Saur.
Neumann A.: 2008. Web Mapping and Web Cartography. In: Shashi Shekhar
und Hui Xiong, ed. Encyclopedia of GIS. NY: Springer, p. 1261–1270.
OKM – Oktatási és Kulturális Minisztérium, 2003. 243/2003. (XII. 17.) Korm.
rendelet a Nemzeti alaptanterv kiadásáról, bevezetéséről és alkalmazásáról.
[online] Available at: <http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/kozokt/nat_070926.pdf>
[Accessed 08 January 2009].
OKM – Oktatási és Kulturális Minisztérium, 2005. Az érettségiről tanároknak.
[online] Available at:
<http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/kozokt/erettsegi2005/tanaroknak/foldrajz/foldraj
zbe.htm> [Accessed 08 January 2009].
OKM – Oktatási és Kulturális Minisztérium, 2009. Az Európai Unió és az okta-
tás, képzés. [online] Available at:
<http://www.okm.gov.hu/main.php?folderID=861> [Accessed 26 January 2010].

OKM – Oktatási és Kulturális Minisztérium, 2010. Az oktatás területét érintő

európai uniós jogszabályok listája. [online] Available at:
<http://www.okm.gov.hu/jogszabalyok/oktatas-teruletet>
[Accessed 10 October 2010].
Ormándi J.: 2006. Összehasonlító pedagógia. Gyula: APC-Stúdió.
UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
1997. International Standard Classification of Education ISCED 1997. [online]
Available at: <http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/pdf/isced/ISCED_A.pdf >
[Accessed 08 January 2009].
Ütőné Visi J.: 2009. A földrajz tantárgy helyzetét és fejlesztési feladatait feltáró
tanulmány – Kérdőíves elemzése felmérés alapján. [online] Available at:
<http://ofi.hu/tudastar/tanitas-tanulas/foldrajz-tantargy >
[Accessed 08 January 2009].
TIMSS, 2007. Összefoglaló jelentés a 4. és 8. évfolyamos tanulók képességeiről
matematikából és természettudományból. [online] Available at:
<http://timss.hu/KMEO-TIMSS-2007.pdf> [Accessed 10 October 2009].
Simonné-Dombóvári E., Schmidt M. and Gartner G.: 2010. Kartenanwendungen
im Web. HMD – Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 276 (2010), p. 59 – 67.
Zeugner K.: 2006. Hölzel-GW 1 – Faszination Erde 5. Schulstufe. Wien:
Ed. Hölzel.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 55
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Cartography in Education

THE CARTOGRAPHY IN STUDIES OF

ENVIRONMENT: BILINGUAL PRACTICE
AIMING INCLUSION OF DEAF STUDENTS

Tiago Salge Araújo1, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas2

1 Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade do Porto
(Portugal) [email protected]
2 Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP/ Rio Claro, São Paulo (Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: When it comes to Special Education are countless proposals, debates and disa-
greements. In Brazil, the fact is that special schools has been extinguished by yielding,
more place to schools heterogeneous and full of diversity. Regarding Deaf students must
highlight their own language and culture so that ultimately require study and foremost
“a desire to integrate”. This research was mainly aimed to identify possible methodolo-
gies and activities targeted to the Deaf students entered into the regular Education. Be-
cause it is a Qualitative Research on a school located in the outskirts of on city in Brazil,
was elected to Urban Environmental Problems such as thematic development activities.
Assuming that to intervene in the problems of the environment, at first, we must realize
the place that we live, the Cartography was the important instrument used in the activi-
ties proposed by this Project.

1. Introduction

In 2008 I was drafted to replace a professor of geography at the municipal

schools in the region of Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil, and in one of the classes
might have contact with two deaf students. The replacement period of two
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

months was insufficient for a more comprehensive work was developed with
these students, combined with the difficulties of orientation and infrastructure
offered by the school to work with this particular class. However the special
needs of deaf students have shown clear during the lessons, highlighting the fact
that being included in the regular education system often does not ensure
linguistic equality and so full of knowledge acquisition from the regular school. It
was on this experience that came my interest in investigating the matter and the
need to explore issues relating to this situation. In expectation of confronting the
question of inclusion in regular school, there is the proposal of this research. This
research has as main objective, plan and develop teaching activities focusing on
geography, in particular with regard to spatial perception, which relates to the
different methodological and linguistic needs of a mixed class of regular schools
with deaf. It is important now to emphasize that this work is not intended to
“give voice to the deaf” because that group is extremely organized and com-
mitted to their policies and politics. For several centuries the Deaf has been
struggling to articulate in pursuit of their goals, conquering space for partici-
pation, engagement and dialogue in our society. And just by understanding them
as a cultural group that shares the history and linguistic situation in common in
that, throughout the paper, we will adopt the terminology Deaf. To cite Skliar
(2001, p. 144), “Sign Language nullifies the deficiency and allows the Deaf are,
then, a linguistic minority community different and not a deviation from nor-
mality”. This proposal aims to share experiences working methodology, to con-
tribute with other professional teachers who were faced daily with deaf students
in their classes. At first, the practices related to this research would be directed to
study and activities with maps, charts and aerial images, however, the mapping
developed in this work was very far beyond activities with coordinated, scales
and types of representations. The project was being developed, and as it unfold-
ed, new activities have emerged and been proposed in an attempt to better un-
derstand and also encourage Deaf students in their perceptions of living space.
However, with regard to the effectiveness of the process of school integration, we
must emphasize that this, necessarily depend on the cooperation of everyone
involved, from the teachers prepared until the students who participating in the
activities. As proposed the “Qualitative Research, the information are not collect
to confirm or disprove hypotheses constructed previously, the abstractions were
built as private data were gathered and were gathering”. (Bogdan; Bilken, 1994,
p. 50). Drawing on Bogdan and Biklen (1994), our planning was being done
throughout the research and data analysis, even if they have been analyzed more
systematically in the final stages of research. But it’s also important that the bases
for the planning of learning activities are well defined, as well the materials and
teaching methods adopted, “interlacing the individual parts” (Bogdan; Biklen,
1994). For being Deaf children, with own language and culture, it essential that
the content of available resource to work in Portuguese and in Sign Language. In
the sense, from cartography, photos, games drawings and field work, accompa-
nied by an interpreter of Brazilian Sing Language, teaching sequences were de-
veloped able to meet the needs of a class with deaf and hearing students, with the
theme “The Urban Environmental Problems: From The world to my school”.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 57
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

2. Games, pictures and cartography

This work is not aimed to explore all the central elements as cartographic
projections, scales, their coordinates and mathematical relationships. More than
that, this work in cartography, a tool to enhance knowledge of the world and the
living space of the students involved in research. To Callai (2005), a form of
scanning the world is through the reading of space, which embodies all brands of
men’s lives. “Thus, reading the world goes far beyond reading cartographic re-
presentations which reflect the local area, sometimes distorted because of the
cartographic projections adopted. To read the world is not just doing a reading
of the map or by the map, although it is very important. You do the reading of
the life world, building daily and expressed both our utopias, and limits that we
are put in, whether the scope of nature, within the context of society (cultural,
political, economic)”. (Callai, 2005, p. 228)
Therefore, in the development of activities with deaf students, the use of
maps is not the sole factor, but is an important visual resource for exploring the
living space and teaching of geography. By corroborating this view, it is said that
“in the school, the discipline of geography, in particular the contents of Carto-
graphy, offers subsidies to expand the students’ understanding of the place where
they live and work”. (Juliasz; Freitas; Ventorini, 2007). The Cartography is there-
fore an important resource for the teaching of Geography, because it allows the
representation of different perspectives of space and scale that is appropriate for
teaching. Thus, the mapping allows the student to understand the manner in
which he or she is inserted in space, which can be in local, regional and global
levels. Through maps, they will be able to distinguish the different and distant
locations, giving them the possibility of a more critical view of reality which they
belong. According to Almeida (2010) “The importance of learning in a socio-
cultural context of modern society, as a necessary tool in people’s lives, requires a
certain mastery of concepts and references to spatial displacement and ambiance,
and more than that, so that people have a conscious and critical view of their so-
cial space” (Almeida, 2010, p. 10). In the developed work there are also other
ways of representing and perceiving space. As Almeida and Passini (1989) point
out, “The living space refers to the physical space, experienced through move-
ment and displacement. It is learned by children through games or other forms
by going through it, enclosing it or arranging it according to their interests”
(p. 30). Combining the use of Cartography, drawings, photos and games, we
aimed to improve understanding of space by students. In the case of deaf child-
ren, it was essential to value their vision. The option of showing and building
drawings with them is in agreement with the studies based on the perspective of
Oliveira Jr., who says: “The drawing was really a scape option. Fleeing from the
word, whether oral or written, as the only transmitter of knowledge and infor-
mation. But it was also an option for that approach. Approaching to a language
more suitable for the transmission of knowledge about space, where the elements
would be presented spatially, without the need for a chain of words and expres-
sions. When looking at a drawing we already have a global view of it and we can
‘read’ it in several ways, from various points. It is also like this with the space and
the city” (1994, p. 9). Regarding to games, we shared Albres’ idea (2010) that tells
us that “childhood is a significant period for language acquisition. At this stage,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 58
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

recreational activities are built in the form of games” (p. 92). The same author
points out the relationship among games; language and cognition development
in deaf children. For this reason, during the study, it was privileged recreational
activities that would allow communication between the students, and that would
give importance to the visual field.

3. Research

3.1. The study area

The research was conducted at the Municipal School Professor Armando Grisi,
located in Jardim Paulista, in the outskirts of Rio Claro / São Paulo, Brazil, hous-
ing a community of low income. The neighborhood has several problems in the
urban environment in this way, a work on the perception of space and character
“environmental educator”, which embraced and integrated the students in this
school, proved to be of great importance. Even for the school where the research
was conducted in two thousand and six, we started work only with the inclusion
of deaf students in the district that it is located. In fact, because of a imposition
policy, the school received these students, however the support was poor. The
school principal in the period in which the proposal was implemented, on a visit
made in 2009, reported that, despite the difficulties, staff and students committed
themselves to actually include the deaf community in the context of regular
school. From this context, they took their own project and structured (Bilingual),
defined needs, strategies and possibilities. According to the director, this work
would be impossible if there was no engagement of all staff and students. Cur-
rently, City Hall / Department of Education provides funds to guarantee an
expert educator in BSL accompanying nine deaf students who attend school
regularly in elementary school. Regarding the distribution of deaf students in
classes, the Director during the visit, in 2009, told us that at start, all who attend-
ed the same grade would be placed in the same class. However, she said, moti-
vated by the interests of hearing students to learn sign language, the classes were
rearranged so that there was a greater “integration” and learning from each
other, even though this might be discussed.

3.2. Students involved

Initially, when this survey was idealized, it was thought in the implementation of
activities in classrooms with deaf and hearing students, but during the visits and
conversations with the teacher and pedagogical professional hired by the school,
it was decided to carry out activities only with the deaf students, believing that
this way the main design goals would be achieved. However it is worth noting
that all activities were planned and designed so that they could be developed in
classrooms with deaf and hearing students. At the same time, the different levels
of proficiency in Portuguese and in the written form of Brazilian sign language,
the different levels of deafness and the various difficulties of the students in-
volved, eventually constituted a very heterogeneous group and also mixed. In

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 59
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

some activities we divided them into two groups, with the intention of making a
careful observation and rethink the attitudes. Therefore, students involved in the
project were 9 children ranging from 9 to 12 years old, all students, deaf, in ele-
mentary school and in regular school.

3.3. Activities

3.3.1. Building the city

The first practice with the students sought, from the appreciation of the visual
field and the Brazilian sign language, awakening the students to the impacts of
Brazilian urbanization and environmental problems resulting from this process.
Starting with the practice of assembling a jigsaw puzzle containing a drawing of a
modern city (Figure 1), we tried to stimulate the visual discrimination, analysis,
synthesis, and visual-motor coordination (Albres, 2010, p. 112). The puzzle was
designed using cardboard paper, the drawing of a city and impermeable adhesive
paper to make it more resistent. In case we had more time, it could also be possi-
ble that each student would be asked to design their own puzzles with their own
drawing and then be exchanged between them. After students have managed to
form the puzzle, it was asked them to locate the elements present, cars, buildings,
factories, trash, etc...
The next step of this activity was a sequence of pictures, which sought to
portray “from the natural environment to urban problems, which presented
situations such as the construction of the first railroad tracks, the industrializa-
tion of the cities, the verticalization, the queues for jobs, segregation socio-spa-
tial, visual pollution of cities, and other situations. In all images shown, it was in-
cluded subtitles in Portuguese and sign language. Ending this practice, it was
proposed that the students would draw what drew more attention to them, some
students drew some garbage in cities, buildings and others drew up the slums.
Interestingly, one student chose to draw a rural landscape, arguing that since
there were many different urban elements it would be difficult for his own work,
showing that some situations can indicate a possible misunderstanding, it may
actually be revealing. With this practice, it was clear how the language is funda-
mental in the organization of thoughts: those who had a more structured lan-
guage, had an easier way to understand the subject matter and then represent it.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 60
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Figure 1. Student “building the city”

Regarding the designs produced by students, it was noted that in the first
(Figure 2), the student was concerned with aspects of designing an urban land-
scape, a building and a vehicle, undeniable “symbols” of cities. In this second
design (Figure 3) is very interesting to note that the student took care to also
show her mastery of Portuguese in the written form when writing garbage in the
trash where a kid throws a package. We also noted the contrasted ideas of two
different situations, a guy throwing the trash from car and another having a
more correct environmental point of view. Still related to the design, we also note
that the student can recognize and draw the elements into perspective, a char-
acteristic usually developed after 8–9 years of age (Almeida; Passini, 1989).
Student Nathalia soon was encouraged by family, which is the listener, to learn
the Brazilian sign language, she has no difficulties to realize the contents exposed,
moreover, is one of the students more attentive and not let dispense easily, unlike
her friends. In the next representation (Figure 4), the student exhibited some
situations also presented and discussed by the images shown previously. The stu-
dent portrays a girl with some bags in her hand, perhaps inspired by the images
on consumerism that also were presented to them. The rain and the house might
want to tell us something related to floods. However, it is worth noting that the
student does not place the drawing elements at the bottom of the paper, for a
child of 11 years, could we say that he/she is pretty childish for his/her age? Can
we infer about their cognitive and spatial sense?
In the last drawing (Figure 5), there is no doubt that it makes us reflect on
different aspects. The student has serious problems regarding the acquisition of
the Portuguese language in the written form and according to the interpreter,
presents poor and difficulties BSL. When he finished his drawing, we questioned
him about what he had done and he told me that he had designed a “hill” (note
the square at the bottom left, which would be boxes) and a car “falling” into a
flood. It would be fair to say that their language deficits interferes with their abi-
lity to represent it? The absence of a structured language troubled him to express
what he really liked to do?

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 61
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

Figure 2. The design of the building and truck

Figure 3. The representation of opposing situations

Figure 4. “Consumerism rain and the house”

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 62
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Figure 5. “The suburbs and the car”

3.3.2. From the world to my school

The second stage of the project came up with the proposed of giving the students
an idea of Geographic Space before talking about environmental issues. We used
a globe and different maps, including one of the our city, “Rio Claro”, as our idea
was to give the students a global and a local idea of space (Figure 6). Having
found where Brazil is located in the globe, they were given a colorful map of
Brazil printed in A4 size in order to check if they were able to identify which
country it was. This activity aimed to encourage them to acquire Portuguese vo-
cabulary in the written form, and present them important elements of maps and
charts also the separation of title, content and caption. The map of the political
division in Brazil was given after that and they were supposed to only paint the
province in which they lived. The map was printed without color, leaving all the
states represented with white background, so that students could paint our state.
To provide them first with the globe and the physical map, and only after give
them the political map aimed to show them that space is not “born” with bound-
aries. The idea was first to introduce the students to a unique Brazil, explaining
them the differentiation of colors depending on the types of relief, and so on-
wards. We wanted to show them that the States are a recent chapter in Human-
ity’s history, as pointed out in the “Notes on the education of visual maps: (un)
nature of the idea of representation”, by Oliveira Jr. (2009). The next step was to
get the map of the city of Rio Claro to try find out the localization of the school
and of the houses in which each of the students lived in. This phase of activity
was a lot of fun to the students because they all wanted to be faster than the
others in finding the school and their homes. For this activity we use only a city
map available at newsstands. To finish this practice, we individually asked the
students to draw up mental maps of the possible routes from their homes to the
school, and some of them went further by placing signs in the Portuguese lan-
guage about reference points along the way, like stores, streets, etc. By doing this
activity, we aimed to increase their spatial perception in different scales and we

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 63
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

wanted to encourage the students to think about a possible hierarchy: World –

Continent – Country – State – City – Suburb.

Figure 6. Materials used in this activity

On this first map (Figure 7), made by the same student that made the
“Figure 2”, there was a concern to make it flat, like a conventional map. It is in-
teresting to note that again she was concerned about indicating reference points
in the Portuguese language (aunt’s house, bar, market, etc.). The student also
used symbols to point her reference marks, such as crosses to represent the
churches along her journey from home to school. One aspect that caught atten-
tion was that while developing her map, the student told me that she had to draw
everything “too small” in order to fit everything in there, which gave me the im-
pression that her sense of scale had already improved.
In the second map (Figure 8) drawn by another student, only was reference
point was indicated, another school located in the same street where the school
they attend is. In this case, two children of the same age, but present levels of
perception and spatial representation quite different. We can even say that while
the previous representation has “characteristics of a map – at locating the places
in two-dimensional plane, trying to play their way and streets” (Marandola;
Oliveira, 2007, p. 7) – this other (Figure 10) can be considered a design. In it, we
noticed the lack of perspective by portraying the street seen from above and the
other elements seen from the front (Almeida, Passini, 1989, p. 40). De Paula
(2010) warns that the problems regarding the mental maps are concentrated, in
part, at the time subsequent to the acquisition of material, data analysis and says:
“Both representations have their advantages and disadvantages. A two-dimensi-
onal mental map is advisory because the individual fits into a system of direc-
tions (right, left, front and back), but loses ground to the possibility of devel-
oping related images, such as topography. The oblique representation from a
skyline, despite decreasing the clarity of spatial relationships between Euclidean
distances and directions, allows the individual to draw the elements according to
their size and shape, it is this perspective that we often see the world. There is no

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 64
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

restriction on the form of representation; it is for each object of research me-

thodology and charting their own ways and more optimal use of the map infor-
mation”. (De Paula, 2010, p. 8). We also highlight that in your drawing, Gustavo
was careful to indicate the room number where we gathered to do the activities,
showing that possibly even leave his own body as a reference for the location of
objects, possibly not having gone through the process of “decentering” which ac-
cording to Almeida and Passiani (1989, p. 34)” (...) Is the passage of child ego-
centrism to a more objective approach to reality through the construction of
conservation structures that allow children to have a thought more reversible.
This is because it begins to consider other elements for the spatial location and
not just their perception or intuition about the phenomena”. The third map,
made by the same student who made the “drawing 4”, it was clear his difficulty in
representing his perception. We are not saying what is ‘right or wrong’, especially
because the maps and drawings are mainly expression of their creativity, but we
can’t deny the difficulty shown by this specific student. In general, we can say
that this activity with drawings and maps was really informative about the cha-
racteristics and needs of the students.

Figure 7. Map of student Nathalia, landmarks and directions in Portuguese

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 65
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

Figure 8. Representation made by the student Gustavo

Figure 9. Representation made by student Paulo

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 66
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

3.3.3. Fieldwork in the school district

In order to aggregate the elements discussed in the previous practices, we de-

cided to do a fieldwork on the block and around the school. The area around the
school has serious problems of urban and environmental policy, such as unpaved
and poorly maintained roads, garbage dump on the banks of a small stream, fires
and illegal housing. In order to develop a complete work, before starting it we
returned to the idea of different scales of spatial analysis via the image below. We
provided maps to the students with a highlighted route so they could follow the
steps of the field work. We decided to use Google maps to present them with an
accessible and free to use map. The option of not introducing them to ‘scales’
was made because the main goal of the work was not to ask them for ‘calcula-
tions’ and cartographic operations. Along the way, besides the map, each student
had a digital camera so they could record the aspects that drew most attention.
Besides enhancing the students’ visual field perception, the idea was to capture
images able to allow a further analysis of the elements that were more interesting
to them and this activity was more important for the deaf students. Helped by a
school interpreter, we talked about the importance of the preservation of our
water resources, as well about the impacts of the urbanization process and of the
irresponsable garbage in ‘Corumbataí’ river, which is located near the school
where they study.

Figure 10. From global to local (Prepared by: Tiago Salge Araújo, 2010)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 67
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

Figure 11. Map delivered to students with the course of fieldwork

Figure 12. Some pictures taken by the students during the fieldwork

During the fieldwork, besides the problems related to waste and pollution of
water sources, housing issues also attracted the attention of students. Back to the
school, we had a picnic in the schoolyard and talked about the impressions the
students had about what they had seen: they liked the beauty of the sky, the ani-
mals they found along the way, such as cows, birds and dogs; they also liked the
fieldwork in itself, but they didn’t like the garbage, the dirty water and the holes
on the road.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 68
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

3.3.4. From the reality to the representation

As a final activity, it was proposed to build a model of the route taken during the
fieldwork with the students. This activity focused on the importance of stimulat-
ing the students’ perceptions of the living space. According to Freitas, Lombardo
and Ventorini (2007, p. 128), “the use of model allows the representation of land-
scape elements in three dimensions, providing a synthetic model of the complex
reality of the use and occupation of urban land”. Quoted by the same authors,
Filett (2004) points out that the reduced models bring children to the materiali-
zation of real spaces that provide concepts often not understood by them, since
the children of the first cycle of elementary school have a level of abstraction in
development and require viewing to understand them most of the times. Cer-
tainly the collective construction, along with students, is the most appropriate
way to explore all aspects and steps of a model. According to the authors men-
tioned below: “The model can be used as a collective representation of lived
space, which explores the dimensionality, therefore helping to improve the spa-
tial reading of each individual through the exercise of viewing and interpretating
the city”. (Freitas, Lombardo; Ventorini, 2007, p. 128). However, in order to con-
clude the research on time and considering the fact that I would be moving to
Portugal to start my master degree in Education, the construction of the model
was made by me and Carla Lombardi, the school interpreter. The students then
only used and explored it. In order to give them a sense of the land level, the
model was based on a 1 : 25 000 topographic scale of the area. The model was
built to an extent so one half of the model would be the representation of the
trajectory and the other half would be a great legend in ‘Brazilian Signs Lan-
guage’ and Portuguese. In order to stimulate the implementation of the “real to
the abstract”, some photos taken by the students themselves were printed and
glued on small polystyrene and sticks, so they could poste them on the model.
Each photo was accompanied by a title in Portuguese and in “Brazilian signs lan-
guage”. Moreover, numbers were given to the students and they had to put them
in the model in the most appropriated place, considering its representation of
each place. This aimed to encourage the students to look into their memories for
the location of the elements observed in the fieldwork (real) and transport them
to the model (“abstract”).

Figure 13. Model of the route taken in the fieldwork

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 69
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

Figure 14. Large bilingual legend containing references and points list
with what the students liked and disliked on fieldwork

Figure 15. Photos posted on the model

In this activity, all students participated in the survey were involved together
and the activity lasted for approximately 2 hours and performed during a late-
August. When we discussed the application and handling of the model, we think
that it might be best to recall them from the pictures they took, the route taken
during the fieldwork. However to our surprise and delight, it was not necessary.
As soon as they saw the demo, the students were very curious and wanted to
know everything, “whether it was school, whether it was the neighborhood, etc...”
We then began to work each element, we asked to look at the legend and try to
identify what he said. Then ask that relationship and puts in the representation,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 70
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

the number indicated in the legend (Figure 14) in place. Students Renato, Dalila
and Nathalia soon found the most suitable places and the others sometimes dis-
tracted by small details of the model, such as the composition of materials.
Next, we ask that the photos fit together (with subtitles BSL) in the most
appropriate, as the field work (Figure 15). The photos chosen were those shown
in Figure 14, and for judging fairly representative of different points of the route.
Again some students have excelled, showing a greater interest while others just
participated. Finalizing the framework discussed this activity “like – don’t like”
that was written according to what they said at the picnic after the fieldwork. In a
general evaluation of this activity with the model, we conclude that the ideal way
to have been done, no doubt, would have been individually or in pairs. Thus the
devolution would probably have been smaller and everyone could have attended
the same way. However, we shall understand this as being an excellent activity as
well as introducing elements of cartography, allowing visual discrimination, me-
mory and perception of living space.

4. Final condiderations, far from one conclusion…

Start by saying that, methodological and practical issues, we are far from one mo-
del or way of doing. This happens because if the Deaf community shares cultural
and linguistic elements, which enables us to define them as such, on the other
hand the specific needs and characteristics of each subject and students, we make
it impossible to draw a circle homogenizing. If the listener in culture is the same
logic, we recognize the differences among students regarding the Deaf because it
would be otherwise? I mean that we should not expect formulas already set for
teaching and we can work with Deaf students and / or mixed classes. Each stu-
dent, deaf or listener, has its potential, specific needs and desires. With respect to
all the research and activities, we were very clear how the language is the key ele-
ment when it comes to teaching the Deaf, the respect for their language and their
appreciation of the visual field may be the only thing we can say categorically. It
is impossible to think about full inclusion if the classes are designed under the
logic “ethnocentric listener” (Fernandes, 1998). The teacher, who is faced with
this situation, should dip in a constant process of reflection and their teaching
practice. If we want a democratic school, we should expect it to be prepared to
receive each of the students, deaf and hearing. The teacher of deaf students
should contact the relevant bodies and dedicate yourself to know this other cul-
ture. For the teacher to be prepared for this situation, he must live with the deaf
community, seek, where possible, to know more and learn sign language (even if
the school rely on an interpreter) and thinking about broader pedagogy (Skliar,
1998, p. 37 as cit. in Strobel, 2006, p. 250). In the context of cartography, this
proved to be an important instrument of perception and knowledge of living
space. Through her, and with it, we awaken in students a greater sense of space,
reflecting on our position in time and space. The first activity, with the puzzle,
photos and drawings, allowed us to learn more of the students and understand
their forms of representation. From the second activity with maps, globe and
maps, we believe that we were able to show them important elements of carto-
graphy, also indicating their utilities and various forms. The fieldwork and hand-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 71
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

ling of the model enabled a performance analysis and spatial perception rather
interesting, transposing the real to the abstract, directing and “freezing stares”. In
general, we see an evolution in the spatial perception of students, comparing the
first activities with the activity of the model. We therefore believe that the objec-
tives initially proposed by the project were achieved: we can prepare materials in
cartography, in Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese, which enabled the stu-
dents involved, expand their knowledge of the mapping applied to environmen-
tal studies, beginning in the studies using satellite images, aerial photos, letters
and fieldwork. Moreover, the activities provided an insight to the lived space and
environmental issues involving water resources in the study area. We are sure
that the work is not completed, now depend on other professional teachers con-
tinue to encourage and develop skills with these students. Perhaps the biggest key
to the question whether we begin to see how different, we realize that “the diffe-
rence is us” (Magalhães, Stoer, 2005). According to these researchers proposed,
we should look at the difference on another perspective: This discharge of voice
may not escape the boundaries of another as an object, this time through our po-
litical generosity. This is why we put ourselves under the statement “the differen-
ce is we”. The difference in this perspective is the “product of a relational game
in which there is no longer a privileged center from which one can determine
who are the others, who are different” (Magalhaes, Stoer, 2005, p. 10). We share
the ideas of Stoer and Magalhães (2005, p. 138) say that the other is different and
so are we. The difference is the relationship between different. We therefore con-
clude by saying that when it comes to education “special” or inclusive, we must
look at all those involved as “different” and not just the “other. ” The search for
dialogue and promotion of teaching that really reaches the “other” should be the
ultimate goal. With respect to geography and cartography, we were proven that
there are ways to do this, it behooves us all go on researching and looking for
ways to promote a truly inclusive education.

References

Albres, N. A.: Surdos & Inclusão Educacional. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Arara
Azul, 2010.
Almeida, R. D; Passini. E. Y. O.: espaço geográfico: ensino e representação – São
Paulo: Contexto, 1989. – (Repensando o ensino)
Aranha, F. S. M.: Desenvolvendo competências para o atendimento às necessi-
dades educacionais de alunos surdos/Coordenação geral: SEESP/MEC – Brasília:
Ministério da Educação, Secretaria de Educação Especial, 2005.
Boddan, R.C; Biklen, S.K.: Investigação qualitativa em educação. Porto Editora,
LTDA, 1994.
Brasil. Secretaria de Educação Especial. Deficiência Auditiva/organizado por
Giuseppe Rinaldi et al. Brasília: SEESP, 1997.
Brito, L. F.: Integração social e educação dos surdos. Rio de Janeiro: BABEL,
1993.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 72
Joint ICA Symposium
Tiago Salge Araújo, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Cabral, E; Coelho, O.: Uma língua nas nossas mãos: argumentos para uma edu-
cação bilingue dos surdos. In Rosa Bizarro, & Fátima Braga (Orgs.), Formação de
professores de línguas estrangeiras: Reflexões, estudos, experiências, (p. 215–22).
2006. Porto: Porto Editora.
De Paula, L. T.: Mapa mental e experiência: um olhar sobre as possibilidades.
Porto Alegre: XVI Encontro Nacional de Geógrafos, Julho 2010.
Fernandes, S. F.: Surdez e linguagem: é possível o diálogo entre as diferenças?
1998. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Flori-
anópolis, 1998.
Freitas, M. I. C; Lombardo, M. A; Ventorini, S. E.: Do mundo ao modelo em
escala reduzida: a maquete ambiental como ferramenta de formação do cidadão.
Mercator, v. 12, p. 90–102, 2008.
Godoy, H. P.: Inclusão de alunos portadores de deficiência no ensino regular
paulista: recomendações internacionais e normas oficiais. São Paulo: Editora
Mackenzie, 2002.
Goldfeld, M.: A criança surda: linguagem e cognição numa perspectiva sócio-
interacionista. 2º edição. São Paulo: Plexus Editora, 2002.
Irigoyen, N. P. O.: Educação ambiental: implementando a gingaca sociocultural
como metodologia para alunos surdos. Tese de mestrado. ULBRA – Programa de
Pós-Graduação em Ensino de Ciências e Matemática. Canoas/ RS. 2005.
Juliasz, P. C. S., Freitas. M. I. C. de, Ventorini, S. E.: Proposta diferenciada de
elaboração de mapas táteis. In: XXIII Congresso Brasileiro de Cartografia e
I Congresso Brasileiro de Geoprocessamento. CBC 2007 – cartografia como
instrumento de preservação da integridade nacional. Rio de Janeiro, 2007. Rio de
Janeiro: Sociedade Brasileira de Cartografia, 2007, 2475–2483.
Lacerda, C. B. F.: A inserção da criança surda em classe de crianças ouvintes: fo-
calizando a organização do trabalho pedagógico. In: Reunião Anual da ANPED,
2000, Caxambú. Anais da 23ª Reunião Anual da ANPED, 2000.
Lacerda, C. B. F.: Os processos dialógicos entre aluno surdo e educador ouvinte:
Examinando a construção de conhecimentos. Tese de Doutorado, UNICAMP:
Campinas, 1996.
Marandola, J. A. M. S; Oliveira, L.: Desenhos e Mapas: representações e imagens
do Urbano. In: XI Encontro de Geógrafos da America Latina - XI EGAL, “Geo-
política, globalização e mudança ambiental: desafios no desenvolvimento latino-
americano”, Bogotá, Colômbia, Universidade Nacional de Colômbia, 26 a 30 de
março de 2007. [ISBN:SD] disponível
http://observatoriogeograficoamericalatina.org.mx/egal11/Nuevastecnologias/Ca
rtografiatematica/03.pdf
Oliveira, JR, W. M.: Desenhos e escutas. In: 29ª reunião da Anped. GT 12: Ca-
xambu, 2006. 15 p.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 73
Joint ICA Symposium
The Cartography in Studies of Environment:Bilingual Practice Aiming Inclusion of
Deaf Students

Oliveira, JR., W. M.: Apontamentos sobre a educação visual dos mapas: a (des-)
natureza da ideia de representação In: Colóquio de Cartografia para Escolares, 6.,
2009, Juiz de Fora. Anais... Juiz de Fora : UFJF, 2009. CD-ROM.
Oliveira JR, W. M.: A produção da escuta a partir de imagens. In: 8 Encontro Na-
cional de Prática de Ensino de Geografia, 2005, Dourados-MS. Anais do 8º En-
contro Nacional de Prática de Ensino de Geografia, 2005. p. 1–25.
Parâmetros curriculares nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do ensino fundamen-
tal: introdução aos parâmetros curriculares nacionais / Secretaria de Educação
Fundamental. Brasília: MEC/SEF, 1998. 174 p.
Stoer, S. R., Magalhães, A.: A Diferença Somos Nós – A Gestão da Mudança so-
cial e as Políticas educativas e sociais. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 2005.
Strobel, K. L.: A visão histórica da in(ex)clusão dos surdos nas escolas – Educa-
ção Temática Digital, Campinas, v. 7, n. 2, p. 244–252, jun. 2006.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 74
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Cartography in Education

THE ROLE OF OUTPUT DEVICES IN

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF CARTOGRAPHY
László Zentai
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest (Hungary)
[email protected]

Abstract: The rapid development of information technology affected cartography consi-

derably in the last four decades of the 20th century. Traditional offset printing methods
were developed neither by and nor for cartography. In the cartographic curriculum, how-
ever, these techniques were taught to let cartographers control/evaluate the final phase of
map making. The first digital output device used by cartographers (and also by students
in the higher education) was the pen plotter. Other type of early computer printers (line
printers and dot matrix printers) were only used at large firms, but their output was of
very poor quality for cartographic purpose. Colour dot matrix printers were able to print
colour maps, but both the speed and quality was insufficient. This technology was soon
replaced by inkjet printing, which is still the most common and most affordable method
(even in large format).
In higher education curricula, the reproduction process was taught as an independent
subject or a part of other related subjects. Cartographers should know the complete tech-
nical process to be sure that the maps will be reproduced as they were planned. In the
second phase, when the digital output devices became wide-spread and higher education
institutions could afford these devices, the course on map reproduction was completed
with digital methods, and the necessary theoretical information about the process was al-
so added. In the third phase, when the output device became easily available for even
home users, the traditional offset printing method has seemingly lost its importance, and
the students became rather interested in the digital printing methods. Nowadays, the
most important output devices in cartography are the screen of the computer, mobile
phone, and PDA, which again made us introduce changes in the curriculum.
László Zentai

Introduction

The first independent cartographic courses were established at the Moscow State
University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK) in 1923. Although there
were several major institutions where cartography was taught (e.g. in Zurich and
Vienna), these and other Western and Central European universities and high
schools needed a longer time to establish their independent cartography pro-
grammes.
Looking at the curricula of the first cartography programmes, the difference
between the early and modern structures is striking. Much fewer courses are of-
fered now in cartography than 30-40 years ago: most of the courses are converted
to courses named as GIS, geoinformatics or geomatics. The subject on reproduc-
tion has disappeared from the courses, although this subject used to be an impor-
tant part of cartography courses (Salichtchev, 1979).

Traditional reproduction methods as an output “device”

The reproduction methods were always very important in map making. We can
not simply consider these techniques scientific, because they are mostly artistic
or industrial methods. We do not have reproduction techniques directly devel-
oped for cartography, but cartography selected the best available methods that
fitted the needs.
The printing methods of the first centuries after Gutenberg are less important
for cartographers. Most printing technology was based on letterpress, namely,
the printing of images that were projected above the nonprinting areas.
The first method worth mentioning is lithography. In 1798, Alois Senefelder
made a discovery of profound significance in the history of artists’ prints and
later of commercial printing too. He had been attempting for some while to print
from limestone. What he came to realize is that the antipathy between grease and
water can be used as a basis for printing. He found that an image, no matter how
detailed, that was drawn with a greasy substance on the face of a water-absorbent
stone and then inked could be printed onto paper with absolute fidelity. Litho-
graphy was ideally suited for illustration (like maps) and enjoyed a phenomenal
popularity during the 19th century, especially for colour printing, which required
a separate stone to print each colour. The discovery of lithography was signifi-
cant to the history and development of cartography. Prior to the birth of litho-
graphy at the turn of the 19th century, most maps and atlases were produced by
engraving – a technique that required much skill and labour. Engraved maps were
rare and relatively expensive. Lithography offered a cheaper and quicker way to
reproduce maps and other images. The early topographic map sheets were repro-
duced by engraving techniques. This method was suitable to reproduce the hach-
uring method of the relief representation.
Lithographic metal plates had only rarely been used for commercial printing,
in part because the image on the plate was often worn through by the printing
paper. In 1904, an American printer accidentally discovered that the lithographic
image could be transferred, or offset, to a rubber cylinder that could then print as
perfectly as the plate and would last indefinitely. This became the most popular
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 76
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

printing process because of its economy, long plate life, and ability to print on
many different textures.
The halftone colour printing, the process still used today to reproduce full
colour, was introduced in the 1890s, but many years passed before its full po-
tential was realized. Although colour reproduction theory was fairly well under-
stood, the lack of colour film restricted colour work to studios where the neces-
sary separation negatives had to be made directly from the subject, under the
most exacting conditions. Reliable colour film became available in the 1930s and
‘40s, and colour reproduction grew both more common and more accurate.
The development of offset printing method was very important for carto-
graphers. This was the first method that let the cartographers to reproduce their
colour maps economically without any constrain on the used colours or lines.
However, cartographers regularly used spot colour printing methods instead of
the process colour methods, which were the most common methods for colour
reproduction, especially for colour photographs. In the early years of colour off-
set printing, it was not unusual that a map was printed more than 10 spot col-
ours, which made the printing process quite expensive and required special care
and treatment on the technology and the printing paper itself.
With the development of photography, screening methods (halftone dots)
were used to reduce the number of printed colours by using the tints of colours.

The foundation of ICA

The International Cartographic Association was established in 1959. The founda-

tion followed the birth of a new era of rapid and substantial development of car-
tographic technology. In the 10–15 years after World War II, there was a conti-
nuously increasing worldwide demand for maps (including not only topograph-
ic, but mostly road, city and tourist maps as well thematic maps). An almost si-
multaneously occurring wave of innovations further revolutionized the map pro-
duction process. Plastic drawing materials which were dimensionally stable were
invented, new methods, like scribing on coated polyester material replaced the
conventional ink drawing.
Typesetting machines were also very important in cartography because these
machines could replace one of the most time consuming processes of map pro-
duction: the hand lettering. The first mechanical phototypesetters involved the
adaptation of existing typesetters by replacing the metal matrices with matrices
carrying the image of the letters and replacing the caster with a photographic
unit. The industrial application of this idea resulted in the Fotosetter (1947), a
phototypesetter manufactured in the USA by Intertype. Very soon, French, Ger-
man and Russian models were invented. Later models with a separate keyboard
printed more than 28,000 characters per hour. The third generation of photo-
typesetters appeared in the 1960s, in which all mechanical moving parts were e-
liminated by omitting the use of light and therefore omitting the moving optical
device responsible for operating in its field.
Dr. Carl Mannerfelt, from the Esselte Map Service (Sweden) initiated a co-op-
eration of map production experts. He invited a number of foreign experts in dif-
ferent areas of map production to exchange information on the technological in-

novations (including map editing, compilation and reproduction). It was in 1956,

and due to the Cold War period, only Western countries were invited. The main
reason of the success of this first meeting was that the participants focused on a
special area of cartography: the map production. There were no scientists; they
were all practical cartographers, map producers. When ICA was formed the sci-
entific aspects became more important (international co-operation in the field of
cartography) than the technical aspects. (According to the final resolution of the
Esselte Conference on Applied Cartography, the planned international organiza-
tion should concentrate on such aspects of cartography as are not already covered
by existing organizations, like IGU, FIG etc.).
On the first ICA General Assembly in 1961, 26 countries were inaugurated as
member countries. The Statutes as adopted in 1961 did not represent either gov-
ernmental or commercial cartographic interest. Its aims were the study of carto-
graphic problems, the co-ordination of cartographic research involving co-ope-
ration between different nations, the exchange of ideas and documents (and later
digital data), the training of cartographers and encourage the spreading of the
cartographic knowledge. However, in the first years of ICA when the relation-
ships between IGU and ICA was a part of a long discussion it was said that carto-
graphy as a technical science might be subject to commercial and governmental
influences. It was really a fact that the Esselte Conference on Applied Carto-
graphy in 1956 and the other early meetings were initiated by private map pro-
ducing companies so this was probably the main reason that socialist countries
were not invited and started to become ICA members only after 1964 (neverthe-
less, it was again a political issue at that time).
The definition of the term cartography was also an important task of the
early years of ICA (Stéphane de Brommer, the Vice-President of ICA and the
chairman of the Commission on Education and Training has dealt this issue).
The Multilingual Dictionary of Technical Terms in Cartography (edited by Emil
Meynen in 1973) declared the term as “the art, science and technology of making
maps, together with their study as scientific documents and works of art”. This
definition was a compromise after a long discussion inside the association, but
Prof. Konstantin Salichtchev, the ICA President (1968–1972) still regretted that
the final definition was concentrated too much upon the map production and
did not concentrate enough on a scientific approach. The definition later has
been changed due to the computer technology, but this issue still shows the im-
portance of the output in cartography (Ormeling, 1988; Salichtchev, 1979).

ICA commission on map production

The initial statutes of the ICA only roughly described as to how the commissions
should be established. The first ICA commission on focusing partly on the repro-
duction methods was the Special Commission on Automation. This commission
was established in 1964 and in 1980 it was renamed to the Commission on Com-
puter-Assisted Cartography. The commission had very general terms of refer-
ence, which later became more specific including the development of carto-
graphic systems. The only objection to the commission’s work was that it was
usually highly based on the hardware elements of computer cartography (in-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 78
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

cluding output devices), but the cartographic presentation was often hidden in
the background. This opinion on computer-assisted cartography was still valid in
the 80s. The series of AutoCarto conferences (USA) had a strong influence on
the technical development of computer cartography, but the results of this dyn-
amic process were used only in the most developed countries.
In 1971–1972, a questionnaire result demonstrated that ICA member coun-
tries thought that there was a need for a commission to study practical map pro-
duction methods and techniques. The Commission on Cartographic Technology
was established in 1972 with the following terms of references:

1. To review current cartographic techniques and processes;

2. To disseminate information on these techniques and processes;
3. To organize commission meetings.

In order to avoid overlapping with the above mentioned Special Commission

on Automation the new commission restricts its activities to study:

• colour proofing techniques (which is an important part of the map pro-

duction process),
• register systems (these systems were developed to make the offset printing
process smoother and to avoid mis-registering),
• an evaluation of techniques for the production of small editions of multi-
coloured maps (this problem is still existing, but the digital printing
methods are now easily available, which was a not a case when the com-
mission was originally formed).

The commission was very active in the early years, and they continuously mon-
itored the new development of the map production technology. However, due to
the production of different written manuals and handbooks their activities were
partly slowed down. The name of the commission changed several times and now
it is called Commission on Management and Economics of Map Production. Al-
though the subjects of the commission has changed comparing to the early years,
matters like printing-on-demand, web publishing and archiving should be re-
searched by the commission since the middle of 90s.
In 1984, the first volume of Basic Cartography for students and technicians
was published (Figure 1). Altogether three volumes and an Exercise Manual were
published. Volume 3 was published in 1996 and dealt mostly only with computer
cartography. In the first two volumes there were altogether 10 large chapters. The
Map reproduction chapter was written by Christer Palm in Volume 1 (Sjef van
der Steen was a co-author in the second edition), but additional chapters like
Techniques of map drawing and lettering, Map compilation and Computer-as-
sisted cartography have also partly dealt (or at least mentioned) to the output
part of cartography. The effect of the Basic Cartography volumes was important
since the original formulation of the concept of the series cartography, like many
other fields of activity within the general area of information technology, has un-
dergone rapid changes in both form and character. Basic Cartography had an
important role also in the higher education to make an internationally stand-
ardized teaching material for cartographers. However, the rapid development of

computer cartography has made difficult and complicated to integrate the know-
ledge represented in these volumes into the curricula. In less developed countries
where the use of computer technologies was late due to the limited financial re-
sources Basic Cartography played an important role to represent an international
standard of cartography. The Map reproduction chapter mentions only the tra-
ditional printing methods (offset print), but the chapter deals with other tech-
nical sub-processes (Ormeling, 1988).

Figure 1. Cover page of Basic Cartography, Volume 1 (1st edition)

Traditional reproduction methods in the cartographic education

Cartographers had to understand the printing process, so the basics of the offset
printing process were part of the higher education cartography curricula.
Erwin Raisz, one of the most important American cartographers of the 20th
century felt that cartographers fell into two categories: “geographer cartograph-
ers”, who wish to express their ideas with graphs, charts, maps, globes, models;
and “cartotechnicians”, who “help produce maps, models, and globes by doing
the colour-separation or other technical works”. He proposed the idea of differ-
ent types of cartographers, including the cartologist, cartosophist, toponymist,
map compiler, map designer, draftsman, letterist, engravers, map printers etc.
Of course, it may take time to establish independent cartography courses and
before World War II practically these independent courses did not exist. The
other important American cartographer of the 20th century was Arthur Robin-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 80
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

son, who got his PhD right after World War II at the Ohio State University. In
this university subject like Cartographic Production was part of the course. Ra-
isz’s General cartography and Robinson’s Element of Cartography are probably
the most important books in the 20th century of the American cartography, but
we should mention that the cartographic education was most developed in Eu-
rope at that time (McMaster, R., McMaster, S., 2002).
In the Latin American and European traditions, the production techniques are
certainly not considered part of the academic environment. They are much re-
spected and much appreciated, but generally we will find them not in academia.
Without fully understanding the essence of offset printing, cartographers
were not able to create a good symbology (which can be reproduced technically).
They had to start the whole process with the definition of the printed colours,
line widths etc. To increase the number of printed colours may considerably
make the whole map production process more expensive (it was even more re-
levant around 1960–1970). Even the selection of the number of colour tints was a
question of costs. It was very important in the education of cartographers (espe-
cially in the higher education where we have time to give complex knowledge
and make the students understand the relationships) to clearly understand how
the final phase of the map production process (offset printing) may affect the
beginning phase of the map production (creating a map symbology). However, it
is not obligatory to be an expert of the whole reproduction phase, but to un-
derstand its importance is necessary if we want to run our business efficiently.
At my university, the independent Department of Cartography was founded
in 1953 and in 1955 we started the first cartography course. This was not an in-
dependent cartography programme, but was a specialization after the second
year based on geography and geology courses. (We may call it a pre-Bologna sys-
tem: 2 + 3 years). We had a series of lessons with a title Map technologies and the
students had to understand the whole technical process of map producing: map
drawing or scribing, all kind of technical works (photography, screening),
proofing, offset printing (including binding, folding). These were not just the-
oretical lessons, but students had to practice all different areas. We had all tech-
nical devices (special camera for reproduction, frames for contact copies, special
instruments for screenings, proofing devices, trial offset printing machine; as
folding and binding were connected to book and newspaper publishing and we
did not have such kind of machines, we visited printing houses to present these
processes to our students). Of course, we also had similar practical lessons in the
drawing part (ink drawing and scribing etc.). A student who made the whole
process himself/herself was able to understand the potential errors. This is why
they were able to manage the production line when they started to work at a
mapping company or in the state cartography.

The first steps of digital cartography

The Geographic Information System simultaneously developed in America, Au-

stralia and Europe. The extraction of simple measures largely drove the develop-
ment of the first real GIS, the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS) in
the mid-1960s. CGIS was planned and developed as a measuring tool (mostly to
help the precise measures of areas), a producer of tabular information. At that
time, the system could not be a mapping tool, because the most important input
and output devices were not yet developed. Computer systems were unique, very
expensive, and mainly used only for research or (secret) military purposes.
A second step of innovation occurred in the late 1960s in the US Bureau of
the Census, in planning the tools needed to conduct the 1970 Census. The DIME
program (Dual Independent Map Encoding) created digital records of all US
streets, to support automatic referencing and calculation of census records. (The
US Census was always very innovative: Hollerith built machines under contract
for the Census Office, which used them to tabulate the 1890 census data using
special punched cards.) The similarity of this technology to that of CGIS was
recognised immediately by experts and led to a major program at Harvard Uni-
versity's Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis to develop a
general-purpose GIS. Early GIS developers recognized that the same basic needs
were present in many different application areas, from resource management to
the census.
In a largely separate development during the second half of the 1960s, carto-
graphers and mapping agencies had begun to ask whether computers might be
adapted to their needs, and possibly to make the map producing more cost ef-
fective. The UK Experimental Cartography Unit (ECU) pioneered high-quality
computer mapping in 1968; it published the world’s probably first computer-
made map in a regular series in 1973 with the British Geological Survey; the ECU
also pioneered GIS work in education, and much else. National mapping agen-
cies, such as Britain's Ordnance Survey, France's Institut Geographique National,
and the US Geological Survey and the Defense Mapping Agency began to inves-
tigate the use of computers to support the editing of maps, to avoid the expensive
and slow process of hand correction and redrafting. The first automated carto-
graphy developments occurred in the 1960s, and by the late 1970s most major
cartographic agencies in the Western part of the World were already computer-
ized to some degree. However, the magnitude of the task ensured that it was not
until 1995 that the first countries achieved complete digital map coverage in a
database (including digital state cadastral and topographic maps series) (Longley,
2005).
Remote sensing also played an important part in the development of GIS
(and cartography), as a source of technology and more importantly as a source of
data. The first military satellites of the 1950s were developed in great secrecy to
gather intelligence, but the declassification of much of this material in recent
years has provided interesting insights into the role played by the military and
intelligence communities in the development of GIS. Although the early spy sat-
ellites used conventional film cameras to record images, digital remote sensing
began to replace them in the early 1970s. At that time, civilian remote sensing
systems such as Landsat were beginning to provide vast new data resources and

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 82
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

to exploit the technologies of image classification and pattern recognition that

had been developed earlier for military applications. Weather satellite images had
also an important role especially in meteorology, where the low resolution of the
early images was good enough to improve the precision of global weather fore-
casts. Nowadays satellite remote sensing provides the best quality large-area
coverage database on Earth (Harris, 1987).
Although there is no close contact to the output side of the cartographic pro-
cess, another important step of digital cartography has to be mentioned: the glo-
bal satellite navigation systems such as GPS. However, GPS became widely used
in the civil cartography only in the 21st century, although for military use it was
already available around 1980.

Computer printers

There is no space to give a comprehensive overview of computer printing in this

paper, so only the most relevant techniques will be discussed. The development
of computer technology before the release of personal computers was focused on
the calculation speed. This was the time when the theory of the geographic infor-
mation systems was developed. In the 1960–1970 years, there was not too much
focus on output devices in informatics. At that time matrix printers were nearly
the only opportunities to make output from digitally stored data. These devices
were produced to print text (characters) based on simulating the well-known
“output device”, the typewriter using a so called impact printing. However, these
devices were driven by the computer at a much larger speed than any human
could do. What was much more important in the cartographic point of view is
the print size. In the industrial and scientific environment where financial re-
sources were available such kind of large format line matrix printers and (later)
dot matrix printers were used. This large output size (wider than the 80 columns
of an A4 sheet) became available in the 70s. The Harvard Laboratory for Com-
puter Graphics (and Spatial Analysis) developed an automated mapping appli-
cation called SYMAP, to produce isoline, choropleth and proximal maps on a
line printer around 1960 (Figure 2). This technology was used only in research
institutes where line printers were available. This printing technology has never
been used together with personal computers, however the technology was long
time used in business environment (bulk printing), but finally the large speed
laser printing replaced the old technology. This technology probably did not ap-
pear at that time in the cartographic education, but nowadays it is widely taught
when we want to present the evolution of digital cartography and geographic
information system.

Figure 2. SYMAP example around 1965

http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone/thumb8/popup/bssn1_
popup1-21.htm

Dot matrix printers were developed around 1970. The very first printers used
5 × 7 dot matrix to form the characters; later the 9 × 9 dot matrix became stand-
ard. In the 1970s and 1980s, dot matrix impact printers were generally consi-
dered the best combination of expense and versatility, and until the 1990s they
were by far the most common form of printer used with personal computers.
Early dot matrix printers were notoriously loud during operation, a result of the
typewriter-like mechanism in the print head and they produced printouts of a
distinctive “computerized” quality (the quality of text printing was far from the
real typewriter text). Although the very first dot-matrix impact printers lacked
the ability to print computer-generated images it has changed soon and encou-
raged the PC users to buy this relatively cheap output device. The speed and
graphic quality was very poor, but users had no other opportunity to print their
documents, including maps. This was also the first low-cost option for colour
printing (although they were also 9 pin dot colour models). When the manufac-
turers wanted to improve the printing quality of their models, they invented a
24-pin dot matrix printer around 1985. The print quality was not comparable to
the actual models, but these were the first printers to allow the users to print
colour photographs (even such prints might take some ten minutes or more even
in a small size). The colour dot matrix printers had no chance to become wide

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 84
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

spread because a new technology, the inkjet was invented and in some years this
technology replaced the dot matrix printers especially on the home market. The
effect of colour dot matrix printers in cartography was nearly invisible due to the
fact that only few manufacturers developed such models (Apple, Citizen, Epson,
Panasonic), and the print quality was really poor (printing stripes remained vi-
sible on the paper, Figure 3). Some colour dot matrix printer models are still on
the market, but only for printing receipts (Zable and Lee, 1997).

Figure 3. 24-pin dot colour matrix printed map

The very first special output devices used in cartography was the pen plotter.
Compared to modern printers, pen plotters were very slow and cumbersome to
use. Users had to constantly worry about a pen running out of ink. If one pen
ran dry at the end of a plot, the entire plot had to be re-done, which was very
time consuming. Plotters could only draw lines; they could not reproduce raster
or photographic images. Despite these limitations, the high resolution and colour
capability of pen plotters made them the colour hardcopy output device of
choice until the late 1980s especially in technical drawings and CAD graphics,
which consisted of simple lines like cadastral maps. Only the inkjet technology
has made pen plotters obsolete.
In a drum technology papers were fixed and pen was moved in a single axis
track and the paper itself moved on a cylindrical drum to add the other axis or
dimension. Where the paper was fixed on a flat surface and pens were moved to
draw, the image was called a flatbed plotter. This type of plotters regularly can
use several different colour pens to draw with.
CalComp was incorporated in 1958. It was one of the first companies in the
United States to market peripheral products designed specifically to work with
computers. CalComp’s appearance coincided with the first wave of acceptance of
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 85
Joint ICA Symposium
László Zentai

computers by such mainstream businesses as banks and insurance companies. In

1959 the company developed the world’s first drum plotter, but few expected the
instrument to grow into CalComp’s strongest product line (Figure 4.). The
company introduced a complete line of drum plotters in 1962. During the mid-
1960s computers continued to advance and become more user-friendly through
the addition of peripheral products such as keyboards, monitors, printers, and
plotters such as those designed by CalComp. By 1968 between 80 percent and 90
percent of all plotters in existence were manufactured by CalComp (prices were
between $3,500 and $50,000).
The other important plotter producing company of the early years was Ver-
satec. They produced the first commercially successful electrostatic writing tech-
nique plotter that produced information on paper directly from digital data
sources in 1970.

Figure 4. CalComp model 565, a 12 inch drum plotter (1959)

http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/images/pages/calcomp565_jpg.htm

Hewlett Packard and Tektronix produced small, desktop-sized flatbed plot-

ters in the late 1960s and 1970s. The pens were mounted on a travelling bar,
whereby the y-axis was represented by motion up and down the length of the bar
and the x-axis was represented by motion of the bar back and forth across the
plotting table. Due to the mass of the bar, these plotters operated relatively slow-
ly. HP produced only flatbed plotters before 1980, but the model 7580A (released
in 1981) was the world’s first “grit wheel” pen plotter. This machine combined
high speed and high line quality in a small package at a price less than half that of
comparable products on the market at the time. Small grit-covered wheels move
the paper along the X-axis of the 7580A, thereby replacing the heavy, bulky

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 86
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

components used in other plotters with a low-mass, low-inertia drive mechan-

ism.
Plotters were perfect devices in the early years of digital cartography, but
their high price made these devices affordable only for large companies. When
the price was reduced, these plotters were also used in the higher education be-
cause the programming was relatively easy (very simple instructions on the plot-
ter graphic languages) and students could use it efficiently. It was also important
in the higher education that the operational method of the plotter was theoreti-
cally easily understandable. The operational costs were relatively low (pen, pa-
per) and the devices did not require special treatment, which was important in
the higher education.
At our department the first real digital output device was a simple Numonics
drum pen plotter, which we acquired in the beginning of 90s. Our students wrote
computer programs that calculated the coordinate network of various projec-
tions, but due to the lack of suitable output devices students edited these draw-
ings manually (buying the Numonics device we had the opportunity to use the
digital technology, which made this project more interesting for our students).

Actual computer printing technologies

Since the graphic operation systems and graphic environments were released
around 1984–1990 and graphic software also become available computer printers
started to be a part of a cartographic workstation. Laser printers were fast and re-
liable, but colour models were very expensive in the beginning. This technology
does not allow larger models than A3 size. The prices were falling down in the
last few years so laser printers (including colour ones) are real options now even
in the home market.
Inkjet technology replaced the dot matrix printing in the middle of 90s (Can-
on released their very first model in 1981 and HP did the same in 1984). Al-
though black and white models were less expensive in the beginning, the price
difference between colour and black and white models was not very high. In
some years black and white models have totally disappeared. This was the first
technology that reached the photo quality at a reasonable price. Although photo
quality and colour accuracy was not necessary for cartographers, it helped to im-
prove the technology (for example using more than four inkjet cartridges to be
able to reproduce more colours). Before manufacturers reached this goal, they
just had increased the resolution of their models up to 1200 dpi. Not only the
photo quality was the issue of resolution, but also the quality of ink and paper.
The large format models were much more important for cartographers, although
primarily the large format models were developed for CAD. This was the reason
why the first large format models were concentrated on line drawing instead of
filling area with homogenous colours.
Other technologies like dye sublimation, thermal vax, electrostatic printing
were so expensive that only state cartography institutes were able to afford that.
The operational costs were so much high that inkjet models replaced these
special printers in some years. These special technology models are still available

and they used where colour accuracy is a key factor, but colour management is
also available for inkjet models.
Inkjet printers appeared soon in the higher education. A4 and A3 models
were available at a reasonable price already in the first part of the 90s and the
price range of large format models was also reachable for a higher education
department. Even students could afford such printers in the second half of 90s
(Zentai, 2009).

Computer printing in the education

Only when the digital printing became an affordable option in the higher edu-
cation it was really important to teach not only the cartographic software, but
also the digital printing process. Although the first printers were not really so-
phisticated, their appearance gave the users a freedom not to depend on the ex-
pensive, time consuming process of offset printing. In the beginning, digital
printing was just treated as an additional proofing method, which substituted
neither the offset print, nor the proof. The real advantage of this new option was
the low cost and the speed. The speed was really slow compared to the actual
capabilities, but it was much faster than any contemporary analogue method.
Students were very interested in the digital technologies (as the younger
generations regularly did so) so they wanted to use these technologies as early as
the higher education institutes could provide them with the opportunity. It was
also important to teach the theoretical background of the digital printing process,
which has considerable differences compared to the traditional offset printing.
One of the most important differences was that colour digital printing used a
CMYK colour model instead of using spot colours, which was very common in
the traditional map printing. This difference is also influenced the composition
of map symbols (colours, line widths etc.). In the early years of the digital era, we
had to take into account the weakness of the technology. It was very important to
make the students understand these characteristics of the printing process.
As the price of computer printers decreased, these devices become part of the
home computer systems together with scanners. The Internet era has made the
access of information (especially the IT information) much easier than any pre-
vious time. Such kind of knowledge was partly taught in secondary schools, but it
is still necessary to teach the theoretical and technical background to the car-
tographers. It is similar to the offset printing era: some cartographers became the
experts of the technology and they were responsible for that part of the process.
Nowadays we also have only few cartographers who are experts and understand
the process, and the rest of them (as any other user) just presses the print button
and trusts in the software and hardware.
It is also necessary to mention the new output device: the screen. More and
more maps are planned (or at least viewed) on the screen of computers, mobile
phones, GPS devices, personal digital assistants. To visualize the digital informa-
tion efficiently students have to be familiar with the characteristics of these new
“devices”, so such kind of subjects should be included in the curriculum.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 88
Joint ICA Symposium
The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education of Cartography

Summary

As cartography became a science and independent cartography courses and cur-

ricula were implemented in the 20th century, the content of these studies has
been developed continuously. After the International Cartographic Association
was formed, they set up commissions to encourage the cooperation of the sci-
entists and higher education experts of the member countries. The ICA Com-
mission on Map Production was established in 1964 and played an important
role in developing and standardizing the modern reproduction techniques of car-
tography. The teaching of map production techniques in the higher education
was also influenced by the commission, especially in the less developed countries.
However, as the computer printers became widely used this influence started to
decrease. Cartography curricula tried to follow the development of these output
devices. Even today, when digital maps are the most important products of car-
tography we have to teach the visualization on computer screens. Nevertheless,
the development is continuous: 3D screens and other devices are coming making
new challenges also for cartographers.

Acknowledgments

The project is supported by the European Union and co-financed by the Euro-
pean Social Fund (grant agreement no. TÁMOP 4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010-0003).

References

Harris, R.: 1987. Satellite remote sensing, Taylor & Francis.

Longley, P.: 2005. Geographic information systems and science, John Wiley and
Sons.
McMaster, R. McMaster, S.: 2002. A History of Twentieth-Century American
Academic Cartography, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 29
(3), p. 305–321.
Ormeling, F. J. ed.: 1988. ICA 1959–1984. The first twenty-five years of the Inter-
national Cartographic Association. Elsevier.
Salichtchev, K. A.: 1979. Periodical and serial publications on cartography. The
Canadian Cartographer, 16(2), p. 109–132.
Zable, J. L. and Lee, H. C.: 1997. An overview of impact printing. IBM Journal of
Research and Development, 41(6), p. 651–668.
Zentai, L.: 2009. Change of the meaning of the term ‘cartographer’ in the last de-
cades, XXIV International Cartographic Conference, Santiago de Chile, 15–22
November 2009. ICA.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 89
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Internet and Cartography

THE TILE-BASED MAPPING TRANSITION IN

CARTOGRAPHY
Michael P. Peterson
Department of Geography / Geology, University of Nebraska, Omaha (USA)
[email protected]

Abstract: Arguably the major development of the first two decades of maps and the In-
ternet is a method of map distribution that divides the map into smaller tiles. The tiling
of maps along with a more interactive form of communication with a server called AJAX
transformed the online mapping experience. Soon after the method was introduced
through Google Maps, all other online map providers switched to the new form of map
distribution. The introduction of Application Programmer Interfaces that allowed user
information to be added to the maps solidified this form of online map presentation.
Whether for good or bad, online mapping is currently in a tile-based mapping era and
will likely be so for the foreseeable future. The method is examined more closely along
with the potential for adding user-defined maps.

Introduction

Maps became a major component of the online information landscape in 1993

after graphical illustrations could be added to World Wide Web pages (Peterson
2003). All types of maps became easily available, from subway maps of cities to
maps of the moon. Map users could even choose between alternative representa-
tions of the same environment and determine the one that best suited their
needs. Interactive sites made it possible to center the map on an area of interest
and include features requested by the user.
Michael P. Peterson

The nearly two decades since 1993 can be seen as a period of discovery as
map providers tried different ways to make use of the new medium. Paper maps
were initially scanned. Then, cartographers alternated between various vector
and raster formats and forms of interactivity. A major goal was to increase the
speed of map delivery. Map users did not want to wait for the map and a method
was devised to appease the impatient online map user. This method involved di-
viding the map into pieces, or tiles. It is important to understand the tile-based
mapping transition and what it means to cartography. We begin by examining
server-based mapping.

Server-based mapping

Interactive server-based mapping began in 1993 within months after the intro-
duction of the Mosaic browser in March of that year. The first interactive online
mapping application was developed by Steve Putz (1994) at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC). His Map Viewer program allowed the user’s, client
computer to create on-demand maps from a geographic database. Each interac-
tion with Map Viewer would request a new map from the server that was
zoomed in on a specific point (see Figure 1). Individual maps were generated in a
graphic file and embedded into a web page.

Figure 1. Xerox Parc Map Viewer was an early example of an interactive web map. By
interacting with a mapping program on the server, the site made it possible
to generate a map of the world at different zoom levels. The resultant map
was converted into a graphic file and inserted into a web page.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 91
Joint ICA Symposium
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography

MapQuest introduced its online mapping site in 1996 based on large database
that included most streets in the North America. Within months, it was produc-
ing millions of maps every day and was the leading online map provider until
2009. The user’s client computer would make a request for a specific map. Map-
Quest servers would respond to the request by drawing the map from a database
of points and lines, converting this to a grid-based raster format and delivering
the resultant map within a web page.
Each request for another map, at a different zoom level or centered at an-
other point, would result in another server request that would produce another
map that would be embedded in another webpage that would update the page on
the user’s computer. Although the process was fairly fast, there was always a wait
for the server to respond. A simple zoom or pan required waiting for the server
to produce another map that was inserted into another webpage. Server requests
are also subject to Internet traffic so a request for a map might take considerably
longer when traffic was heavy. Maps would be produced more quickly in the
overnight hours when Internet traffic was lighter. This variability in response
times was found to be more annoying for users than the generally slow response
times. Figure 2 depicts a 2001 version of MapQuest along with three maps of
southern Florida at different scales.

Figure 2. A 2001 version of the MapQuest webpage. Dominated by ads,

the map constitutes only a small part of the webpage. Three
different maps of southern Florida are also depicted. A total of
ten zoom levels were available.

Tiled web maps

Google Maps, introduced in 2005, offered a more interactive street map interface
(Peterson 2007). Google, known for its search engine, effectively added a map-
based search engine through Google Maps and the stand-alone Google Earth. In
the process, they found a more effective way to indirectly make money from on-
line maps by charging businesses, much like the way they make a profit through
their search engine. In addition, by not including ads around the map, like Map-
Quest, they left more room for the map on the computer screen. Google Maps is
based on two major ideas: 1. image tiling; and 2. AJAX.

Image tiling

Image tiling had been used since the early days of the World Wide Web to speed
the delivery of graphics (Sample & Ioup 2010). In comparison to text, images
require more storage and therefore take longer to download. A solution was to
divide the image into smaller segments, or tiles, and send each tile individually
through the Internet. These smaller files often travel faster because each can take
a different route to the destination computer. On the receiving end, the tiles are
reassembled in their proper location on the web page. With a moderately fast
Internet connection, all of this occurs so quickly that the user rarely notices that
the image is actually composed of square pieces. With a slower Internet connec-
tion, the individual tiles are clearly evident.
The basic street map is the most functional of all the views provided by these
services. The map is provided in up to 20 scales called levels of detail (LOD).
Each map at a particular level of detail is rendered from an underlying vector
database consisting of points, lines and areas. This map is converted into a grid
representation by placing the points, lines, and areas into a matrix of pixels. In
the process, anti-aliasing is performed by adding lighter pixels around sharp
edges to soften the stair-step effect. After the map is placed in a matrix that can
be millions of pixels on each side, it is divided into tiles – usually 256 x 256 pixels
(see Figure 3). This process is repeated for every LOD.

Figure 3. The process of making map tiles. A database of points, lines and
areas is rasterized into a large matrix that is subsequently divided in-
to 256 x 256 square tiles.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 93
Joint ICA Symposium
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography

Figure 4 depicts a series of Google Map tiles at different scales. All tiles are
256 x 256 pixels and require an average of 15 KB a piece to store in the PNG
format. Table 1 shows the number of tiles that are used in a tile-based mapping
system for 20 levels of detail (LOD), or zoom levels, and the associated storage
requirements and storage costs. With 20 LODs, there are a total of approximately
1 trillion tiles for the whole world. At an average of 15 KB per tile, the total me-
mory requirements would be 20 Petabytes, or 20,480 Terabytes. No single client
computer could have this much storage capacity. A data center is required to
store this amount of data.

10th LOD 11th LOD 12th LOD

13th LOD 14th LOD 15th LOD

Figure 4. Individual map tiles from Google Map at six different levels of detail
(zoom levels). In 2005, Google introduced a tiling system to deliver
online maps. Over a trillion tiles are used for Google’s 20 zoom levels.

The cost of storing this much data on hard drives can be calculated based on
a cost of about $100 per Terabyte drive, a price that does not include the housing
or computer connection. To store the entire one trillion tiles would be about
$2 million ($100 x 20,480 Terabytes). In order to achieve faster response times,
there is some indication that Google uses faster random-access memory (RAM)
to store the Google map tiles. If the entire map of the world were stored in RAM,
it would cost the company more than $629 million.
These data storage requirements and costs are only for the map. The satellite
view, with tiles in the JPEG format, requires approximately the same amount of
storage space. A terrain view is also provided with 15 levels of detail. Google
maintains multiple data centers around the world and each would likely have a
copy of the map and satellite image, and any other map that is provided.

Combining all of these data storage costs provides some indication of the im-
portance placed on maps by Google and other companies. Even government en-
tities would have difficulty justifying the initial and ongoing expense of main-
taining an online map in this way.

Table 1. The number of tiles, storage requirements, and storage costs used by
a tile-based online mapping system to represent the world at different
levels of detail (LOD) or zoom levels.

Levels Ground
Disk storage RAM memory
of Number of distance Storage requirements at
costs at $100 storage costs at
Detail Tiles per pixel 15 Kilobytes per tile
per Terabyte $30 per Gigabyte
(LOD) in meters

1 4 78,272 60 Kilobytes (KB) $0.000006 $0.002

2 16 39,136 240 KB $0.00002 $0.007
3 64 19,568 968 KB $0.0001 $0.03
4 256 9,784 3.75 Megabytes (MB) $0.0004 $0.11
5 1,024 4,892 15 MB $0.001 $0.44
6 4,096 2,446 60 MB $0.006 $1.76
7 16,384 1,223 240 MB $0.02 $7.03
8 65,536 611.50 960 MB $0.09 $28.13
9 262,144 305.75 3.75 Gigabytes (GB) $0.37 $112.50
10 1,048,576 152.88 15 GB $1.46 $450.00
11 4,194,304 76.44 60 GB $5.86 $1,800.00
12 16,777,216 38.22 240 GB $23.44 $7,200.00
13 67,108,864 19.11 968 GB $93.75 $28,800.00
14 268,435,456 9.55 3.75 Terabytes (TB) $375 $115,200.00
15 1,073,741,824 4.78 15 TB $1,500 $460,800.00
16 4,294,967,296 2.39 60 TB $6,000 $1,843,200.00
17 17,179,869,184 1.19 240 TB $24,000 $7,372,800.00
18 68,719,476,736 0.60 960 TB $96,000 $29,491,200.00
19 274,877,906,944 0.30 3.75 Petabytes (PB) $384,000 $117,964,800.00
20 1,099,511,627,776 0.15 15 PB $1,536,000 $471,859,200.00
20,480 Terabytes or
Total 1,466,015,503,700 20 Petabytes $2,048,000 $629,145,600

In a transformation that shows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,

all of the other major interactive map providers – MapQuest, Yahoo, Microsoft
(Bing) – converted from the standard server-client to the AJAX, tile-based meth-
od of map delivery within a short time after the introduction of Google Maps.

AJAX

The second major innovation brought by Google Maps was the incorporation of
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) in the relationship between the serv-
er and client. This was the culmination of many years of effort to re-shape inter-
action on the Internet. Essentially, AJAX maintains a continuous connection
with the server – exchanging small messages in the background even when the
user has not made a specific request. This allows for faster server responses when
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 95
Joint ICA Symposium
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography

the user does make a request. AJAX might be thought of an application that
works in the background of a browser to anticipate what the user might want
and be ready to communicate with the server to respond to a request. Operations
in Google Maps that are particularly assisted by AJAX include zooming and
panning, a common form of interaction with maps.
Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (Ajax) is a technique that combines Java-
Script and XML to create very interactive, server-client web applications. Ajax is
not a programming language in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group
of different technologies together. The technique uses a combination of HTML,
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Document Object Model (DOM), and the eXten-
sible Markup Language (XML). These are all freely available technologies. Asyn-
chronous communication is used to exchange data with the server while the user
is idle so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user
makes a change (see Figure 5). The result is increased interactivity, speed, and an
improved user interface.

Figure 5. The typical client-server communication is synchronous (top illustration).

Ajax uses asynchronous communication between the client and the server.
A connection is maintained to the server to speed interaction.

Ajax eliminates the usual start-stop-start-stop type of interaction. When the

map is scrolled, additional map tiles are automatically downloaded. The tiles are
added almost instantly because a connection is maintained to the server so that
additional tiles can be quickly loaded. As the user scrolls, more of the map or
satellite image is downloaded from the server without the user making a specific
request for additional tiles.
Asynchronous communication is made possible by the Ajax engine, Java-
Script code that resides between the user and the server. Instead of loading the
webpage at the start of a web session, the Ajax engine is initially loaded in the
background. Once loaded, the JavaScript code downloads data from the server
without refreshing the web page. A user action that normally would generate an
HTTP request to the server becomes instead a JavaScript call to the Ajax engine.
If the engine can respond to a user action, no response from the server is re-
quired. If the Ajax engine needs something from the server to respond to a user
request – such as retrieving new data – the engine makes the request without in-
terrupting the user’s interaction with the application. Ajax has transformed the
online client/server experience and is used by many different types of applica-
tions.

Mashups and the application programmer Interface

Mashups are an integral part of what is commonly referred to as Web 2.0 (Batty,
et al, 2010). Beginning in about 2004, Web 2.0 represents a variety of innovative
resources, and ways of interacting with, or combining web content. In addition
to mashups, Web 2.0 also includes the concept of wikis, such as Wikipedia, blog
pages, podcasts, RSS feeds, and AJAX. Social networking sites like MySpace and
Facebook are also seen as Web 2.0 applications.
Central to mashups are Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), online
libraries of functions that that are made freely available. Many different API
libraries have been written for the user-driven web. APIs are the tools that facili-
tate the melding of data and resources from multiple web resources by providing
tools to acquire, manipulate and display information from a variety of sources. In
a strict sense, map mashups combine data from one website and display it with a
mapping API. The term has come to be used for any mapping of data using an
API, even data supplied by the user.
APIs are used for many different types of applications but the creation of
maps is one of the major uses. This should no be surprising because there is a
great deal of data that has a location component. The relative ease of overlaying
all types of information with online mapping tools has further transformed car-
tography from a passive to an active enterprise with all types of data being
mapped.
Introduced in 2006, the Google Maps API consists of a series of map-related
functions. These functions control the appearance of the map, including the
scale, position, and any added information in the form of points, lines or areas.
The purpose of the API is to make it possible to incorporate user-defined maps
on websites, and to overlay information from other sources.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 97
Joint ICA Symposium
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography

Map layers

Google and the other online map providers have a large number of pre-defined
layers. These layers have also been tiled – like all of the tiles that make up the
map and the satellite image. Table 2 shows the available layers provided by
Google.

Table 2. Standard layers provided by Google. All layers are tiled.

Traffic Current traffic conditions.

Photos Locations of available photographs.
Labels Street, city, and boundary names.
Webcams Locations of cameras with live imagery.
Videos Locations of YouTube videos.
Wikipedia Wikipedia pages for locations on map.
Bicycling Biking paths and trails.
Buzz Postings to Google Buzz.
45° 45° degree angle bird’s-eye view.
Terrain Shaded relief map.
Transit Public transportation network.

These overlays consist of a series of tiles that have the same size and dimen-
sion as the base tiles. Most of the overlay tiles are made transparent so that you
can see the tile underneath. Whatever part of the tile is opaque becomes super-
imposed on the underlying map (see Figure 6). Overlaying transparent tiles in
this way is faster than overlaying individual points or lines. Most maps supplied
by these services are transparent tile overlays and have a particular theme such as
traffic, webcams or photos.

Figure 6. The tile overlay method. A map tile on the left is overlaid with a
transparent PNG file with an opaque line. Combining the two tiles
produces the display on the right.

Most of the layers that are offered by online mapping services are updated
only occasionally. An example of a frequently updated layer is traffic (see top
map in Figure 7). This layer shows the speed of traffic for major streets in the
larger cities of the world and is updated continuously throughout the day. The
maps are also tiled at multiple levels of detail for faster download. Only those
tiles are replaced that need updating. The bottom map in Figure 7 shows a bicy-
cle path map that completely covers the underlying street map, at least in urban
areas. It is updated only irregularly.

Figure 7. Comparison of two different overlays. The top map showing traffic
is transparent allowing the underlying street map to be visible. The
bottom map showing bicycle paths is opaque, at least in urban areas.
Both overlays are supplied in multiple levels of detail.

An example application of the overlay is the campus map for the University
of Nebraska at Omaha (see Figure 8). Here, a map of the campus was first con-
structed with vectors in Adobe Illustrator. Subsequently, the map was converted
to the raster png format and tiled through an online tiling service. Three differ-
ent levels of detail of tiles were created and combined with the Google Map as a
layer. Layers were also created for parking and the shuttle transportation net-
work.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 99
Joint ICA Symposium
The Tile-Based Mapping Transition in Cartography

Figure 8. Campus map overlay for the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The
tiled representation is supplied at three levels of detail and overlays
over a standard Google Map.

Figure 9 shows how the parking and shuttle layers are integrated within
Google Maps to provide to provide an overall view of the campus. All Google
Map functions are active, such as searching for a specific location or travel rout-
ing.

Figure 9. Parking and shuttle layers superimposed on a Google Map of the

University of Nebraska at Omaha campus.

Summary

The advantage of using a major online mapping site is that the maps represent a
common and recognizable representation of the world. Overlaying features on
top of these maps provides a frame of reference for the map user. A particular
advantage for thematic mapping is the ability to spatially reference thematic data.
For simplicity, thematic maps have limited the display of spatial reference data
such as the location of cities and transportation networks. This has made it more
difficult for map users to spatially reference thematic data.
Storing the online map represents a major expense for online map providers.
Depending upon the method of storage, the cost for simply store the map may be
as much US $630 million. Maintenance of the database and a variety of other
costs would represent significant ongoing costs. A non-profit agency or govern-
ment entity would have difficulty justifying this expenditure. Application Pro-
grammer Interfaces represent a way to integrate information with the online
map. For a variety of reasons, this form of map delivery is the most cost-effective
way of making maps available to the online map user.

References

Batty, Michael et al.: (2010) Map mashups, Web 2.0 and the GIS revolution. An-
nals of GIS. Vol. 16, No. 1, p. 1–13.
Peterson, Michael P.: (2007) International Perspectives on Maps and the Inter-
net. Berlin: Springer.
Peterson, Michael P.: (2003) Maps and the Internet. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Putz, Steve: (1994) Interactive Information Services Using World-Wide Web
Hypertext. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27 (2) 273–280, Berlin: Else-
vier Science.
Sample, John T. and Elias Ioup: (2010) Tile-Based Geospatial Information Sys-
tems: Principles and Practices. New York: Springer.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 101
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Internet and Cartography

UPDATING A HUNGARIAN WEBSITE ABOUT

MAPS FOR CHILDREN
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez1, Csaba Szabó 2
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary)
1 [email protected] , [email protected]
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/dolgozo/jesus
2 [email protected]
http://mercator.elte.hu/~bahama/index.html

Abstract: The first website in Hungarian language dedicated to the presentation of basic
cartographic concepts for children and young people was made in 2000. The making of
this homepage was preceded by a study about the basic map concepts learnt by Hungari-
an pupils in Elementary and Secondary Schools, when (in which grades) these concepts
are taught, and which subjects include the map concepts and the use of school atlases and
other maps in the teaching of their themes. This research was completed with the study
of international experiences during the creation of websites presenting scientific themes
for pupils.
After more than 10 years from the publication of the original website, the time has
arrived to update the website, considering that Internet and in particular the Web has
had notable changes along this period of time and also considering possible changes in
the teaching of the map concepts in the Hungarian Educational System. This decision
implied not only the possible revision of the themes presented in the original website, but
also the analysis of compulsory changes in the structure of the website, namely, which
new programming and design tools can be used to develop the new site and which new
graphic tools can be added to develop a new Web based environment.
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

1. Original research (1997—2000)

1.1. Theoretical research

The project was begun with the study of curricula, textbooks, workbooks and at-
lases used in the subjects related to Geography in the Hungarian Educational
System, to determine which cartographic concepts were learnt by the pupils. The
conclusion was that the majority of the cartographic concepts were taught be-
tween the 3rd and the 5th grade of Elementary School, and the posterior use of
maps and school atlases in the classroom (including High School) is based on
this knowledge.
Parallel to this research a study was also made about different methods of
publishing educational materials on the Web, paying special attention to finding
international experiences in the presentation of concepts related to maps. In the
last years of the 90’s, the number of homepages designed to fill this aim could be
considered still low. By this reason the research was extended to homepages
designed for children in interest of presenting concepts related to different sci-
ences.
The next step was to classify the map concepts for their presentation on the
Web, first dividing them into general themes, followed by their detailed descrip-
tion, the definition of smaller units and finally completing the themes taught in
schools with other concepts.
The list of general themes presented in this website was: Map and reality,
Orientation with and without maps, Map history, What kind of maps are there?,
Representation of relief, Rivers and lakes on maps, Other colours on maps, Sym-
bols on maps, Latitude and longitude, Some words about the geographical
names.

1.2. Planning, design and making of the website

During the design of the website the decision taken was to follow the structure of
a Web portal, not only to present the map concepts but to complete them with
other options that could make more interesting the site for pupils and teachers.
The title of the website was “All about maps…” and the structure was deter-
mined as follows (Figure 1):

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 103
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

Figure 1. “All about maps…” website welcome page

• Summing up… (Previous works related to this theme)

• As you are learning and even more… (Presentation of basic map
concepts)
• What can you find on the Web? (Links to websites related to Maps
and Children)
• Try out! (Demos, examples, etc. that were found in other websites)
• News and events (Information about activities related to Cartogra-
phy: organization of exhibitions, Barbara Petchenik Award, meet-
ings, interests on TV programs, etc.)
• Not only for you … but for teachers too! (Open forum for the ex-
change of opinions and questions)
• Learn and play! (Tasks and games related to Cartography)
• Curiosities (Section including old maps, imaginary or fantasy maps,
etc.)

The website was programmed using HTML language and some JavaScripts
for specific solutions (e.g. opening a separated window to show a short anima-
tion). After testing it, the website was made accessible for Hungarian pupils and
teachers from July 2001.

2. Update of the website from 2001 to 2011

During the last ten years, the structure and design of the website remained
changeless, but it was periodically used to keep pupils and teachers informed
about activities related to cartography; especially about the annual organization
of GIS Days and the organization of the Barbara Petchenik World Map Award
every two years.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 104
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

Between 2004 and 2006 new websites were created to complete the content of
the chapter dedicated to present basic concepts. This decision was taken consi-
dering the results of a survey filled by pupils of Elementary Schools that included
a question about their preferred cartographic themes. Based on their answers the
two most popular themes were the history of maps and the computer cartogra-
phy. Three websites were made on these topics: Map History, GIS and Multime-
dia Cartography (including Thematic Cartography). Its structure and design was
similar to the “All about maps…” website, to be inter-connected and to create a
collection dedicated to cartographic themes for children and young people. The
content of this collection was composed as shown below (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Examples of pages about Map History, GIS and

Multimedia Cartography

Map History website (six chapters containing 39 themes):

1. Maps from the Ancient Age: Town Plan from Catal Hüyük, rock map
from Bedolina, Mesopotamian world map from Nuzi, Mesopotamian
town map of Nippur, Babilonian clay tablet, Turin Papyrus.
2. Hellas and Rome: Pythagoras and the spherical Earth, Aristotle and Di-
caearchus, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, Tabula Peutingeriana, the first T-O
maps.
3. Early Middle Ages: Maps from the Middle Ages, monastery maps, climat-
ic zone maps, the Islam Atlas, Al-Idrisi’s works, portolan maps, Catalan at-
las, translations of Ptolemy’s works.
4. The Great Discoveries: Portuguese discoveries, Christopher Columbus,
discovery of the New World, Cosa worldmap, Cantino worldmap, Wald-
seemüller and America, Piri Reis worldmap, Magellan and the circumna-
vigation of the Earth.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 105
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

5. The first atlases: Mercator and Ortelius, Gerhard Mercator’s works, Ab-
raham Ortelius’ works, Waghenaer’s atlas.
6. The first Hungarian maps: the English Saxon map, Dulcert’s portolan
map, Cusanus and Fra Mauro, Lázár secretary’s map of Hungary, details
on the first Hungarian map, actual Hungarian limits on the Lázár’s map,
János Zsámboky.

GIS website (six chapters containing 35 themes):

1. About GIS history: What is GIS?, the first steps, analogue GIS, the begin-
nings of computer sciences, Canada Land Inventory, SYMAP soft-ware,
ESRI & Intergraph, MapInfo & Autodesk, GIS Day.
2. GIS data: Vector data model, raster data model, layers on the maps, fun-
damentals of databases, geocoding, multimedia databases.
3. GIS data sources: Surveys, aerial photos, satellite photos, GPS, source
maps, thematic databases.
4. GIS processes: data collection, data input, data analysis, data output.
5. Data analysis: Overlay, buffer, classification, fuzzy.
6. Graphic outputs: webmaps, 3D models, animations, Geography Network,
Hungarian websites.

Multimedia in maps website (six chapters containing 35 themes):

1. Stories about data visualization: Catalan Atlas, John Graunt, William

Playfair, Alexander von Humboldt, making the diagrams popular, Bertin
and the graphic theory
2. The first thematic maps: Halley’s map, Valentin Seaman, early geological
maps, Humboldt and Berghaus, French influence, John Snow
3. Thematic maps today: Sciences on maps, drawing symbols, drawing are-
as, isolines, diagrams on maps, drawing with points, choroplets and car-
tograms, representation of movements
4. Traditional multimedia on maps: Before the multimedia of today, what is
multimedia?, maps and multimedia, multimedia in atlases, the first ani-
mated maps
5. Digital multimedia on maps: Introduction, beginnings of digital multi-
media, digital maps, digital multimedia atlases
6. Multimedia in webmaps: maps in the Web, interactivity in the Web
based atlases, Geographic Network, learning with outline maps, settle-
ments on Lázár’s map, “All about maps…”

3. Creation of a new website

3.1. Theoretical research

After more than 10 years from the presentation of the original website, the time
arrived to update the content if needed, and to modify the structure and design of
the website, considering the development experimented by the Internet and in par-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 106
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

ticular by the Web during this period of time. In October of 2010, the authors de-
cided to begin the preliminary tasks to make these changes. First of all, we studied
again the content related to Geography subjects in the Hungarian Educational Sys-
tem, paying special attention to the basic level (Elementary Schools). This analysis
began with the reading of textbooks related to Geography to determine if there
were any kind of significant changes during the last 10 years. It was completed
with the study of some of the School Atlases used in the Elementary and Secondary
Schools of Hungary to determine the basic cartographic concepts presented or at
least mentioned in the introductory pages of these atlases (Table 1).
After 2000, the number of hours/week dedicated to the teaching of Geogra-
phy subjects remained the same: 3 hours at basic level (Elementary Schools) and
4 hours at secondary level (Secondary and Vocational Schools). In grades 4 and
5, Hungarian pupils learn a subject entitled “Basics about Nature”, combining
knowledge mainly from Geography and Biology. The concepts related to carto-
graphy have not been modified considerably, but in numerous schools the teach-
ing of these concepts has been moved to later grades in respect to our previous
research in 1997–2000. The more detailed explanation of these concepts follows
being presented in the textbooks written for the 5th grade (“Basics about Na-
ture”, see Table 2), but some regional curricula planned the teaching of them in
grade 6.
After revising the themes presented in the original version of the website and
comparing them with the content of textbooks and school atlases, we decided to
use the same map concepts without any considerable change. Based on this deci-
sion, the structure of chapters remained the same and the detailed content of the
website is as follows:

• Map and reality (7 themes: Earth and former worldviews, shape of

the Earth, what can we find on a globe, from the globe to a plain:
how to make a map?, what is a map?, what makes a map a map?,
graphic scale)
• Orientation with and without maps (8 themes: How could a cave
man orient?, the first compass, compasses in Europe, cardinal points,
using compass, orienteering with the Sun, in the forest and at night)
• Map history (9 themes: the first maps, maps on rocks, on clay and
papyrus, Greek scholars, Roman maps, maps of the Middle Ages,
portolans, maps of Discoverers, Mercator and Ortelius, the first Hun-
garian map)
• What kind of maps are there? (4 themes: classification of maps ac-
cording to their scale and content, thematic maps, city, road and to-
pographic maps)
• Representation of relief (3 themes: basic shapes of relief, contour
lines and hypsometry, shading)
• Rivers and lakes on maps (2 themes: how to draw rivers and lakes on
a map?, special features related to hydrography)
• Other colours on maps (5 themes: colours on a political map, how to
draw the frontiers and roads?, colours on a topographic map, colours
on a thematic map, other topics represented on maps)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 107
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

• Symbols on maps (3 themes: what kind of map symbols do you

know?, symbols drawing hydrography and relief, symbols in the
school atlases)
• Latitude and longitude (4 themes: geographic coordinate system,
latitude, longitude, orientation on the globe)
• Some words about the geographical names (5 themes: what is a geo-
graphical name?, grammar of geographical names, using fonts and
placing names on a map, hydrographical and relief names, the inter-
est of a better map reading)

At same time, we also kept the themes explained in the websites dedicated to
Map History, GIS and Multimedia maps, which were developed between 2004
and 2006.

Table 1

Basic concepts related to Cartography in Hungarian School Altases

School Atlas for
My First Atlas Secondary School Atlas
10–16 year-old pupils
(Cartographia, 2008) (Cartographia, 2008)
(Cartographia, 2008)
1. Our world 1. Representation of relief 1. Representation of relief
Rotation and translation of on a map on a map
Earth, planets of the Solar Sys- Panoramic view, cross-sections, Perspective image, cross-
tem, Moon, coordinate system, contour lines, hypsometry and sections, striping, contour
Sun’s path in the sky, cardinal relief shading lines, hypsometry and relief
points. 2. Comparison of maps at shading
2. Map symbols different scales 2. Comparison of maps at
Legend explaining symbols Fragments of maps at different scales
used in the atlas 1 : 25 000, 1 : 50 000, Fragments of maps at
3. From a sketch to a map 1 : 100 000, 1 : 500 000, 1 : 25 000, 1 : 50 000,
Illustrations: the school 1 : 1 250 000 and 1 : 20 000 000 1 : 100 000, 1 : 500 000,
building, the classroom, 3. Satellite image 1 : 1 250 000 and
panoramic view of the school, Image at 1 : 500 000, Budapest 1 : 20 000 000
sketch of the school and and surroundings 3. Satellite image
classroom, aerial photography 4. Map symbols Image at 1 : 500 000,
and map of the school and Legend explaining symbols Budapest and surroundings
surroundings. used in the atlas 4. Map symbols
4. Basic geographical concepts 5. Cartographic projections Legend explaining symbols
(image, map, colour and Cylindrical, conic and used in the atlas
symbol) azimuthal projections 5. Cartographic projections
Plain and hurst, hill, mountain, 6. Basic astronomical concepts Cylindrical, conic and
valley, plateau, basin, island and Structure of the Universe, azimuthal projections
peninsula, sea and bay, river, planets of the Solar System, the 6. Basic astronomical
affluent and canal, delta and visible side of the Moon, solar concepts
estuary. and lunar eclipse, the Earth and Structure of the Universe,
Representation of relief on a the Moon orbit, Earth bound, planets of the Solar System,
map (sea, depression, plain, hill, the Sun’s apparent motion, the the visible side of the Moon,
mountain) Earth from the Moon. solar and lunar eclipse, the
Landscape and map 7. Types of Hungarian Earth and the Moon orbit,
5. Maps and scales settlements on maps at Earth bound, the Sun’s
Panoramic view, tourist map 1 : 30 000 apparent motion, the Earth
(1 : 40 000), topographic map One street settlements, from the Moon.
(1 : 100 000), maps at chessboard-structured settle-
1 : 550 000, 1 : 1 500 000 and ments, conglomeration, ircular-
1 : 20 000 000 structured settlements,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 108
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

Basic concepts related to Cartography in Hungarian School Altases

School Atlas for
My First Atlas Secondary School Atlas
10–16 year-old pupils
(Cartographia, 2008) (Cartographia, 2008)
(Cartographia, 2008)
6. Orientation on a globe settlements connected by 7. Types of Hungarian
Satellite image, Earth globe and bridge, planned industrial settlements on maps at
geographic coordinate system settlements. 1 : 30 000
7. Orientation in Nature 8. Tourist map at 1 : 40 000 One street settlements,
Determination of cardinal (Danube Bend) chessboard-structured
points Legend settlements, conglomeration,
8. Representation of relief on a 9. Other thematic maps circular-structured settle-
map Climate, soils, political, ments, settlements con-
Methods of representation on economic, nationalities, ethno- nected by bridge, planned
maps: contour lines, hypso- graphic industrial settlements.
metry and relief shading 8. Maps of landscapes
9. Satellite images Estuary, glacier and fjord,
False colour satellite image of agglomeration, agricultural
Budapest: explanation and industrial region on
10. Types of settlements maps
Cíty, town and farm in an aerial 9. Tourist map at 1 : 40 000
photo and on a map. (Danube Bend)
11. Physical and political maps Legend
Hungary, Europe and Earth 11. Typical weather
12. Other thematic maps conditions in Europe
Climate, soils, political, econo- 12. Other thematic maps
mic, nationalities, ethnographic Climate, soils, political,
economic, nationalities,
ethnographic

Table 2

Basics about Nature

(Cartographic concepts in the textbook for 5th grade)
National Publishing Mozaik Publishing Apáczai Publishing
Title of the House (2002) House (2004) House (2004)
chapter/ Our important partner: Orientation on maps Orientation on maps and
themes the map (p. 104–122) (p. 34–50) in Nature (p. 69–84)
1. Map Simplification, reduction, top view, reduction, Reduction, base plan, top
definition faithful representation projection to a plane view
2. Scale Scale Large and small scale Scale
3. Graphic Explanation about its use Explanation about its use Explanation about its use
scale
4. Earth globe The reduced image of the – –
Earth
5. Orientation Direction, distance, Cardinal points, Reference system and
cardinal points, compass, compass, its use and index of names. Orien-
its use and principle principle (magnetism), tation of a map. Kilometre
(magnetism), Sun based orientation of a map, grid. Principle and use of a
orientation orientation with the compass (magnetism)
North Star Orientation with a watch.
6. Relief Plains (Great Hungarian Plains (Great Hungarian Plains (Great Hungarian
Plain), hills (valley, Plain), hills (hilltop) and Plain), plateau, hills and
ridge) and mountains. mountains (valley, basin, mountains. Contour lines
Regions of Hungary. peak). Regions of and height values.
Contour lines and height Hungary. Contour lines
values. and height values.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 109
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

Basics about Nature

(Cartographic concepts in the textbook for 5th grade)
National Publishing Mozaik Publishing Apáczai Publishing
Title of the House (2002) House (2004) House (2004)
chapter/ Our important partner: Orientation on maps Orientation on maps and
themes the map (p. 104–122) (p. 34–50) in Nature (p. 69–84)
7. Colours on Height values (blue, Mountains: brown Legend
physical green, light and dark Hydrography: blue (blue, green, light and
maps brown) Representation of dark brown)
Representation of hydrography (creek, Representation of
hydrography (spring, river, canal, affluent, Hydrography: river, lake,
brooklet, stream, creek, flow, left and right sea, ocean. Depth values
river, estuary, canal, riverside, lake, reservoir,
affluent, flow, left and sea, ocean, marsh).
right riverside, lake and Depth values
marsh)
8. Types of Political, physical, Map of provinces, Thematic maps, tourist
maps tourist, road, city, political map, road map, maps and road maps
historical, military, city map, tourist map,
meteorological, phyto- thematic maps, atlases
and zoogeographical
map. Maps of population
density and dialects
9. Map – Country and province Legend, symbols of routes
symbols border, settlement for excursionists
symbol, roads and
railroads.
Mining (coal, lignite,
petroleum, natural gas,
iron ore, bauxite)
Industry (heavy, light,
food)
10. Map – – Stick maps, Egyptian map
History of gold mines,
Eratosthenes, Ptolemy,
Tabula Peutingeriana, T-O
maps, discoveries,
Mercator, Lázár secretary,
János Zsámboky
11. Others satellite, aerial photo- satellite image as illustra- Basic rules for excursions
graph, computer tion in Nature

3.2. Technological questions developing the website

After taking the decisions related to the structure of the new website, we faced
another not less important question: which environment can be most appropri-
ate to develop the site? Our first choice was to select PHP (Hypertext Pre-proces-
sor), which is a widely used general purpose scripting language suited for Web
development and which can be inserted into HTML (HyperText Markup Lan-
uage) too. Searching for other possible options the use of a Content Management
System (CMS) was considered a better choice, because this kind of environment
facilitates the development of a website offering pre-programmed tools, whose
use is easy to learn. The next question was: which CMS should be selected? At
present, there is a big number (more than 100) of freely downloadable CMS in

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 110
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

the Web: Wordpress, Drupal, Custom CMS, Joomla, Moodle, Typo3, e107,
PHPX, PHP SiteManager, PHP SiteManager, etc. Our first condition was to
choose a CMS with Hungarian support and the second one was the security that
the CMS can offer, preventing our server from possible hacking attacks across
the Web. Considering the different options in the market, our decision was to
develop the new website in the CMS named Plone.

What is Plone? Why Plone?

Plone is an open source content management system (CMS), whose heart is the
Zope (Z Object Publishing Environment) application server. Zope is an open
source, object-oriented Web application server. A Zope website is usually com-
posed of objects stored in a Zope Object Database (ZODB) and not by files in a
traditional file tree system. Zope can be managed using an interactive built-in in-
terface via a Web browser.
Plone was developed using Python and other programming languages (Java-
Script, XML, CSS, etc.). It is multifunctional and can be used for the design of
different Web content, e.g. blogs, Web shops, internal sites, etc. Platform-inde-
pendent (available on Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix) and all its features are
customizable, being easy to personalize a website using CSS (Cascading Style
Sheets) and add-ons. At same time Plone is one of the fastest open-source CMS
platforms on the market.
Plone has also a visual HTML editor and a “drag and drop” reordering and
editing tool to create and update content. It supports the creation of backups to
avoid data loss. The system has multilingual content management, portlet en-
gine, graphical page editor and so many helpful features. Its use is totally free.
These advantages were enough to choose this CMS.
Some noted users of Plone are the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bra-
zilian Government, Chicago History Museum, DISCOVER magazine, United
Nations, European Environment Agency, NASA Science and Defending Child-
ren’s rights (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Other websites created with Plone

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 111
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

3.3. Changes in the structure of the website

The structure of the website had to be changed too, to adapt it to the conditions
derived from the use of the Plone CSM. The title of each main part was abbrevi-
ated (shortened) and the menu points were also modified and reduced from
eight to six (some of them were joined and others were put under new titles), to
fit into the superior section of the website (Figure 4):

• Basic concepts (As you are learning and even more…) (Alapismere-
tek)
• Digital collections (Curiosities and Try out!) (Digitalis gyűjtemé-
nyek)
• Games (Learn and play!) (Játékok)
• Events (News and events) (Rendezvények)
• Links (What can you find on the Web?) (Hivatkozások) – including
previous works in Hungarian language
• News (News and events) (Hírek)

Figure 4. Welcome page of the new website

Asking the pupils about the handling of the website, we could conclude that
short texts help to keep awake the children’s and young people’s interest in the

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 112
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

content, re-affirming the principles followed during the development of the first
website. However, pupils also remarked that the high number of short pages (al-
most hundred) causes difficulties to access a determined theme within a chapter.
Considering this situation, we decided to introduce some changes in the organ-
ization of pages within the website, designing longer pages (one by each general
theme) and placing more interactive fast links to the main headings (Figure 5).
Other important change made was the addition of a search tool, which is
constantly accessible from the top of the website, to seek and locate information
within the homepage. This is a useful tool asked very often by the user children
in our meetings during the last years. Other, a most visual innovation was the
graphic and dynamic (real-time) presentation of the number of visitors to the
website, using an Earth globe and/or map designed and maintained across the
www.revolvermaps.com website.

Figure 5. Some pages of the website

The online-glossary created in 2000 was also changed, adapting it to the new
environment, but keeping the same content and assuring the fast access to the in-
formation when the user moves with the mouse over an unknown concept. The
use of a glossary fills two aims:

• to explain concepts related to other sciences, concepts that children

could not learn between 3rd and 6th grade of Elementary Schools (e.g.
magnetite, used in the explanations related to the compass)
• to explain concepts presented in other themes, avoiding the links be-
tween different pages and themes, to keep the continuity of reading the
actual page. E.g. Equator, a concept mentioned in the first theme (“Map
and Reality”), but explained in more detail in the 9th theme (“Latitude
and Longitude”).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 113
Joint ICA Symposium
Updating a Hungarian Website about Maps for Children

4. Future plans

4.1. Testing the grade of acceptation

Participants in the present project are interested to know the critics, suggestions,
etc. from pupils and teachers. The more directly way of contacting us is across
the website, sending their messages to our email addresses. We are also consi-
dering the option of creating at least two Web based questionnaires, one for pu-
pils and other for teachers. These questionnaires will ask about the design (em-
phasizing this aspect in the questionnaire for children) and content (emphasizing
this aspect in the questionnaire for teachers) of the website.

4.2. Versions in other languages

The Plone CSM includes a choice to make an automatic translation of the

pages into other supported languages. The translation can be made using Lin-
guaPlone, a tool that in March of 2009 supported more than 40 languages apart
from English (French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and others).
The main difficulty of translating the original Hungarian text into other
language is not the translation itself, but the correct interpretation of the text
related to cartographic concepts. Other difficulty can be that children from va-
rious countries speaking the same language can use the same words with a dif-
ferent meaning or can name the same object using different substantives that
have different meanings in each country. Specialists should also consider that a
considerable percentage of the illustrations containing maps have to be substi-
tuted, because these figures were designed for Hungarian pupils after being se-
lected from Hungarian School Atlases.

4.3. Connecting the website to social networking websites

Social networking websites play a very significant role in the more effective com-
munication with the younger generations, which are growing living in a virtual
community grouped within websites such as Facebook, Tagged, hi5, Hungarian
Iwiw, etc. and websites offering social networking and microblogging services,
like Twitter. Considering our interest to keep Hungarian pupils informed about
the newest updates to the website, we are considering seriously to create profiles
in Facebook and Twitter as “indispensable” tools to maintain young people in-
formed.

4.4. Accessibility

The structure of the website created with Plone CSM lets us widen the content
with new themes if needed and to keep the information updated in the server of
the Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics (Eötvös Loránd University).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 114
Joint ICA Symposium
José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Csaba Szabó

At next future, we plan to add more examples developed at the Department

and more interactivity to the website, taking advantage of the choices offered by
CSM as well as considering the suggestions to be made by Hungarian pupils and
teachers in the interest of maintaining a website that increasingly meets their
learning and teaching needs.

The project is supported by the European Union and co-financed by the Euro-
pean Social Fund (grant agreement no. TÁMOP 4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010-0003).

References

Horváth, M. Molnár, L. Szentirmainé, B. M.: 2003. Természetismeret az 5. osz-

tály és a 11 éves korosztály számára. Celldömölk (Hungary): Apáczai Publishing
House.
Horváth, M. Molnár, L. Szentirmainé, B. M.: 2003. Természetismeret munkafüzet
az 5. osztály és a 11 éves korosztály számára. Celldömölk (Hungary): Apáczai
Publishing House.
Reyes, J. J.: 2002. Iskolások számára készített honlap a térképekről. Földrajzi Közle-
mények, Vol. CXXVI.(L.), number 1–4., p. 130–38.
Reyes, J. J.: 2006. A website about map history for Hungarian pupils. In: Proceed-
ings of Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage. Thessaloniki, Greece 2006, p.
77–82.
Reyes, J. J.: 2006. GIS site for Hungarian pupils. In: Digital Proceedings of the First
International Conference on Cartography & GIS. Borovets, Bulgaria 2006.
Reyes, J. J.: 2006. Multimedia Cartography for Hungarian pupils. In: Modern tech-
nologies, education and professional practice in Geodesy and related fields Pro-
ceedings. Sofia, Bulgaria 2006, p. 240–48.
Reyes, J. J.: 2002. Térképészeti alapismeretek bemutatása a weben. PhD. Hungary
Eötvös Loránd University.
Tompáné, B. M.: 2002. Környezetismeret 4 (Élő és élettelen környezetem. Élet a
ház körül. Környezetismeret tankönyv 10 éves tanulók részére). Celldömölk
(Hungary): Pauz-Westermann Publishing House.
Plone CSM, 2011. [online] Available at: <http://plone.org/ > [Accessed 18 April
2011]

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 115
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Internet and Cartography

INTERNET MAPPING EDUCATION:

CURRICULUM TECHNOLOGY AND
CREATIVITY

Rex G. Cammack
University of Nebraska, Omaha (USA)
[email protected]

Introduction

In the process of educating students in the area of Internet mapping, faculty

must choose systems and tools that work in tandem with their educational goals.
The number of options for these types of education technologies is almost un-
limited. How does one choose an environment that will provide education flexi-
bility and comprehensiveness without having students change from one tech-
nology to another for each project? There are numerous ways to approach this
question. This case study will go through the tasks of setting educational goals,
implementation assessment, technology assessment, exercise plan and creativity
possibilities. This approach is not deterministic in the sense that there is only one
possible solution or even a solution that meets all the criteria. One of the goals
for this research is to identify most of the specific issues in regards to educating
students in the area of Internet mapping in the current environment. A second
goal of the research its to look at the education technology in two ways. First is
the whether the technology can provide a learning environment for specific
learning of generic learning goals, while the second part examines the ability of
the technology to foster creative ideas.
Rex G. Cammack

Education Goals

In the university education environment the term curriculum development and

management is used. For many faculty members and program groups this con-
cept is only a managerial task that must be done. Looking deeper in to this prac-
tice one learns that there are many facets to examine and consider. There are
three-principle parts of curriculum to consider within the university environ-
ment:

• University Education Outcomes

• Programs Outcomes
• Course Outcomes

Most of the time faculty and teachers look solely at the latter of these out-
comes because it’s the one that has direct control over the time of the course.
Faculty members develop a plan of study for the course that meets the needs of
the course with little to no consideration of the other learning outcomes that the
university and program need. The bottom up approach has been employed wide-
ly throughout universities and has served well for the most part. One of the rea-
sons for this is that faculty members and course content can change rapidly. In
the United States of America (USA) university systems, most courses have a cur-
riculum structure found in a university catalog (University of Nebraska Omaha,
2010). These consist of a title, number of credit hours, a course description of
around 80 words in length and prerequisites for the course. These course catalog
entries can be used for years with no change or update. As a curriculum tool, it is
evident that they are not all that effective yet this method is the primary direct
contact with perspective students.
In this age of higher education there is a need to go beyond the current state
of education delivery and focus on a new approach. One approach changes the
concept of curriculum from static to a “living curriculum” (Bath, Smith, Stein,
and Swann, 2004). In this context curriculum is seen as vibrating and changing,
much like the changing world we live in. Bath, et al (2004) examine living curri-
culum in the Australian higher educational system. Not unlike the USA higher
educational system, there is a debate on how to educate students for an ever-
changing world. The focus of this debate is on program knowledge verses generic
skills. Universities as a whole identify that the primary task is educating students
to communicate, problem solve, analyze, integrate and think creatively. The ar-
gument is how to achieve this. One approach is to focus on these skills specifi-
cally and have all students master these generic skills in assignment courses
(Havery 1993, Gash & Reardon, 1998 De La Harpe & Radloff, 2000). Others have
argued that only through effective disciplinary education will students learn and
apply these generic skills (Boyatzis, Cowen & Kolb, 1995, Kemp & Seagraves,
1995 Diamond 1998, and Drury and Taylor 1999). These two extremes in curri-
culum approaches have been bridged, but neither side seems to like the options
(Gash & Reardon, 1998). Ideas like tacked-on afterthoughts, (Bowden et al. 200,
Pearson & Brew 2002) and checklists are seen as failing to deliver acceptable edu-
cational outcomes.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 117
Joint ICA Symposium
Internet Mapping Education: Curriculum Technology and Creativity

The latter approach does have appeal at both at the program and course out-
comes level. In a closely related context, the efforts by DiBiase, DeMers, Johnson,
Kemp, Luck, Plewe and Wentz, (2007) to review and establish the merits of the
Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge (GIS & T
BoK) (AAG, 2006) shows a exhaustive set of disciplinary skills that students
should learn and master. These skills are closely related to web mapping and one
might think that all of web mapping is covered in the GIS & T BoK. But as
Dibiase, et al (2007 p. 119) say “that disruptive new technologies, innovative sci-
ences, imaginative applications, and the dynamics of human and physical land-
scapes that give rise to the GIS&T field in the first place, will continue to drive
changes”.
In the field of Information Systems Gorgones et al. (2002) developed a com-
prehensive curriculum of undergraduate programs. The curriculum like the GIS &
T BoK was a discipline outcome focused approach. This middle ground approach
to curriculum development focuses on assessment of market demands for grad-
uates. This special consideration for the need of the employment market does
focus a program to continually update its educational system. However, one can
argue that this approach will only develop time sensitive vocational skills and
graduates will be ill prepared to handle changes in the work place.
Designing a course focused on web mapping technologies, how does the fac-
ulty member approach this education? Web mapping requires some very specific
skill sets. By choosing a development environment, vocational training looms
and universities are quick to say they are not vocational by nature in the USA.
One approach is to use a wide variety of development environments. In this en-
vironment students are forced to learn not a system but a method of problem
solving. Here the student must create a knowledge set that answers, “How do I
do this in this new system?” An example would be to ask how do I declare a vari-
able type? In every programming language declaring variables is a basic concept.
So by switching environments multiple times within the course, students will de-
velop a method for learning the next system. This problem-solving outcome fits
nicely in all three learning outcomes. Yet this outcome result is extremely diffi-
cult to achieve. It takes a long time to develop this knowledge, even for professi-
onals in the field for decades, and many times professionals really never develop
this skill.
At the end of this process for developing educational goals, a pragmatic ap-
proach was selected. First a comprehensive look at university education out-
comes was completed. The following outcomes were identified as follows:

• Critical Thinking
• Problem Solving
• Communication
• Diversity
• Cooperative Learning
• Team Building
• Social Values
• Creative Thinking and Expression

The second phase of learning outcomes looked at degree program goals. In

this case study the University of Nebraska Omaha degree program in Geography
was considered. This program consists of a Bachelors’ of Arts and a Bachelors’ of
Science program. The course was designed to meet the needs of both disciplinary
programs. These two program are similar in education outcomes goals but with
variances in importance of the goals:

• Understanding of Physical Process

• Understanding of Human Behavior and Societal Variances
• Relationship Between Environment and Humans
• Analysis of Spatial Events
• Environmental/Human Landscapes
• Resources and Human Interaction
• Geospatial Representation and Analysis
• Regional Difference
• Social Acceptance
• Qualitative and Quantitative Spatial Methods

The course outcomes will be discussed in more detail later in the paper.

Implementation Assessment

The process of implementation assessment is difficult. At the level of university

education outcomes, most choose a post hoc approach by looking at the success
of students graduating from the university’s programs. Issues like professional
certification and accreditation are procedural methods of assessment. Addition-
ally, universities will interview students nearing graduation to determine whether
they are successfully finding employment. These methods are helpful, but most
of the time does little to assess the generic skills for students. Bath, et al (2004)
employed a survey approach that focused on students after a major change to a
music degree program at the University of Queensland. The focus of the research
was to examine the effectiveness of doing a complete review and change to music
school programs that specifically combined the learning outcomes for the uni-
versity and the discipline within each course. The results of the research showed
that students from the updated program were doing better than other students at
the university.
In this project a different approach was taken. A single class was used. The
course was an advance Geographic Information Science course. The course out-
comes where reassessed and more emphasis was placed on incorporating aspects
of university and degree program goals. Some of the changes to the course were:

• Team Projects
• Alternative Demonstration of Work, i.e. Poster Presentations
• Quantitative Analysis
• Visualization (Conceptual and Numerical)
• Comparative Solutions

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 119
Joint ICA Symposium
Internet Mapping Education: Curriculum Technology and Creativity

• Creative and Limited Guided Tasks

• Independent Problems
• Solution Integration
• Critical Self Evaluations

Many times the new tasks were assigned in a way that they covered several
generic skills. Also, students did new assignments that were unique combinations
of the learning outcomes. The goal was to have students doing these learning
outcomes several times without directly focusing on them. The method of inte-
grating several learning outcomes and repeating of reinforcement was ques-
tioned, but this was the approach chosen.

Technology Assessment

In this part of the project specific discipline skills were considered. The Advanced
GIS course was reorganized around the core concept of Geographic Information
Services. Nyerges and Jankowski (2010) explain that Geographic Information can
be explained as a system, science or service. In a previous version of the course,
aspects of advanced systems and science were the focus but changes in GIS in the
last 5 years have lead to the development a professional need for the better under-
standing of information services. Within the redesign the focus was on these GIS
skills:

• Spatial Data
• Spatial Data Services
• Implementation Issues for Services
• Topic Specific Geographic Services
• Service Design
• Service Deployment
• Services on a Network
• Services on the Internet
• Service Use
• Standard Clients for Service Use
• Custom Clients for Service Use
• Multiple Spatial Data Services
• End User Clients

The approach here was to select a combination of web mapping technology

and development environments. Students would use these technologies and de-
velop projects to showcase their understanding to these disciplinary skills. A sec-
ond consideration was to have students use technologies that are common with-
in the USA geospatial professional workplace. The basic design of web mapping
services is shown in Figure 1. The basic element of a GI service starts with a net-
work, most commonly the Internet. A server on the network hosts a GI service
and clients or other services consume the data for the GI services. Within the
server, any number of designs can be deployed, but the simple structure is that

GI server is hosted directly or through a web server. The GI server will store
within or get from external devices the spatial data and/or spatial processing
functionalities.

In the course, issues like servers, networks, web servers, database services, and
middleware were explained but the students did not work with them. The main
focus for the students was on the building of the GI services and clients.
The GI server software used in the course was ArcGIS server 10.1 deployed
on Microsoft Internet Information Web server with the DotNET framework.
Students were asked to design both, services and web applications, using the Arc-
GIS Server application. For the more detailed client development for specific In-
ternet mapping applications, students used the combination of Adobe FLEX 4
and Adobe Flash Builder 4. This development environment was selected for sev-
eral reasons:

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

• FLEX Framework Functionality
• API for Google and ArcGIS Server
• Skinablility
• Modularity
• Multiple Platform Capabilities

Client development is the fastest growing part of Internet mapping. Mostly this
is due to the availability of large GI servers open to anyone. Google GI servers host
several different worldwide mapping databases such as Google Maps and Google
Earth (Google 2011). With this type of service available, numerous mapping clients
are developed either for wide user or focused users. One of the many aspects of
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 121
Joint ICA Symposium
Internet Mapping Education: Curriculum Technology and Creativity

developing client Internet mapping applications is the deployment environment.

One of the major advantages for Adobe Flex environment is that it builds ap-
plications for the computer desktop and web applications that run within a web
browser. These are two of the three main client deployment environments. The
third environment is the mobile environment such as Android iOS. The mobile
environment is the most complex and varied of these three. Mobile computer is
the newest of the three, so there is still a large amount corporate maneuvering at
the time of this research. In the future (such as the next time the course is taught) a
reviewed implementation will need to be considered.

Exercise Plan

All the exercises in the course were designed to consider all three learning out-
comes discussed so far within the research. This list of exercises for the course
shows the wide differences in tasks student did within the course. At first glance
the effect of the university and program outcomes are not apparent.

• Multi-Layered Environmental GI Service

• Multi-Server Demographic GI Service*
• Desktop Client for GI Service
• Desktop Client for Multiple GI Services*
• GI Service Standardization for Integrated Internet Mapping Website*
• Topic Based Client Web Application*
• Interactive Client Applicants
• Desktop Client Application for Corporate Task*
• Final Project Student Focused GI Services and Client Application
• Group Assignments

The course was divided into five-hour blocks each week of the 15-week se-
mester. The first hour was devoted to lecture on core ideas and concepts. A sec-
ond hour was devoted to technology issues regarding GI services and manage-
ment. The third hour focused on the client development environment and the
final two hours was laboratory time for students to work on their assignments.
With each assignment, students developed new disciplinary skills that they
would use in following assignments. Skills in both, GI services and client devel-
opment, progressed until the final project that students had created based on
their own ideas. This final project is considered a demonstration of knowledge
and could be used for a detailed analysis of the learning outcomes for the univer-
sity, program and course. The topic of the assignments focused on program out-
comes so while students worked to develop their systems, they had to understand
and consider broader program issues.

Creative Possibilities

Generally the idea of creativity in higher education is identified with the fine and
liberal arts disciplines of the university. Yet in Geography, creative expression
with maps has long been understood. This creativity has led to some great maps
and also some bad ones. Visual representation, as in writing, is not just a static
concept but has a sense of expression that cannot be over looked. As each assign-
ment was defined to the students, fewer and fewer details of the final look of the
work were provided and students were asked to think not only of function but
also form for their project. Design was given value within the assessment of proj-
ects and students with creative solutions were given opportunities to show them
to the rest of the class and explain the ideas behind their creative solutions.

Conclusions

The process of assessing and re-designing a university course no longer can be

done in the vacuum of an individual faculty member’s interests and desires. Uni-
versities are integrating student learning across the programs and courses stu-
dents take. The model of learning outcomes will have a greater influence on
course structures and activities. Currently the model of learning outcomes sug-
gests that the best outcomes are achieved by excellent course content and edu-
cation that considers within its delivery, issues of program and university out-
comes. In this case study an Advanced GIS course was re-designed with special
consideration made to outcomes for both the university and program. The selec-
tion of education technologies led to the use of robust but a limited number of
technologies. Students were asked to repeat aspects of GI services several times
during the length of the course to reinforce concepts and to consider closely the
effect of their decisions on the overall technology implementation and societal
importance.

References

Bath, D., C. Smith, S. Stein, and R Swann: (2004) Beyond Mapping and Em-
bedding Graduate Attributes: bringing together Quality Assurance and Action
Learning to Create a Validated and Living Curriculum. Higher Education Re-
search & Development 23(3) p. 313–328.
Bowden, J., G. Hart, B. King, K. Trigwell, and O. Watts: (2000) Generic Capabi-
lities of ATM University Graduates: final report to DETYA. Melbourne Austral-
ian Technologies Network Teaching and Learning Committee.
Boyatzis, R. E., S, Cown and D. Kolb: (1995) Innovation in Profession Education.
San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
De La Harpe, B. and A. Radloff: (2000) Supporting Generic Skill Development:
Reflections on Providing Professional Development for Academic Staff. Paper
presented at the International Lifelong Learning Conference, Yeppoon Australia.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 123
Joint ICA Symposium
Internet Mapping Education: Curriculum Technology and Creativity

Diamond, R.: (1998) Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula. San Fran-
cisco: Jossey Bass.
Dibiase, D., M. DeMers, A. Johnson, K. Kemp, A. T. Luck, B. Plewe, E. Wentz:
(2007) Introducing the First Edition of Geographic Information Science and
Technology Body of Knowledge. Cartography and Geographic Information
Science. 34(2) p. 114–120.
Drury, H. and C. Taylor: (1999) Providing the discipline Context for Skills Devel-
opment: Report on the Production on an Interactive Video for Oral and Visual
Communicaiton in the Biological Sciences. Paper presentated at the HERDSA
Annual International Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
Gash, S. and D. F. Reardon: (1998) Personal Transferable Skills for the Modern
Information Professional. Journal of Information Science, 14. p. 285–292.
Google (2011) Google Maps. http://maps.google.com
Gorgone, J., G. B. Davis, J. S. Valacich, H. Topi, and D. L. Feinstein: (2003) IS
2002 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in
Information Systems. Communications of the Association for Information
Systems: 11(1) p. 11–233.
Harvey, L.: (1993) Quality Assessment in Higher Education: The collected papers
of the QHE Project. University of Central England: Qaulity in Higher Education.
Kemp, I. J. and L. Seagraves: (1995) Transferable Skills can Higher Education De-
liver? Studies in Higher Education. 20 p. 315–328.
Pearson, M. and A. Brew: (2002) Research Training and Supervision Develop-
ment. Studies in Higher Education. 27, p. 135–150.
Nyerges, T. L. and P. Jankowski: (2010) Regional and Urban GIS: A Decision
Support Approach. New York: Guilford Press.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 124
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Internet and Cartography

VISUALISATION OF GEOLOGICAL
OBSERVATIONS ON WEB 2.0 BASED MAPS

Gáspár Albert1, Gábor Csillag1, László Fodor1, László Zentai2

1 Geological Institute of Hungary
2 Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest (Hungary)

Abstract: The method of geological mapping has changed during the last decades and
the collected data have been recently stored in the records of databases instead of hand-
written notebooks. In the Geological Institute of Hungary, a special database structure
was designed for primarily scientific purposes, but also for storing and classifying the ge-
ological observations according to their importance for geo-tourism. The relational data-
base of the geological observations can be queried by different subjects and transcribed
into KML files, which are useful for the dissemination of geological data via web 2.0 map
applications like Google Earth.

Introduction

Before the digital era, the methods and main objectives of a geological descrip-
tion during mapping were worked out in details by several authors (e.g. Comp-
ton 1985, Barnes 1995). These methods were both restricted and unobstructed at
the same time. Restrictions pre-defined those criteria that were indispensable for
the understanding and for the localisation, but the details and lengths of the de-
scription were up-to the documenter.
Working out the requirements of a database, which would store the field
observations, is usually problematic. The problems originate from the contradic-
tion between the logic of the traditional documentation system and the uniform
methods of the technical processing of the data. People, who want to use a com-
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

mon database, think differently, and the database would be usable for them only
in the case the logic of the querying methods corresponds with their own logic.
Creators of geological databases worked out different methods to reduce the
conflict between the two different logic (e.g. Laxton & Becken 1996, Brodaric
2004, Clegg et al. 2006, Dei & Gosh 2008). All of these contributors attempted to
collect and store field observation data, however, the developed methods and the
structure of the database were different, because the mapping conditions and the
prorities were also different.
The field observations are the primary data that make the compilation of ge-
ological maps possible for the geologists. These observation data are mostly sur-
veyed traditionally, with paper maps and hand-written notebooks (Figure 1), and
stored in archives for the geological survey organizations. The techniques of the
digital geological mapping (DGM) developed only during the latest decades. Al-
though several author discussed the methodology and applications of DGM (e.g.
Struik et al. 1991, Briner et al., 1999, Kramer 2000, Jones et al. 2004, McCaffrey et
al. 2005), international standards still do not exist for this technology.

Figure 1. Hand-written geological observation. 1 = Number of the observation

point; 2 = Description of the location; 3/a and 3/b = Geological in-
dexes; 4 = Description of the geological formations; 5 = Drawings
and list of fossils (after the notebook of G. Albert 2005)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 126
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

Some of the observed sites have not only scientific, but also attractive value. It
is obvious for the friends of the natural heritage of the world that many pictur-
esque and visited landforms mostly have geological significance. For geo tourists,
these spot-like points of interest are best known as geosites (synonym for geo-
tops). Hungary is also full of geological curiosities. Well known geosites, like the
Baradla Cave of the Aggtelek and the Slovak Karst, which was inscribed on the
UNESCO World Heritage List in 1995 (WHC 1995), have wide publicity, but the
minor sites are mostly unknown except for the geologist.
The Geological Institute of Hungary have been collecting the documentation
of geological sites for more than 140 years. Although the number of documenta-
tions may exceed many thousands, only a few dozen of the documented outcrops
would attract the attention of the geo tourists. These sites usually have both sci-
entific and attractive value and thus deserve the name, “geotop”.
How can one access these observation data? It became obvious during the last
decades that the most effective way of accessing the archives of the old manu-
scripts is the digitization of them. Therefore, the digitization of the manuscripts
of the documentation was one of the aims of the authors’ work.
The selection of possible geotops from the swarm of data was another aim. The
method that was worked out for these aims comprised two main phases: in the
first phase the structure of a relational database was worked out, which would
contain the archive documentation of the geological observations. In the second
phase, the process of visualisation and dissemination of the selected outcrops was
carried out.

Methods

The way of geological documentation in the field was worked out by generations
of geologists. The following method can be considered as a novelty only because
it represents a new data structure, which is suitable either for reconstructing and
digitalizing archive data, or for processing new observations into a relational
database. Furthermore, it is applicable for digital field instruments such as PDA
(Personal Digital Assistant) or tablet PC.
The experimental application of this method was carried out during the
current Regional Mapping Project of the Geological Institute of Hungary in the
Gerecse Hills (Northern Central Hungary). The aim was to work out and “fine
tune” the general data processing method and the data structure of the observa-
tions. It was a basic requirement that the data structure could be processed and
queried, but the recorded data should be explanatory and not restricted by the
recording methods. It was also necessary to prepare the data structure to receive
data from handwritten manuscripts either as typed in as ASCII texts, or scanned
as raster images. The data structure was designed to satisfy three functionalities:

1. Recording newly observed but “traditionally” documented data in a struc-

tured database (in office);
2. Rapid digitization of archive data (in office);
3. Recording new observations directly in the database (in the field).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 127
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

The first approach of the data digitization in the Geological Institute of Hun-
gary used the MS Office Applications in the 1990’s. Technicians used Excel and
Word for recording and typing the handwritten manuscripts into files. It became
a routine; however, the data structure changed many times. The firstly created
files, especially the Word documents often contained only the explanatory data
and the formatting of the documents was not suitable for executing data-mining
processes (Figure 2). Therefore, it was necessary to rearrange the data in these
documents.

1. p2m
North from the church of Vértesszőlős village and from the entrance of the museum, fresh-
water limestone was exposed in the abandoned quarry. The famous fossil (dated to 350–
500 y.b.p.) of the skull fragment of “Sam” the Neanderthal man was collected from here.
The memorial plaque of the finder, László Vértes is placed on a 5 m high, and 20 x 10 m
wide mound in the middle of the quarry yard. Here the limestone is lamellar, slightly
curving, with a sequence of 1–10 cm thick beds on the upper 1.2 m (A). Below, 2 m mas-
sive bedded, poorly cemented limestone can be found with quite many cavernous plant
stem imprints in it (B). The lamellar limestone is friable along the plains of the beds, but
consistent and yellowy-brown inside. Bended secessions can also be found locally.
Age: Middle Pleistocene

Figure 2. Archive digital documentation of an observation from 1991 in MS

Word format. The capital letters (A and B) indicate parts of a hand-
drawn figure. Note that neither coordinates, nor dates were recorded
in the digitized description.

Experience showed that the reshaping (Figure 3) was most effective when the
data remained in the same form (in Excel sheet or in Word document) until they
could be data-mined and reconstructed in a database. It was also reassuring for
the technicians who could work in a familiar environ. To carry out the most
effective data-mining, a series of Visual Basic macros was developed to be exe-
cuted on MS Office documents. These macros had the following functionalities:

1. Searching for data in Word documents and exporting them into a data-
base;
2. Searching for missing or corrupt data fields in the created database;
3. Decoding data-fields using uniform names;
4. Correcting mistyping in selected data-fields;
5. Exporting the selected attributes into XML files.

The result of the data-mining and processing was a database of the geological
observations, which was stored in MS Access tables. The XML (Extensible Mark-
up Language) files were created for data exchange purposes. The following sec-
tion gives a detailed description of the re-shaped document structure, which can
be considered as fields or collections (queries) of the final database.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 128
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

ID: LAB3-AG051
Geo Index: dT3, pJ1
Observer: Gáspár Albert
Date: 1 August 2002
Coordinate: 611568, 260336
Latitude: 47.68572222 N
Longitude: 18.53552778 E
Elevation: 263 m
Type of outcrop: in situ
Importance: high (Jurassic limestone and cave sediments)
Location: Cliff on a small spur on the western slope, in the curve of the
Masina Valley
Lithology: The 3-5 m rock face consists of massive, thickly-bedded, mic-ritic,
Upper Triassic Dachstein limestone with lopher-cycles (dT3). The
general dip direction of the limestone is towards the Northeast.
There is a plenty of dripstone fragments in the debris around the
cliff. Thinly bedded, Lower Jurassic Pisznice lime-stone, with bul-
bous bed surface, ammonites and crinoids (pJ1) can also be
found in debris on the eastern slope of the valley. There are also
many rock debris from the Jurassic “ammonitico rosso” facies.
Stratigraphy: dT3|pJ1
Measurements: 285/25 bed (dT3)
Fossils: ammonites, crinoids
Photos: drawings in the notebook; 4321-25
Samples: LAB3-AG051/1 (ammonite)
Notes: The presence of dripstone debris suggests that there was once
a cavern here, which may have collapsed. It is very likely that
the Masina Valley was once the cave itself. The Jurassic rock
debris may fell into the cave through a sinkhole, but it is also
possible that the Jurassic limestone was in situ nearby or tec-
tonically transported to the present location. Eocene gravels and
debris were not observed.
Alias:

Figure 3. General geological documentation of an outcrop in the Gerecse Hills

(Northern Central Hungary) in the pre-defined MS Word format,
which was designed to easily execute data-mining processes on it.

Database of the geological observations

The geologist, who is responsible for the documentation, uses numbers and let-
ters to create a code for each registered outcrop during mapping. It is the way of
documentation now and it was the same a hundred years ago. During these
many years, the codes naturally change and one code may often occur repeated-
ly, thus in creating the new database it was a primary requirement to work out a
unique and easily understandable naming method for the database entries.
The mapping is carried out at large scale (1 : 10 000) state topographic maps.
The projection of these maps is the official Hungarian National Grid (EOV –
Uniform National Projection) system, but the coordinates can be recorded or
transformed into latitudes and longitudes on standard WGS84 datum.
The database is represented by several main, sub- and code tables (Figure 4).
The main tables contain genuine data, like the observation points themselves, or
the maps of the region concerned. Sub-tables contain details of the observations,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 129
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

like the measurements and photos taken, or the samples and fossils collected.
The code tables store the repeatedly occurring data, such as the objects measured
(e.g. fault plane), the names of the fossils, and the observers.
Each record in the “OBSERVATIONS” main data table is identified by a
unique key in the “OP_ID” field, which links this table with other sub-tables in the
database. It was considered that the database would be better understandable for
the geologists, if the unique identifiers are designed to contain real names and
numbers. These kinds of identifiers are called natural keys. To produce a natural
key field, a 4-letter code of the documented area was put together with the mo-
nogram of the documenter and the number of the observation point (e.g.: LAB3-
AG051 is the natural key for the 51st site of Gáspár Albert on the map, which is
coded as LAB3). The area codes are also natural keys, since they are abbreviations
of the name of the topographic maps. For example, the code LAB3 is the third sub-
sheet of the map called “Lábatlan”, named after a little village in the area.

Figure 4. Structure of the relational database of the geological field observa-

tions. The code tables are bilingual (English and Hungarian), the lan-
guage of the documentation is selectable. Field names in italics in the
OBSERVATIONS main data table indicate that the data recording
process may happen directly or through the linked sub-tables.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 130
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

The rules of the documentation are strict. From the formatting of the identi-
fication numbers to the applicable characters in the string data of the geological
descriptions, are all strictly defined. Without the restricting VBA (Visual Basic
Applications) codes, hardly a few documenters would keep themselves to the for-
malities. These codes (macros) are built in the model Word document, and they
also handle the link to the database.
The field documentation is slightly different, since these codes are not com-
patible with the mobile applications of the data recording device. Thus the data,
which were recorded in the field, go through a syntax-controller program before
the processing.

Data fields or categories?

If the data of the observation are collected in one form (Figure 3), each category
represents one ore more records in the data tables. These forms are originally the
Word documents themselves, created by the documenters, but the creation of
these collections may work reversely if it is needed.
Creating the collections from the database is a question of querying the data-
base. In a query, which produces the form of the Word document (Figure 3), the
records are collected from the main or sub-tables of the relational database.
Both in the forward and in the reverse process, the categories are basically the
followings:

1. Identification of the outcrop

2. List of the identified objects (with codes)
3. List of the documenters
4. Date and time of the documentation
5. Coordinates
6. Importance of the outcrop
7. Type of the outcrop
8. Location of the outcrop (with description)
9. Geological description of the observed formations
10. Stratigraphy and relation of the observed and identified objects
11. Measurements
12. Fossils
13. Photos
14. Samples
15. General notes
16. List of other documented outcrops from the same location or nearby

This categorized form is suitable for reviews and overviews of the observa-
tion, and represents a printer friendly form. Printed collections of the outcrops
are often used in the fieldtrips and as appendices of written reports.
The categorization described above may reappear in visually enhanced form
of the observed geological data, but in a visual representation of a query, only
those data fields will be represented which have a value (Figure 5).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 131
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

Archive documentations rather focus on the colour, the texture, and the type
of the outcropping rock (e.g. Compton 1985, Barnes 1995). Although these char-
acteristics are still important, field geologists have already worked out methods
to classify sedimentological, tectonic, volcanological, etc. features in the field,
which help to determine the genetics of the observed rock. These features can be
recorded in the field both in DGM devices, and in traditional notebooks, but fi-
nally the data within the database will be stored in sub-tables.

Figure 5. Visually enhanced representation of a geological observation as a

Google Earth “bubble”. The categories of the documentation
were queried from the database of the observations and were
transcribed into XML files.

Visualisation of the observed data on XML bases

The XML (Extensible Markup Language) was created to store documents in ma-
chine-readable form. It was developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consorti-
um) in 1998 from an ISO standard (SGML = Standard Generalized Markup Lan-
guage) with the purpose to store and transfer data via Internet (ISO 8879: 1986,
W3C XML: 1998). The structure of an XML file is defined in a schema document
(XSD, or XMS), which, like an empty database, contains information about the
data-fields and types. The KML files, officially named the OpenGIS® KML En-
coding Standard, are also XML documents, but specialized for the description of
geospatial data. Since both the XML and the KML are open standards, data col-
lecting, processing and visualizing applications can be developed freely to imply
these data structures. The KML is maintained by the Open Geospatial Consorti-
um Inc. (OGC 2008), and was improved several times since its first publication.
The KML standard became widespread along the expansion of Google Maps and
Google Earth.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 132
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

The structure and the content of the geological observation database were
translated into KML files to create Google Earth compatible selections of specific
outcrops. In the process, the “ogckml22.xsd” XML schema file was used. The cri-
teria of the selection varied according to the purpose of the visualisation. Basic-
ally, the following criteria were used:

1. Outcrops of public interest

2. Outcrops of a specific area
3. Outcrops documented by a specific person

The first category was restricted to those outcrops which had high impor-
tance. Some of the KML files were used by the geologists of the Regional
Mapping Project, some of them were published on the Internet to disseminate
the geological knowledge (Albert and Csillag 2010).
Besides a wide range of documents, the KML format can also describe geo-
referenced images, spatial vectors, polygons and shapes. This allows one to tran-
scribe maps in raster or vector file format into KML files. It is especially useful if
the user interface – preferably a free software package for visual representation of
the data – works with this kind of file structure. Thus, the documented geological
data might be visualized together with the photos and geological maps (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Screenshot montage of the GE interface showing: a) the data and photo
of an observation point (lower right), b) a borehole log from the bore-
hole database (upper left), c) a geological map draped on the DTM, and
d) the boundary of the mapping areas (blue lines). These data together
enable one to easily overview the spatial relations between the geological
formations.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 133
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

The transcription of the geological maps of selected regions was carried out
with the Global Mapper 10 software. For the user interface the Google Earth 5.2
(GE) freely downloadable software was applied (Google Earth 2010), but any GIS
software, which is capable to read the KML format, is suitable for this purpose.
The free tool was selected for the visualization, because an unlimited number of
users can access the files after creation and interpretation of the data-packages.
Furthermore, the visual representation of the geological data in GE is enhanced
with built-in background of satellite images, digital terrain models and a wide
range of arbitrarily selectable themes. The following maps were displayed for
geo-scientific purpose along with the observational database:

• Geological maps covered and uncovered by Quaternary sediments

• Geochemical maps
• Topographic maps
• Geophysical (e.g.: Bouguer anomaly) maps
• Geological maps for tourists
• Hydro-geological maps

The geo-scientific approach of the visualization of geological data brings up

the necessity to visualize not only the observations, but, for example, the bore-
holes in a given area too (Figure 6). The borehole database as well as the observa-
tion database can be transcribed in KML format. For the querying of a database,
different from the observations, a Visual Basic script was programmed. With the
help of the script, the transcription of the query in KML files was carried out au-
tomatically from the selection of data fields, and the data were visualized ergono-
mically in the GE interface.

Results

The advantages of a relational database and the freedom of a traditional hand-

written documentation were combined in the newly developed documentation
system. This duality is represented in the authors’ documentation methods, and
in the structure of the database.
The number of photographs of an observed site has rapidly increased since
the times of digital photography. These photos themselves formed quite large
digital data, which were necessary to categorize and store in some kind of data-
base. The expansion of the GPS usage in the field also led to the creation of sets
of data. Although the created database structure follows the logic of the field
notes, both the usage of the digital photography and the GPS represent such a
technical background that is suitable for a connection between these data.
The method of the dissemination of the collected geological knowledge was
the other achievement besides the construction of the geological database.
The increasing attempt to elongate the season for tourism was one of the
main reasons for the development of the geo-tourism. Visiting geological out-
crops practically needs only good weather conditions, and except for those lati-
tudes where snow covers the geological formations in winter, any season would
be suitable for this purpose. The establishment of new national parks and nature
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 134
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

reserves and their widening profile give new challenges for the geoscientist, be-
cause the natural heritage in the concerned regions consists not only of the flora
and fauna, but the geological background as well.
A national survey of geosciences has to deal with this new challenge and find
ways to disseminate useful knowledge of the geologically interesting and scenic
locations. These geosites may be located on already preserved lands, but often
they are not. Abandoned quarries, collapsed caves on a construction site, or pic-
turesque landforms in private forests are often the subjects of such curiosity.
Some of them may be preserved only as memories, because the quarry would be
recultivated, and the cave would be buried or covered on the construction site.
These memories are the documentations and photos taken by the geologists.
The new database structure made it possible to classify the geological objects
according to their significance whether they were recorded newly or data-mined
from decades-old archives. The applied method for the visualisation made it pos-
sible to put selected sites (geosites) and maps on the Internet for public use.
These two achievements are just a small part of the work, which needs to be
done.
The legislation of the natural heritage is usually different in each country, but
the non-living part of our natural environ is considered a subject of protection
only recently even in the environmentally aware countries. On the long run, it is
inevitable for the geological surveys to mark the reference locations of all known
geologically interesting landforms and to select those that need legal protection
to be preserved.

Discussion

Before and partly parallel to the development of the geological database and doc-
umenting system, some previous methods were applied and tried in various geol-
ogical mapping projects. These methods were developed mainly by program-
mers, and the aim of the documentation was different. With the collaboration of
the Geological Institute of Hungary, a research project was initiated. Exploration
wells were drilled in order to find a safe location for the low and intermediate
level radioactive wastes in Hungary (Balla 2003). For the on-site borehole docu-
mentation, handheld PDA and an XML-based data collecting application was
used in this project (Gyalog et al. 2004).
Although at that time the XML format was quite modern, the database
structure was rigid, and when the documentation was over, the data were not
easily accessible for the geologists. Much of the effort spent on the input of the
observed data was futile. On the other hand, a quite usable, user interface was
developed to query the borehole data in an Internet browser (Gyalog et al. 2005).
This interface was designed to query only a thin segment of the overall database,
but this part – a simplified stratigraphic column of each well – was the most sig-
nificant in some way (e.g.: enabled the correlation between the borehole data and
the medium scale geological maps).
Despite the deficiencies of the results, it was an important step to apply and
try preliminary documentation systems and user interfaces. It is futile to believe
that a database structure for “all use” can be created. The database can be consi-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 135
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

dered perfect when the stored data can be accessed easily and there are no redun-
dancies in it. The users of a geological database also vary. Basin modellers search
for the lithological data, while the palaeontologists are interested in the fossils.
The nature of the geological field observation is quite unique. The range of
observation is usually limited because of time, weather and terrain conditions.
The details of the described geological formations are limited to the eye and
loupe range, and the number of collected samples is often limited by the physical
condition of the collector.
The edification in the previous borehole documentation and querying system
was that the documenters should not spend their time picking data from pre-
defined lists and fill data fields which are not or hardly accessible later. The time
consuming on-site documentation will lead to the simplification of the geological
description, and thus to a decreasing scientific value. The pre-defined – often
very long – drop-down lists on a data recording interface can also lead to the
same result.
The digital representation of the database is usually only a question of the
GIS background. If the financial conditions allow it, one can use several kinds of
software, which not only create and manage, but also properly visualize the data-
base background and the thematic maps of a region. However, this kind of com-
plex GIS functionality is quite expensive and usually only a limited number of
licences are affordable for a geological survey. The visualization of data on the
web 2.0 using free licensed software solves the problem of the licence limitation
and makes it possible to publish geological information freely and properly.
Publications of point-of-interests, satellite images and maps draped on a 3D
surface serve as useful tools to disseminate scientific knowledge amongst those,
who are interested, but not specialized in geology. The authors’ experience shows
that the map applications of the web 2.0 are useful tools for geoscientists as well.

Acknowledgements

The authors thankfully appreciate the efforts of the documenters who took care
of using the prototypes of the database, and occasionally made suggestions and
gave advice. An ergonomic documentation system and a well-structured data-
base serve the benefit of not only the geologists of the Geological Institute of
Hungary. On the long run, the base application can be widely used amongst the
Hungarian and maybe the foreign earth scientists too.

References

Albert, G., Csillag, G.: 2010. Földtani tartalomszolgáltatás web 2.0 alapokon (Ge-
ological knowledge service on web 2.0 base – Fest of the Hungarian Science with-
out boundaries – Protection, research and display of the geological heritage,
(conference) 11. November 2010. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 136
Joint ICA Symposium
Visualisation of Geological Observations on Web 2.0 Based Maps

Balla, Z.: 2004. General characteristics of the Bátaapáti (Üveghuta) Site (South-
western Hungary – Annual Report of the Geological Institute of Hungary (2003),
p. 73–91.
Barnes, J. W.: 1995. Basic Geological Mapping, 3rd Edition. Wiley, Toronto, 133 p.
Briner, A.P., Kronenberg, H., Mazurek, M., Horn, H., Engi, M., Peters, T.: 1999
FieldBook and GeoDatabase – tools for field data acquisition and analysis. –
Computers & Geosciences 25 (1999), p. 1101–1111.
Brodaric, B.: 2004. The design of GSC Fieldlog: ontology-based software for
computer aided geological mapping, – Computers & Geosciences, Vol. 30 (2004),
p. 5–20.
Clegg, P., Bruciatelli, L., Domingos, F., Jones, R.R., De Donatis, M., Wilson, R. W.:
2006. Digital geological mapping with tablet PC and PDA: A comparison –
Computers & Geosciences, Volume 32, Issue 10, December 2006, Pages 1682-1698.
Compton, R.R.: 1985. Geology in the Field. – Wiley, New York, 398 p.
Dey, S., Ghosh, P.: 2008. GRDM–A digital field-mapping tool for management
and analysis of field geological data Computers & Geosciences, Volume 34, Issue
5, May 2008, Pages 464–478.
Google Earth 2010: version 5.2.1.1588: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
[accessed: 1st of September 2010].
Gyalog, L., Havas, G., Maigut, V., Maros, Gy., Szebényi, G.: 2004. Geological-
tectonic documentation in the Bátaapáti (Üveghuta) Site – Annual Report of the
Geological Institute of Hungary (2003), p. 171–201.
Gyalog, L., Orosz, L., Sipos, A., Turczi, G.: 2005. The uniform legend system, the
borehole database and the web-based query tool of them in the Geological In-
stitute of Hungary (in Hungarian, with translated abstract, and figures) – Annual
Report of the Geological Institute of Hungary (2004), p. 109–125.
ISO 8879. 1986: Information processing – Text and office systems – Standard
Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=16387 [accessed: 4. May
2011].
Jones, R. R., McCaffrey, K. J. W., Wilson, R. W., Holdsworth, R. E.: 2004. Digital
field acquisition: towards increased quantification of uncertainty during geolo-
gical mapping. – In: Curtis, A. and Wood, R. Editors: Geological Prior Infor-
mation vol. 239, – Geological Society of London, Special Publication (2004),
p. 43–56.
Kramer, J. H.: 2000. Digital mapping systems for field data. In: Soller, D. R. (Ed.),
Digital Mapping Techniques ’00 – Workshop Proceedings. U. S. Geological Sur-
vey Open-File Report 00-325, p. 13–19,
http://pubs.usgs.gov/openfile/of00-325/kramer.html [accessed 2. May 2011].
Laxton J. L. and Becken K.: 1996. The design and implementation of a spatial
database for the production of geological maps. – Computers & Geosciences 22 7
(1996), p. 213–225.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 137
Joint ICA Symposium
Gáspár Albert, Gábor Csillag, László Fodor, László Zentai

McCaffrey, K. J. W., Jones, R.R., Holdsworth, R.E., Wilson, R.W., Clegg, P.,
Imber, J., Holliman N., Trinks, I.: 2005 Unlocking the spatial dimension: digital
technologies and the future of geoscience fieldwork – Journal of the Geological
Society, London 162 (2005), p. 927–938.
OGC 2008: XML Schema Document for OGC KML version 2.2
http://schemas.opengis.net/kml/2.2.0/ogckml22.xsd [accessed: 4. May 2011].
Struik, L.C., Atrens, A., Haynes, A.: 1991. Handheld computer as a field note-
book, and its integration with the Ontario Geological Survey’s “Fieldlog” Pro-
gram. – In: Current Research, Part A, Cordillera and Pacific Margin. – Geological
Survey of Canada, Paper No. 91-01A, p. 279–284.
W3C XML 1998, orld Wide Web Consortium – XML Technology
http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/ [accessed: 4. May 2011].
WHC 1995, UNESCO World Heritage Convention, Caves of Aggtelek Karst and
Slovak Karst – http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/725 [accessed: 4. May 2011].

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 138
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Internet and Cartography

COMPARISON OF SPATIAL KNOWLEDGE

ACQUISITION IN THE CONTEXT OF GPS-
BASED PEDESTRIAN NAVIGATION

Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt

Institute of Geoinformation and Cartography
Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
{georg.gartner, haosheng.huang, manuela.schmidt}@tuwien.ac.at

Abstract: This paper investigates the differences of spatial knowledge acquisition when
using different presentation forms in the context of GPS-based pedestrian navigation.
The acquisition of spatial knowledge based on mobile map, augmented reality (AR), and
language (verbal instruction) is analyzed and compared in an empirical test in the city
center of Salzburg (Austria). This paper presents the methodology and interprets the re-
sults. It is proposed that the results will give some hints for future mobile navigation sys-
tem development, which might need to consider not only effectively assisting users’ navi-
gation tasks, but also how these systems affect users’ spatial knowledge acquisition.

1. Introduction

Recent years have witnessed rapid advances in mobile pedestrian navigation sys-
ems, which aim at effectively assisting pedestrians’ wayfinding tasks in an unfa-
miliar environment. Different presentation forms can be used to commucate/
convey route information (directions) to pedestrians, such as maps, verbal in-
struction, and images. Recently, augmented reality (AR), which enhances the real
environment (e.g., via camera view) with registered virtual information overlays,
is considered as another promising approach for conveying route information.
Spatial knowledge acquisition is needed to build mental representations that
can be referred for wayfinding and other spatial tasks. Three levels of spatial know-
Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt

ledge can be distinguished (Siegel and White, 1975): 1. landmark knowledge

comprises salient points of reference in the environment, 2. route knowledge puts
landmarks into sequence (e.g., navigation paths), and 3. survey or configurational
knowledge allows people to locate landmarks and routes within a general frame of
reference. With sufficient spatial knowledge about an environment, especially sur-
vey knowledge, people can still find their way when navigation systems fail. Cur-
rently, more and more people are using pedestrian navigation systems. As a result,
it is important to investigate how these systems affect the acquisition of spatial
knowledge.
There is some research focusing on empirically studying the acquisition of
spatial knowledge in the context of pedestrian navigation. Gartner and Hiller
(2009) investigated maps with different display sizes, and showed that display
size influences spatial knowledge acquisition during navigation. Ortag (2005)
studied the differences of spatial knowledge acquisition with map and language
when guiding wayfinders. Krüger et al. (2004) compared the impact of different
modalities (i.e. audio and graphics, specially, images indicating route directions)
on spatial knowledge acquisition during navigating in a zoo, and concluded that
the acquisition of route knowledge is much better than that of survey knowledge.
In Aslan et al. (2006), the differences in acquiring spatial knowledge with and
without technology (i.e. mobile maps vs. paper maps) were studied. It is impor-
tant to note that most of the above studies employ the “Wizard of Oz” proto-
typing (Wikipedia, 2011) (e.g. without using the GPS). Ishikawa et al. (2008)
compared the acquisition of spatial knowledge with GPS-based systems, paper
maps and direct experience of routes, and showed a poorer performance of sub-
jects using GPS-based system.
The goal of this paper is to empirically study the differences in spatial know-
ledge acquisition with different presentation forms, comparing mobile maps, AR,
and language (verbal instruction) in the context of GPS-based pedestrian naviga-
ion. This research is part of the ways2navigate project, which is a cooperated
project of Vienna University of Technology, Salzburg Research and another 3 in-
stitutes. It investigates the suitability of language and AR based navigation con-
cepts in comparison to mobile maps for conveying navigation and route infor-
mation to pedestrians. Three iterative field tests are planned in the ways2navigate
project. For each field test, we are interested in the questions of how these tech-
nologies can help to reduce cognitive load during wayfinding, and how these
technologies influence the acquisition of spatial knowledge. This paper will re-
port the methodology and results of the first experiment, with a focus on compa-
rison of spatial knowledge acquisition with these different presentation forms.

2. Methodology

A route in the city centre of Salzburg (Austria) was selected for our empirical test
(Figure 1). The route was divided into three sub-routes, each with a number of
way-points (decision points). The test was performed with 24 subjects of diffe-
rent backgrounds and different experiences with navigation systems (13 female
and 11 male, age range 22–63, mean age 40). They were also divided into three
groups. We used within subject design, i.e. for each sub-route, these three groups

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 140
Joint ICA Symposium
Comparison of Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in the Context of GPS-Based Pedestrian
Navigation

each used one of the presentation forms (mobile map, AR, and language). When
they reached the next sub-route, they switched to another presentation forms.
The whole test can be completed within 2 hours.

Figure 1. The three sub-routes in Salzburg (Austria)

The three presentation forms were carefully implemented and deployed on

GPS-enabled mobile devices. The map application is based on OpenStreetMap,
and the calculated route is highlighted and overlaid in the map view. The map
center is continually updated when the position changes. The language applica-
tion implements the results of our previous project SemWay (Rehrl et al., 2009).
Landmarks and semantic information are enriched in route instructions. The AR
application overlays route directions on the camera view.
At the beginning of every test, the test conditions were explained. During
their navigation, subjects were observed by the instructor, and their movement
and interaction with the navigation system were recorded by a logger. When
reaching the end of each sub-route, subjects were asked to solve some tasks and
answer some questions:

• Pointing task: to give an approximate direction to the starting point. It is

measured in angle via a digital compass on mobile phones
• Sketching map: to draw a sketch map of the area they just passed as pre-
cisely as possible. Subjects were asked to focus on the route and land-
marks when drawing the map.
• Marking task: To mark the half of the route on the sketched map
• Familiarity with the sub-route

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 141
Joint ICA Symposium
Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt

3. Results and discussion

The field experiment was completed on Nov. 2010. The results were analyzed by
focusing on sense of direction (the pointing task), sketch maps (focusing on to-
pological aspects: sketched landmarks, errors in sketching turns [missing/wrong/
unnecessary turns]), and sense of distance (marking half of the route). We only
considered the results from subjects who are unfamiliar with the sub-routes. In
total, we got 24 subject/sub-route pairs (8 for mobile map, 8 for language, and 8
for AR). In the following, we present and discuss the results.

3.1. Sketched landmarks

Figure 2. How the number of sketched landmarks differs among using

different technologies

Figure 2 shows that subjects with the “language” application drew more land-
marks in their sketch map compared to subjects using “AR” and “mobile map”.
We also found that 78% of the landmarks sketched by subjects using “language”
are mentioned/included in the verbal wayfinding instruction.
The reason why subjects using “mobile map” and “AR” drew fewer land-
marks may be that for both applications, landmarks are not explicitly highlighted
(for “mobile map”, landmarks are displayed in the background map, while for
“AR”, landmark information are not visualized). For the “language” application,
landmarks are explicitly included in the wayfinding instruction.
We also did an ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance) test. According to the test,
there is no significant difference in number of sketched landmarks across diffe-
rent conditions (F(2,21) = 1.63, p = 0.22).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 142
Joint ICA Symposium
Comparison of Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in the Context of GPS-Based Pedestrian
Navigation

3.2. Errors in sketching turns (missing/wrong turns in sketch map)

Figure 3. How the number of missing/wrong turns differs among

different technologies

The results in Figure 3 show that subjects using “mobile map” made considerably
fewer errors in sketching turns compared to subjects using “AR” and “language”.
This is consistent with our expectation: in the “AR” and “language” application,
turns are not conveyed/presented in a spatial-related overview context. As a re-
sult, subjects using “AR” and “language” would make more errors in sketching
turns.
However, according to the ANOVA test, the difference among these presen-
tation forms is not significant (F[2,21] = 1.60, p = 0.31).

3.3. Sense of distance (marking the half of the sub-route)

Figure 4. How the sense of distance differs among different technologies

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 143
Joint ICA Symposium
Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt

Figure 4 shows that subjects using “mobile map” performed better in mark-
ing the half of the sub-route compared to subjects using “AR” and “language”.
However, the differences among them are not significant as our expectation. An
explanation may be that subjects using “mobile map” did not make full use of the
“mobile map” application (e.g. they seldom used the “overview map” function
and the zooming function). As a result, for all presentation forms, the know-
ledge about sense of distance is mainly gained from sensual perception of the real
world (without the acquisition of spatial knowledge from presentation forms,
such as mobile map).
The ANOVA test also shows that the difference among these presentation
forms is not significant (F[2,21] = 0.3, p = 0.74).

3.4. Sense of direction (Pointing to the starting point)

Figure 5. How the sense of direction (Pointing to the starting point) differs
among different technologies

The results in Figure 5 show that subjects using “mobile map” and “language”
peformed considerably better in marking the half of the sub-route compared to
subjects using “AR”. The results for “AR” are not surprising, because the “AR”
application suffers from the poor GPS signal (compared to “mobile map” and
“language”) and poor compass accuracy, and thus brings some confusion to the
subjects. However, subjects using “mobile map” did not perform considerably
better than subjects using “language”, which is inconsistent with our expectation.
A possible explanation is that subjects using “mobile map” did not make full use
of the “mobile map” application (e.g. they seldom used the “overview map”
function and the zooming function).
It is also important to note that according to the ANOVA test, the difference
among these presentation forms is not significant (F[2,21] = 1.23, p = 0.23).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 144
Joint ICA Symposium
Comparison of Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in the Context of GPS-Based Pedestrian
Navigation

4. Summary, limitations and work in progress

In summary, the results of the experiment confirm our hypothesis that: in the
context of GPS-based pedestrian navigation, among different presentation forms
(mobile map, language (verbal instruction), and AR), using presentation form
“mobile map” leads to more accuracy in pointing the starting point (sense of
direction), more accuracy in sketching turns, and more accuracy in marking the
half of the route (sense of distance). However, it is important to note that no
significant differences are found for the above aspects.
As landmarks are not explicitly highlighted in both the “mobile map” and
“AR” applications, the results for sketched landmarks cannot really be used to
prove/disprove the hypothesis on the aspect of sketched landmarks. More in-
vestigation on this aspect will be carefully investigated in the second field expe-
riment. The following limitations about the above results have to be noted:

1. In total, only 24 subject/sub-route pairs are labeled as “unfamiliar”.

2. For most of the subjects, their marks of the half were somehow consis-
tent with the half of the route in their sketch map. Thus, the sense of dis-
tance may not be accurately measured by their marks.
3. A digital compass on mobile phones is used to measure the pointed di-
rections in the pointing task. Its accuracy is often affected by some other
devices.
4. The use of sketch map to measure spatial knowledge acquisition is based
on the assumption that people can draw more accurate sketch map when
they have better spatial knowledge acquisition. However, sometimes this
may be problematic.

Currently, we are improving the applications (“mobile map”, “language” and

“AR”) and the methodology for the second experiment. We also plan to differen-
tiate three kinds of spatial knowledge (landmark, route, and survey knowledge),
and investigate how these presentation forms influence the acquisition of these.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Way2navigate project, funded by the Austria
FFG’s ways2go programme (2009). The project is a cooperation of Salzburg Re-
search, TraffiCon, WalkSpaceMobilität, TU Wien, and FACTUM.

References

Aslan, I., Schwalm, M., Baus, J., Kruger, A. and Schwartz, T.: (2006) Acquisition
of Spatial Knowledge in Location Aware Mobile Pedestrian Navigation Systems.
In: MobileHCI ’06, p. 105–108. ACM Press, New York.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 145
Joint ICA Symposium
Georg Gartner, Haosheng Huang, Manuela Schmidt

Gartner, G., and Hiller, W.: (2009) Impact of restricted display size on spatial
knowledge acquisition in the context of pedestrian navigation. In: Location Based
Services and TeleCartography II, Springer, p. 155–166, 2009
Ishikawa, T., Fujiwara, H., Imai, O., and Okabe, A.: (2008) Wayfinding with a
GPS-based mobile navigation system: a comparison with maps and direct experi-
ence. Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (1), p. 74–82.
Krüger, A., Aslan, I., and Zimmer, H.: (2004) The Effects of Mobile Pedestrian
Navigation Systems on the Concurrent Acquisition of Route and Survey Know-
ledge. Mobile HCI, p. 446–450.
Rehrl , K., Leitinger, S., Gartner, G., and Ortag, F.: (2009) An analysis of direc-
tion and motion concepts in verbal descriptions of route choices, Proceedings of
the 9th international conference on Spatial information theory, September 21–
25, 2009, Aber Wrac’h, France.
Siegel, A. and White, S.: (1975) The development of spatial representations of
large scale environments. In: Reese, H. (Ed.): Advances in child development and
behaviour. 10, p. 9–55, Academic Press, New York, 1975.
Ortag, F.: (2005) Sprachausgabe vs. Kartendarstellung in der Fußgängernaviga-
tion, Master thesis, Vienna University of Technology, 2005.
Wikipedia (2011) Wizard of Oz experiment,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment, accessed on 4. 2011.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 146
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Tactile Cartography in Schools

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN GEOGRAPHY:

MUNICIPAL ATLAS AND THE GROUP OF
TACTILE MAPS IN UNESP OURINHOS

Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena1, Barbara Gomes Flaire Jordão2,

Cristiano Gimenez3, Mariane Ravagio Catelli4
Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil)
1 [email protected]
2 [email protected]
3 [email protected]
4 [email protected]

Abstract: For the purpose of collaborating with reflections and attitudes that include the
visually impaired in Brazil, is the responsibility of Geography creating methods and tech-
niques that indicate a direction for inclusive education, orientation and mobility for these
individuals. In the Unesp – Ourinhos we have a project entitled “Municipal Scholar Atlas
of Ourinhos–SP and teacher training tutors’ proposals for the study of location”, the pro-
ject proposes the creation of a scholar atlas with multiple languages, including Tactile
Cartography. The group, born in this context in order to know about literature searches,
representation techniques, discussions of texts and production, with various strands of
research in order to embrace the diverse worlds of this science and to make the inter-
change of experiences and informations for mutual growth of the group and other re-
searchers in pro of visually impaired individuals.

A brief history of inclusion in brazil

Worldwide, for a long time, the “different” was placed on the margin of educa-
tion: students with disabilities, in particular, were attended only in separated or
excluded from the educational process, based on normal standards; the special
C. C. Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, B. Gomes Flaire Jordão, C. Gimenez, M. Ravagio Catelli

education, when it exists, also remained devialed from the organization and pro-
vision of educational services.
For that, special education in Brazil, modality of scholar education, as speci-
fied in the Law of Directives and Bases (LDB) and the recent decree No. 3298 of
December 20, 1999, Article 24, § 1. becomes an instrument, because it is:

“(...) an educational process defined in a pedagogical proposal, providing a set of

recourses and special education services, institutionally organized to support,
complement, supplement and, in some cases, substitute the common educational
services, to guarantee scholar education and promote the development potential
of the students who have special educational needs, at all levels, steps and modal-
ities of basic education.”

Brazil has begun highlighting the special education recently. When we in-
quiry the national story, we realize that the experiences started in the nineteenth
century, were based in model American and European’s models, but with dif-
ferent characteristics from those observed in these countries, persisting the
longest phase of negligence or omission, and the scarce production was concen-
trated, for the most part, in academic circles.
In the 70s, the evolution on special education in the developed countries with
regard to Brazil continues to have an advantage. According to Miranda (2003)
discussions and questions about the integration of disabled people in society in
the other countries and in the national stage, come across the institutionalization
of special education in terms of public policy planning with the creation of the
National Center for Special Education (CENESP) in 1973.
The movement of social integration in the world stage had its biggest impulse
from the 80’s, as successful initiatives of rehabilitation services for people with
disabilities and because the movements for disability people’s rights. In Brazil,
this decade also represented a time of social struggles led by the excluded popula-
tion. Full Sena (2008):

“After being rehabilitated, physically and professionally, some people with disa-
bilities were considered able to return to society (school, work, leisure, etc.). This
process was originally known as reiteration, because it was applied only in people
who were function in the society before acquiring a disability. So, it was not ap-
plied to children that born with a disability or have it in the first years of life.
From the 1980s, the reintegration is now called integration and is used for any-
one with disabilities.” (p. 64)

These actions culminated with the obligation of the State to guarantee the
specialized educational services to the handicapped, preferably within the regular
school system, presents in Article 208, paragraph III of the Constitution (Brazil,
1988).
In the following decade, Brazil participated in the World Conference on Edu-
cation for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, which begun the discussions about a
scholar’s model attending called inclusion. In 1994, Brazil signed the Declaration
of Salamanca, in Spain, that proclaimed the principles of rights to education for

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 148
Joint ICA Symposium
Inclusive Education in Geography: Municipal Atlas and the Group of Tactile Maps
in UNESP Ourinhos

people with disabilities, from a pedagogy centered in the student, and introduce
the concept of inclusive education in national education.
Recognizing bases of 2000, collected during the census conducted by the
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), that using an ample defi-
nition of disability, identified in our population of 24,600,256 people, or 14.4% of
population with some difficulty of hearing, seeing, moving or mental disability.
In this scenario, Geography – in principle related to visual perception, as a
consequence of classical traditions – is allied to Scholar Cartography, also re-
sponsible for developing materials and techniques that take account of a mino-
rity that needs a non-conventional education, as blind and visually impaired,
being called from there Tactile Mapping.

The Tactile Cartography in Ourinhos — Brazil

The map, a tool of undeniable importance inside Geography, is essential in the

acquisition of geographic knowledge, and must be present in people’s lives from
an early age, to help in the recognition of space and social relations presents.
When we reflect on this process of knowledge’s acquisition and construction of
citizenship – where maps can and should have a significant portion of contribu-
tion – we look at the importance of cartography, which must be present very
early in people’s lives. Therefore it is necessary since the early years of school,
learning to read, analyze and interpret language and graphic representations.
The Atlas enables students, through a collection of maps, the study of places
and different information, and even the same information seen by different au-
thors. When it interlinks, can give the student an opportunity to understand the
Geography in different scales, to understand the proper function of different
scales, and realize that reality has not the same structure as a photograph, be-
cause depends on the viewpoint of those who mapped it.
The Brazilian legislation, gives importance to local and regional study in
every city, in a process of spatial knowledge that goes from part to whole, from
simple to complex, from near to far, and finally the neighborhood and the city in
the world.
For this purpose, there is at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) Campus
Ourinhos in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil – under coordination of PhD Andréa
Aparecida Zacharias, the project named “Development of scholar municipal atlas
of Ourinhos–SP and training tutors teachers: Proposals for the study of the
locality”. This project proposes a scholar atlas with multiple languages that will
lead to the students a conscience of the spatiality of their city and better under-
stand the physical and social phenomenas that they experience.
For that, the design of the Atlas will have the following versions: Analogic At-
las (on paper), with 3D Digital Atlas Scenic Flights, Tactile Atlas, and a docu-
mentary film version of the city.
The group of Tactile Cartography in Unesp Ourinhos, born, so in that con-
text, with the purpose of knowing and researching the Tactile Cartography, to
contribute to the tactile version of the Municipal Scholar Atlas of Ourinhos and
through the interest of graduate students of the Campus and experience of PhD
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 149
Joint ICA Symposium
C. C. Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, B. Gomes Flaire Jordão, C. Gimenez, M. Ravagio Catelli

Besides the library research, discussions of texts, research and production

techniques of representation, inside the group emerged different topics of re-
search to encompass diverse worlds of this science and make the exchange of ex-
periences and information for mutual growth of the group in pro of visually im-
paired peoples.
The first topic deals with the study, construction and testing of thematic tac-
tile maps, contributing for standardization inquired to tactile maps. As the study
of thematic maps is quite large, were chosen for this job quantitative thematic
maps. Maps were made by locating the Ourinhos in São Paulo, using the tech-
nique of collage with various materials of different textures, and the technique of
drawing in aluminum sheets.
In October 2010, was realized in association with Project Colloid coordinated
by PhD Maria Cristina Perusi, receiving a group of non-governmental organiza-
tion, Association Jacarezinhense Care Deaf Service and Visually Impaired – Spe-
cial Education School, Professor Carlos Neufert (AJADAVI) on campus, with
about 20 people with hearing and vision, disability realized some activities, in-
cluding a test stage of tactile cartographic representations developed. The maps
were greeted with optimism by people with disabilities, who praised and sug-
gested some changes and adaptations.
After the first stage of testing, the group began the construction of a topo-
graphic model of Ourinhos in cardboard locating its urban area. The intent of
the model is that, beyond the perception of different altitudes, students recognize
the urban area (which was represented with another texture) and establish a pro-
portional relation between the size of the urban area and the total area of the city.
The model was presented at the 5th ENSIGEO held at UNESP / Ourinhos.
People show interest in knowing the project. As the prospect of continuing the
project, new features are being developed and aims to expand contact with other
groups that work with people with disabilities to apply and evaluate these mate-
rials.
The intention is to present to visually impaired people the Thematic Carto-
graphy and thematic maps (mainly quantitative) to test its effectiveness and re-
ceive feedback to guide improvements, both in methodology and materials used
to construct these maps.
The second topic, is also directly connected to the experience in the school
environment. It is the participatory construction of a adapted globe based on
visits made by the group on days 1, 2 and 3 December 2010, during participation
in the 1st Seminar of Graphical Representations in Relief at the Institute Benja-
min Constant (IBC), where were notice a need of a tactile globe more complete.
At the seminar it was possible to knew research about the topic and inclu-
sion, besides techniques and materials developed at the institution. Detach the
work done with people who have deaf-blindness, methods and materials used in
production of other disciplines such as chemistry, biology and mathematics, and
a software that support the visually impaired person.
Although the institution have national prominence and with a significant
production of materials, the globes used by students are fragmented, such as
globe to identify the continent, another for the representation of meridians and
parallels to another. The systematization of information in just one globe is a
challenge to be faced. Prominent among positive results in its use, the possibility

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 150
Joint ICA Symposium
Inclusive Education in Geography: Municipal Atlas and the Group of Tactile Maps
in UNESP Ourinhos

of teaching content extremely abstract, so with a high degree of difficulty of assi-

milation by the students, such as geographic coordinates and enthusiasm caused
by handling the globe by different students.

Figure 1. Tactile Globe with parallels

The third topic concerns about the orientation and mobility for people with
visual impairments, developing tactile maps and tactile models that will be
present in public places. These maps should have autonomy, so we emphasize
the importance of education for that spatial concepts are well understood by
users. Direct experience with mobility began with the production of a model of
campus of UNESP Ourinhos These maps will also be present in touristic points
helping promote inclusive tourism, in Barra Bonita, SP.

Final

The Tactile Cartography justified as scientific research when we analyze the large
number of visually impaired people in Brazil. “The bases about the registration in
special education show that students with visual impairments totaling more than
70,000 registered in 2006 (adding to the blind, low vision and deaf-blindness).”
(Sena, 2008, p. 72). Often, schools and teachers are not prepared to receive these
students. Not given the deserved attention to their need, they do not assimilate
the content, as opposed to living the now-called “social inclusion”.
Social inclusion is defined as “the process that society adapts to be able to in-
clude in their social systems generally, people with special needs and at the same
time they prepare to assume their roles in society” (Sassaki, 1997, apud Sena
2008).
Vision is the main channel to capture the environment, helping us to under-
stand the space and all the information it provides. The disadvantage that the vi-
sually impaired person suffers over the loss of information from space can be
mitigated, if we use right resources for their educational process.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 151
Joint ICA Symposium
C. C. Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, B. Gomes Flaire Jordão, C. Gimenez, M. Ravagio Catelli

Thus, the Tactile Mapping shows extremely useful and promising, both for its
scientific and didactic character or because its role as a catalyst for a true inclu-
sion, executing its role as disseminator of knowledge, especially for those who are
still in our society many physical, social and didactic obstacles.

References

Brasil. Constituição da Republica Federativa do Brasil, de 5 de outubro de 1988.

Brasil. Decreto nº 3.298 – de 20 de dezembro de 1999. Disponível em
http://www010.dataprev.gov.br/sislex/paginas/23/1999/3298.htm>
Acesso: 15 fev 2011.
Brasil. Ministério da Educação. Programa Educação Inclusiva: direito à diversi-
dade. Secretaria da educação Especial – MEC. Disponível em
http://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=288
&Itemid=355> Acesso: 15 fev 2011.
Brasil. Ministério da Educação. Lei Nº. 9394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996.
Diretrizes e bases da educação nacional. MEC, 1996. 26 p.
Brasil. Ministério da Educação. Parecer CNE/CBE Nº. 17, de 17 de agosto de
2001. Diretrizes nacionais para a educação especial na educação básica. Secretária
de Educação Especial – MEC, 2001. 79 p.
Sassaki, R. K.: Inclusão: construindo uma sociedade para todos. Rio de Janeiro:
WVA, 1997.
Sena, C. C. R. G. De: Cartografia tátil no ensino de Geografia: uma proposta
metodológica de desenvolvimento e associação de recursos didáticos adaptados a
pessoas com deficiência visual. Tese de Doutorado. Departamento de Geografia,
FFLCH – USP. São Paulo, 2008.
Sena, C. C. R. G. Jordão, B. G. F.: A cartografia tátil para alunos deficientes visu-
ais: a experiência do globo adaptado. Pôster apresentado no Encontro Nacional
de Práticas de Ensino de Geografia – 2011.
Vasconcellos, R.: A Cartografia Tátil e o Deficiente Visual: uma avaliação das eta-
pas de produção e uso do mapa. 1993. Tese de Doutorado. Departamento de
Geografia. FFLCH–USP. São Paulo. 1993.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 152
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Tactile Cartography in Schools

STUDY ON THE ACQUISITION OF

THE CONCEPT OF SPATIAL REPRESENTATION
BY VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE

Silvia Elena Ventorini1, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas2

1 Universidade Federal de São João del Rei, UFSJ (Brazil)
[email protected]
2 Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP (Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: This article aims to present the results and analyses of research whose main ob-
jective was to investigate how visually impaired people are able to learn and draw. Further-
more what the importance is of acquiring the concept of spatial representation for reading,
interpretation and analysis of tactile cartographic documents by this segment of the popu-
lation. The data and analyses presented in this paper were collated from a Special School
and a Children’s Rehabilitation Center. In our research we concluded that a blind child de-
velops this concept in the same way as any other child, acquiring the concept of the per-
manent object, acquiring semantic memory and graphic act, attributing sensory and phys-
ical meaning to the graphic act and showing difficulties to draw locations and objects that
don’t possess significance in their experience of life.

Introduction

Probably every teacher of the lower grades at Elementary School has already ob-
served a student in the act of drawing and seen materialize on the paper graphic
shapes similar to those of other children (Valente, 2008a). Through imitation and
mediation of adults or other children, from the earliest age children without vi-
sual impairments are encouraged to develop graphical representations. In their
act of drawing, they produce similar graphic forms on the paper, usually consi-
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

dered “stereotypical”: the sun represented by a circle with rays emerging or set
the house represented by a triangle on top of a square (Valente, 2008).
These drawings have been the subject of studies by many researchers, both
nationally and internationally. Relevant research on how drawings express the
children’s perceptions of the living space as well as understanding of the mental
and structural factors responsible for the process of producing these graphic
signs, contribute to the development of methodological procedures that assist in
expanding the cartographic and geographic concepts of these individuals.
However, note that there is insufficient research on the drawings by blind
subjects and how they can express knowledge about a particular object or
environment by means of graphic language. Many parents and teachers believe
that the act of drawing is only possible through the use of a visual channel, for
this reason they try not to encourage blind children to draw. Others (teachers)
upon teaching blind children to draw, expect these to produce representations
similar to those of children that can see.
In our research on the spatial organization of a group of blind students, we
engaged them in an activity where they were to do render drawings. This option
was considered when we observed that the students produced graphical
representations of isolated objects. We also used as a basis, reflections about that
which the authors of School Cartography divulge with respect to the importance
of drawings for children to learn about standard maps and about how these
children’s drawings are representations of their thoughts about the world (Alme-
ida, 2010). We also sought to investigate if drawings have the same importance
for the blind. The study referred to on spatial organization was published in a
book by Ventorini (2009) named, Experience as a determining factor in the spa-
tial representation of the visually impaired.
However, there were unanswered questions in the aforementioned paper:
how, for example, these students, particularly one who lost his sight in the early
years of his life, acquired the necessary concepts to express themselves through
drawings? What are these concepts and what is the process to acquire them?
Why aren’t all blind people able to draw, as we observed in theory and practice
involving a blind student, who was 15 years of age?
In academic publications we discovered that drawing activities do not make
up part of the everyday lives of blind people, perhaps, due to the fact that it’s a
visual activity. In our view there is no difference in the meaning of drawings
produced by blind children and those who aren’t if they are interpreted in the
following way:

“A child’s drawing is, thus, a system of representation. Not a copy of objects, but
an interpretation of that which is real, done by the child in graphic language.
Looking at a drawing in this way, it is possible to see beyond the infantile stages
of the drawing, and analyze them as an expression of a language, which children
appropriate to make their impressions visible, thereby socializing their experi-
ences. In one representation, “X” does not equal reality “R”, which represents
this, and the connection can be either analog or arbitrary (author’s emphasis).
The drawing establishes an analog link with the object represented, as the visual
signifiers are of the same nature as its meaning (our emphasis). [...]. The graphic
image is not, therefore, a copy of the real. It depends on the systems of represent-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 154
Joint ICA Symposium
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired
People

ation of the, its perception of the object and its graphical abilities.” (Almeida,
2010, p. 27)

The considerations of the author, although they concern the drawings of

children with normal vision, also apply to the drawings prepared by the group of
blind students who participated in our survey. Their drawings are representation
systems, not copies, they function as a means of socialization, as they are visible
to the eyes of those who see them and visible to the touch of those who feel them.
Considering that for a blind child to render graphical representations, it is
necessary to acquire the concept of symbolism – that something can represent
another object or the same object- how does such a child develop this concept
and represent it through drawings? The question is relevant, because it questions
the association between seeing and knowing and refers to the questions made by
Baptista (2005, p. 1), “What is knowing? To see is to know? Sensory feeling is to
know? One of the responses current in psychology and in the educational envir-
onment relates to the act of knowing to the acquisition of concepts.” This answer
takes us back to the question: how does a blind child develop the concept of sym-
bolism and represent it in drawings? Another question that crossed our minds
was: could it be that when a blind person learns to draw, that this facilitates the
acquisition of concept mapping?
Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present findings and analyses of the re-
search developed, whose main objective was to investigate how blind people can
learn to draw and how important the acquisition of drawing concepts is for read-
ing, interpretation and analysis of tactile cartographic documents among mem-
bers of this part of the public.
The data and analyses presented in this publication were collected from a
Special School, whose name is EMIEE “Maria Aparecida Muniz Michelin–José
Benedito Carneiro – Hearing Impaired and Visually Impaired”, located in
Araras, a city in the state of São Paulo from 5 students who participated and
from the Princess Victoria Children’s Rehabilitation Center, located in Rio Claro,
state of São Paulo, in 2009, involving a 15-year old ninth grade student who has
been blind since birth.

The context where blind students learn to draw

At the Special School the material used for drawing consisted of a board covered
with thin fabric, crayons and A4 150 gsm paper. The fabric was attached to the
back of the board by small tacks. One of the edges of the paper was attached by a
clip, which is part of the board. When scribbling on the paper with the crayons,
the thin fabric produces a high relief that can be felt by touch.
After drawing the first lines these blind students found a lot of pleasure in
using this material and being able to feel by touch what they were scribbling.
There are other variables that allow these students to continue with their draw-
ings, as discussed throughout this document, but the satisfaction of the students
upon feeling the effect of the movement of the crayons on the paper is evident.
The same was not observed at the Children’s Rehabilitation Center during
the collection of the data. The drawing activities were not included in the blind

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 155
Joint ICA Symposium
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

student’s daily routine. The facility also lacked suitable material for this purpose.
For the drawing activities a sheet of aluminum and a pen were used. After scratch-
ing a mark in the aluminum the line produced a low relief on the side where the
drawing was being rendered and a high relief on the opposite side. So to feel by
touch the lines etched into the sheet the student had to run their fingers over the
opposite side of the drawing (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. Material used for drawings Figure 2. Student feeling the lines on
at the Rehabilitation Center the reverse side of the sheet
(Collection of the Tactile Cartography Group, UNESP, photo: Juliasz, 2009)

In the first activity with this material it was possible to observe the student’s
discomfort in using a material that was so different from that of his colleagues, as
well as a certain lack of interest in the material, which didn’t allow him to effec-
tively feel the movement of the pen. This material was replaced with a board cov-
ered with thin fabric, the same that is used at EMIEE.
Figures 1 and 2 show that the student does not have the motor coordination
necessary to etch a scratch on the material, nor the coordination to “see” the lines
drawn, even when the feeling the opposite sides of the sheet on which the lines
were in relief. We also point out that even providing suitable material for this stu-
dent to draw on, the results collected indicated a lack of manual motor coordina-
tion. The lines produced by the student did not have stand out enough to be felt by
touch and show up very faintly on the paper. We put it down to a lack of bimanual
coordination, and consequently of graphic memory.

Bimanual coordination and graphics memory

In the book Visual Impairment and Manipulative Skills, Rubayo et al. (2007)
suggest activities and materials that aid in tactile stimulation. Many of the
authors’ suggestions were observed at the Special School, such as how to; make
balls of paper, paint with your fingers using open molds, classify and sort a mix-
ture of small objects, differentiate textures, recognize miniatures and figures in
high relief, recognize geometric figures, differentiate sizes of objects etc.
The authors’ suggestions are to increase the sensitivity of the fingertips, the
pressure when closing and opening one’s hands and fingers and bimanual coor-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 156
Joint ICA Symposium
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired
People

dination. The hand actions undergo a proper sequence of motions and for Ruba-
yo et al. (2007) the principles of bimanual coordination are:

• Handle delicate and fragile objects differently from durable ones;

• Consider that the neurological maturity in itself is not sufficient for the
development of manual skills, because opportunities are necessary for
the hands to move in various situations;
• Know that each hand has an asymmetric function, and one is dominant
and is more commonly used to the handle objects and in other activities
and the other acts as a helper;
• Consider that the manual coordination serves to improve the efficiency
and dexterity of the hands. The hands should be relaxed for any manual
activity. The tension in the hands restricts the neuromotor reflexes that
must be produced, causing stiff and distorted movements, affecting the
activity to be carried out (ibid, 2007).

At the Special School we noted that the activities for mastering bimanual
coordination were conducted with the students who lost their vision early in life
and those who lost their vision later. In our observations we found that students
who developed the impairment in adulthood demonstrated more difficulties in
coordinating both hands in the activities, such as the activity where they used
their non-dominant hand to feel the outline of the drawing. Moreover, we ob-
served the tension in their hands as cited by Rubayo et al. (2007). This was
caused by the trauma of having lost their vision.
Many of the activities developed at the Special School were aimed at braille
literacy or learning. Simon, Ochaíta and Huertas (1991) and Ochaíta and Espi-
nosa (2004), point out that, in general, the visually impaired read with the index
finger of the dominant hand and use the index finger of the other hand to guide
them when changing lines. In children’s literacy development, the authors ob-
served that a child only uses one finger, returning along the same line to start
reading the next. They also emphasize the need for the development of tactile
sensitivity and bimanual coordination. The drawing activity requires similar co-
ordination, as the student draws with one hand and uses the other for orienta-
tion.
In order to hold and draw the hand and fingers need to undergo a series of
exercises. Duarte (2008) points out that Marc Jeannerod calls this preparation,
pre-training of the hand, which assists in the correlation between opening and
molding of the hand to pick up the object and feel the size and shape of the ob-
ject.
Little by little the child’s mental memory develops of how to hold a pencil
and produce the primary symbolic representation, which along with speech will
allow it to express its repertoire from memory. In children who see, this occurs
by imitation and mediation. In terms of the blind child this will need to be sti-
mulated, since the lack of vision prevents it from observing and imitating the act
of writing and /or drawing.
In work involving drawings we observed the importance of this memory. A
blind 10-year-old student whose name is Luana was going through a phase of
tactile development when we met her and as her field of vision before becoming

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 157
Joint ICA Symposium
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

blind was not sufficient to visualize the shapes of objects and draw them, her mo-
tor memory was not developed enough to render, for example, a square.
In our study, we didn’t apply methods to teach the student how to draw, but
educational situations in which the student understands how three-dimensional
representations (models) may represent locations in their daily lives. In these si-
tuations, Luana would feel these models that represented known environments,
exploring and comparing the real objects with the representations, then pro-
duced drawings of these environments. In other situations she would develop
mental maps to solve problem situations. These procedures were adopted for all
those who participated in the survey.
Figure 3 was the first drawing of the classroom produced by Luana, after
feeling a model representing the place (Figure 4). The drawing was done a year
and a half after the student began attending classes at the Special School. In the
analysis of the drawing it is evident, even though the student is not proficient in
graphic shapes, that almost all the existing objects in the room were represented-
except for three chairs and the teacher’s desk. The analysis also indicates that
Luana had difficulties to represent objects in their correct locations, indicating
that she still hasn’t mastered the spatial organization of the classroom.

Figure 3. First mental map drawn Figure 4. Model of the classroom

by Luana

Figure 5 shows the student’s drawing after exploring the classroom with our
mediation. In this mediation we explained to the student the position of the ob-
jects in relation to each other as well as their different sizes. When exploring the
environment the student pointed out that the doll’s house was not represented in
the model, which she played with and that the student desks were not positioned
one after another, as represented in the model. The exploration of the room was
held two weeks after the previously reported activity and there was a change in
the positions of the furniture in the room and we thought it was better not to
change them to check if the student would notice the differences.
The student’s drawing was done soon after exploring the locality. In this
drawing we discovered that there was an improvement in graphic shapes, but
confusion in the spatial distribution of the objects, especially with respect to the
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 158
Joint ICA Symposium
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired
People

distance between the chairs and desks. The student represents these objects one
on top of the other. In her representation of the dollhouse we are able to see that
Luana sought to represent the slope of the roof by drawing a triangle, and a
chimney with a rectangle. The shapes attributed to the details of the house were
not obtained from tactile pictures, but through interaction with the object. The
graphic knowledge used to represent these characteristics was acquired in the
drawing activities of geometric shapes.

Figure 5. Drawing rendered by Luana after having explored her environment

Legend: A) desks, B) chairs, C) board, D) notice board, E) cupboard,
F) windows, G) dollhouse, H) door

Figure 6/a. Luana’s model of Figure 6/b. Luana’s drawing of

the classroom the classroom

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 159
Joint ICA Symposium
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

In extension activities, Luana built a model of the classroom where she

attended classes at the Special School and then created a mental map of the site.
There is evidence of the student’s knowledge developing in this new drawing
both in terms of the graphic and spatial organization. Figures 6/a and b show the
model developed by student and figure 7 shows the drawing.
Advances in spatial distribution of the objects represented were generated by
the activities involving the model and by exploring the everyday environment.
The improvement, however, in graphical shape is the result of the work done at
school, that is, of the drawing teaching and learning situations, which have also
improved Luana’s motor memory for graphical shapes.
At the Special School the student was encouraged to represent anything he/
she recognized, for example the shape of a circle, by a drawing. This drawing task
was slow and the main objective wasn’t to teach the students to draw the same as
children that can see, rather it was to contribute to them having their own per-
sonal brand, as well as allowing them to understand geometric figures.
The movement associated with drawing on paper assisted in motor coordi-
nation and helped the student to acquire the necessary grip to hold a pencil and/
or a pen and write his/her name. Luana’s improvement in presenting graphic
shapes resulted from the activities directed at developing her literacy. The shape
used to represent slope of the roof of the house is similar to the slope of the letter
A, learned by the student.
When we look at how the student writes her name, beyond the concepts al-
ready discussed, it is evident that she needs to acquire the concept for rendering
sloping lines to write the letter A, whose sloping lines are simpler when com-
pared to the letter N. Moreover, the relationship of space between the letter and
the relationship of size also require acquisition of concepts. When we looked at
Luana’s writing we found that there aren’t any significant discrepancies between
the letters (figure 7), showing that the student acquired the necessary concepts to
write his name, as well as the necessary motor coordination.

Figure 7. Luana’s handwriting

The same did not occur with another student, Bruno from the Children’s
Rehabilitation Center. When he was asked to draw a mental map of the comput-
er room, where Project activities took place, he used a crayon on paper and at-
tempted to represent objects with which he had contact, such as the computers,
floor and walls (figure 8).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 160
Joint ICA Symposium
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired
People

Figure 8. Bruno’s mental map of the computer room

After Bruno had explored a model representing the environment, he was

asked to do a second representation of the same place. In the second drawing we
see that the student seeks to represent the floor (number one in the drawing)
with a graphic shape that resembles the real thing, but he cannot spatialize this
shape on the paper and distribute the other items on it (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Drawing prepared after manipulation of the model

Legend: 1. floor, 2. walls, 3. computers

Another activity that was proposed was the theme of how to draw similarities
between Brazil and Africa. The drawing was free and the theme proposed was
based on work already done with students in Regular Education and the project.
In his drawing the student ran the crayon over the paper again and explained
that he had drawn hunger, a drum/cylinder, a ball symbolizing the World Cup in
Africa and industries. The student demonstrates some knowledge of the two
countries, but again just renders a series of scribbled markings (Figure10).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 161
Joint ICA Symposium
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Figure 10. Drawing of the similarities between Brazil and Africa

In the study that we conducted regarding spatial organization with blind

students at the Special School we had mixed results. In a representation done by
Luana, there wasn’t a representation of the shapes of the objects due to the need
for successive integration of perceptions by means of touch, making it impossible
to exploit them as a whole to understand their shapes. But we realized that in her
drawing there weren’t just crayon scribbles in the attempt to represent the ob-
jects, as we found in the representations done by Bruno.
In the drawing produced by this student there is a spatial logic represented
that fulfills the verbal logic: “The student visited the area weekly to attend Sun-
day Mass at the main Church, located on this square. After Mass, the student
would go down the steps of the church, walked to the ice cream parlor, just
across the street, near the Church” (Ventorini, 2007, p. 101) and had an ice
cream accompanied by her parents (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Luana’s drawing of a route. Legend: 1. church, 2. steps,

3. garden, 4. street, 5. sidewalk, 6. ice-cream parlor
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 162
Joint ICA Symposium
Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired
People

The Church is represented by a square and a semi-triangle. In this represen-

tation the student uses concepts of contour lines for objects and figures with
which she had experience, for example figures of a house, of churches etc. In her
representation of the church the analysis indicates the use of concepts acquired
in manipulating figures, since it was not possible to explore the object such as
occurred with the dollhouse, which the student seeks to represent the real shape
of the object and not use symbols. The symbols are adopted for large objects, that
can’t be explored by feeling them.
To represent the trees in the square she makes use of a simple figure of a tree
and for the garden she uses the symbol of a flower. To represent the ice-cream
parlor she uses two squares, which in fact symbolize the ice-cream parlor tables.
Besides this, there are three ice creams, which represent her mother, her father
and her. The symbols used to represent objects on the route are representations
of her experience in this place in addition to the motor coordination skills and
graphic memory acquired during the drawing activities.
We believe that this student acquired her drawing concept by having applied
the knowledge acquired in her previous experience in this locality and learning
how to draw to the challenge presented (representing a place in the town that she
lived in). In her drawing the shape and size of objects were not represented be-
cause they are large and it was not possible to explore them by touch. The sym-
bols used by Luana are not crayon scribbles on paper, but application of the
graphic representations learned at the Special School.
The students doesn’t know how many trees there are in the square, or what
their height and shapes are, but represents them with a symbol of a tree. In order
to represent the street and sidewalk she uses nearly circular shapes, indicating the
spacing of her body. She represents tables at the ice cream parlor with those that
shed had contact, embracing the concepts for the development of squares. With
regard to the steps she seeks to represent the differences in height, indicating the
steepness of the place, and to achieve this she draws three almost elliptical
shapes, one on top of the other.
This analysis coincides with the interpretation that we present about blind
peoples’ drawings in the introduction of this paper: “the child’s drawing is, thus,
a system of representation. It isn’t a copy of objects, but interpretation of that
which is real, done by the child in graphic language” (Almeida, 2010, p. 27). Lua-
na interprets reality and represents it by adopting concepts of graphic language
learned, it is not simple scribbling in crayon on paper, and nor they copies of
objects or figures.
The student at the Children’s Rehabilitation Center does not have these mem-
ories so he simply scribbles in crayon on the paper, without attributing a graphic
shape to his mental image. Learning these memories is neither simple nor quick
and does not just train motor skills, but it also gives sensory and psychic meaning
to the mental act whose education and learning should be done in context.
In our research we concluded that the blind child develops this concept like
any other child, acquiring the concept of permanent object, acquiring semantic
memory and graphic act, assigning sensory and psychic meaning to the graphic
act and demonstrating difficulties in drawing places or objects with which they
have no significant experience.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 163
Joint ICA Symposium
Silvia Elena Ventorini, Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

References

Almeida, R. D.: 2010, Do desenho ao mapa. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 4 ed. , 2
reipressão.
Batista, C. G.: 2005, Formação de conceitos em crianças cegas: questões teóricas e
implicações educacionais. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, Brasília, vol. 21. 1, p. 7–15.
Duarte, M. L. B. 2008a. A imitação sensória-motora como possibilidade de ap-
rendizagem do desenho por crianças cegas.Ciências e Cognição. v. 13, p. 14–26.
Accessed july 2010.
Ochaíta, E.; Espinosa, M. A. 2004. Desenvolvimento e intervenção educativa nas
crianças cegas ou deficientes visuais. In. COLL. C. Marchesi, A; Palácios, J. &
Colaboradores. Desenvolvimento Psicológico e Educação: transtornos de desen-
volvimento e necessidades educativas especiais. v. 3, 2. ed. São Paulo: Ed. Art-
med...
Rubayo, S. C. et al.: 2007, Discapacidad y destrezas manipulativas. Madrid:
ONCE. Accessed 6 October 2010.
Simón, C; Ochaíta, E. and Huertas, J. A.: 1995, El sistema Braille: bases para su
enseñanza–aprendizaje. Aprendizaje. Comunicación, Lenguaje y Educación.
Madrid, v. 28, p. 91–102.
Ventorini, S. E.: 2007, A experiência como fator determinante na representação
espacial do deficiente visual. 2007. Dissertação (Mestrado em Geografia). Insti-
uto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas. Universidade Estadual Paulista, v. 2, Rio
Claro.
Ventorini, S. E.: 2009, A experiência como fator determinante na representação
espacial do deficiente visual. São Paulo: Ed. UNESP, 2009.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 164
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Tactile Cartography in Schools

TACTILE CARTOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY

TEACHING: LEMADI’S CONTRIBUTIONS

Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena1

Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo2
1 Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus Ourinhos (São Paulo, Brazil)
[email protected]
2 Universidade de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the experiences on Tactile Cartography that
have been made at LEMADI (Laboratory of Teaching and Didactic material of the Geog-
raphy Department, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of São
Paulo–USP). This is an attempt at displaying the contributions of this work to Geography
teaching.
LEMADI’s researchers have been working for more than 20 years on producing, ap-
plying and evaluating geographic representations for teaching, orientation and mobility.
The results, from the first project, as well as the materials already produced (maps,
graphics, plans, illustrations, models and others), led to the introduction of a permanent
group that attend teachers, professionals on special education and visually disabled stu-
dents. Experiences were shared by Brazilian and foreign researchers and institutions.
LEMADI became a reference in Tactile Cartography not only for its tactile didactic
materials, used by students from elementary, high school and college, teachers from pub-
lic and private schools, parents, specialized teachers and blind people in general, but
mainly for the methods developed by its researchers.
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

Introduction

In 1989, Professor Regina Araujo de Almeida (Vasconcellos) started at LEMADI

a pioneering work in Brazil in the area of tactile cartography. Her research,
“Tactile Map Production and the Visually Disabled: an evaluation of the stages of
production and use of tactile maps” (1993), proposes a new method on Geog-
raphy teaching for visually disabled, pointing the role of graphic representations,
mainly maps, in the process of space perception and in the acquisition of geo-
graphic notions.
In the period from 1990 to 1998, with the financial support of VITAE Foun-
dation and from the University of São Paulo (Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa), several
projects were carried out at LEMADI, under the coordination of Professor Regi-
na Araujo Almeida. The group counted on the participation of geographers and
students from the Geography course, including some who had support from a
studentship called “Bolsa-Trabalho”, from the Social Assistance Coordination,
COSEAS–USP.
The main objective of these researches was to arouse visually disabled stu-
dents interest for the Geography and Cartography learning and, at the same time,
to offer conditions for their assimilation of special concepts and information
through touch, hearing and, occasionally, through residual vision. Thus, many
didactic materials were made by associating colors with tactile language and
using adapted writing for subnormal vision.
In the first project, Amazonia was used as a testing area to analyze the meth-
odology. It was introduced in its several aspects, by pointing out its facts, prob-
lems and conflicts. This work included the construction of a set of didactic ma-
terials, such as maps, models, plans, history books, illustrated dictionary, activi-
ties and games, illustrated time-line and teacher’s manual, together with a text on
Amazonia and its historical occupation process, since the XVI century.
The methodology was evaluated through tests with students from public and
private elementary and high schools. This contact with visually disabled students
made it possible to verify the efficacy of tactile graphic language in geography
teaching, as the perception of space and the understanding of basic concepts
such as proportion and scale, placement and orientation.
In the second project, the State of São Paulo was chosen for the application of
the same methodology, already tested with Amazonia. It was offered, at the same
time, a training course to spread the work. In the third project, an Atlas of the
Continents was created.
The positive results, from the first projects and the tactile didactic materials
developed, led to the introduction of a permanent group to give support to
teachers, professionals on special education and visually disabled students. Expe-
riences started to be shared by Brazilian and foreign researchers and institutions.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 166
Joint ICA Symposium
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

International Projects

In 1994, a group of researchers from Chile, Argentina and Brazil started a work
on the production, evaluation and application of tactile didactic materials. First-
ly, it was carried out a large bibliographic survey on the subject, which enabled
the construction of a theoretical landmark. From that it was possible to present
proposals on the making of cartographic materials adapted to visually disabled
children from elementary school and teachers from special education. With the
financial support of institutions such as IPGH (Panamerican Institute of Geog-
raphy and History) and OEA (Organization of American States), several projects
were carried out. Among these projects it will be displayed the more recent expe-
riences developed by the international group.
The project “Diseño y Producción de Cartografia para las Personas Ciegas de
America Latina” was developed in the period from 2002 to 2006 by researchers
from Argentina, Brazil and Chile, with the financial support of OEA. It was coor-
dinated by Professor Alejandra Coll, from the Cartography Department of the
“Faculty of Humanities and Social Communication Technologies”, Metropolitan
University of Technology (UTEM), Santiago, Chile. On the production of didac-
tic materials and on the organization of courses for teachers, in order to contri-
bute to the improvement and diffusion of production and reproduction tech-
niques of tactile graphic representations, the project counted on the collabora-
tion of researchers from Cuyo National University of Argentina and from the
LEMADI–DG–USP, Brazil.
The main purpose of this project was to support visually disabled people in
developing special abilities by the use of didactic and cartographic materials such
as Atlas, maps, charts, tridimensional graphic systems and others, in an attempt
to improve their formal education and mobility.
This aim was achieved by the making and distribution of thematic informa-
tion representative products (ecosystems, social, economic and cultural aspects)
in several scales (global, continental, national, regional and local).
For the development of the project it was formed an interdisciplinary group,
composed by geographers, educators, sociologists, designers and others, from the
three participating countries. The whole group has met at least one time a year to
exchange experiences, present results and defining next stages. The Metropolitan
University of Technology (UTEM – Santiago, Chile) founded, with part of the
Project resources, the Latin America Tactile Cartography Center (CCAT). This
Center became the place of coordination and developing of part of the tactile
graphic materials proposed.
Throughout the four years (2002–2006) it was produced several tactile didac-
tic cartographic materials, in several scales, followed by manuals, resulting more
than 150 tactile graphic representations:

• set of physical, political, population density, vegetation and climatic maps

(Representations of the world, of Latin America and of the several
countries members from OEA),
• didactic materials for geography teaching,
• planet Earth general characteristics plan (water cycle, tectonic plates and
others),

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 167
Joint ICA Symposium
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

• models for the teaching of geographic concepts,

• handbook on geographic concepts, printed and in Braille, with the defi-
nitions of each concept,
• urban plans from Latin American capitals,
• braille alphabet and printed maps.

Figure 1. Example of material produced by the Project: World Physical Map

Figure 2. Example of material produced by the Project: World Political Map

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 168
Joint ICA Symposium
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

Figure 3. Example of materials produced by the Project:

Water Cycle and Continental Drift

One of the biggest challenges at the initial stage of the project was to define
standards for geographic representation. The discussions were based on the pro-
fessional’s experience and on the existing bibliography. Some of the patterns
were defined by the limits of the thermophorm machine, available at CCAT, that
is, 42 cm longer, 42 cm wide and 5 cm high.
For that reason, it was decided that some standards would be applied in all
maps of the project, in order to make the reading and the evaluation of visually
disabled students easy. These standards define the sort of tactile graphic repres-
entation produced at CCAT and distributed among OEA members and project
collaborators. It was established, for instance, that the North would be indicated
by a dashed horizontal line, placed in the height of the map. The maps were ori-
ented to, as frequently as possible, representing the North in this position, facili-
tating students reading and comprehension of this variable or geographic notion.
As the convention for printed maps defines that the North (magnetic and ge-
ographic) is represented by an arrow – considering that it is a point on Earth’s
surface – throughout the project, the Brazilian group proposed the keeping of the
arrow for identifying the North. In this case its representation would happen
with the confection of a vertical straight line segment added by an arrow in relief,
with the letter N in Braille or yet a variation suggested by Vasconcellos (1993), in
which the dashed line is complemented by an arrow.
However, after the evaluation of some maps with specialized in visual disabil-
ity teachers, all the group researchers reinforced the idea of the use of the dashed
line, confirming, then, the linear representation of the North, as it is showed by
Figure 4.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 169
Joint ICA Symposium
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

Figure 4. Tactile map with the standardization proposed

It was decided that the scale would be graphically represented. The efficacy of
graphic scale in tactile maps has already been confirmed by Vasconcellos’ re-
search (1993). Taking into consideration that the concept of scale is abstract and
its representation in a numerical form (proportion between real space and the re-
presented one, using centimeters) makes it difficult to understand the idea of re-
duction of the map and demands another concept – the transformation of meas-
ures; simplifying scale representation may make the reading of the map and the
comprehension of the concept of scale easy.
With the graphic scale, the user can explore the map with both hands: one of
them fixed at scale, and the other searching distances. This way, one can establish
a relation of proportion between the line segment of the scale and the repre-
sented distances.
Besides, it was defined that all written information needed for reading the
map would be made in Braille - title, scale values and the keys.
After the definition of the final originals for each participating country, it
were searched data about its population and climate for the construction of
graphics that complement maps already produced in order to help the teaching
of these subjects.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 170
Joint ICA Symposium
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

Figure 5. Representation of the Equatorial Pyramid (collage)

Figure 6. Representation of Buenos Aires’ Climatogram (collage)

The last stage was focused in the search of cartographic bases for producing
at least one urban map, from downtown or from the most relevant area of the
cities from the 18 Latin America countries of the first stage maps. These maps
were made for the orientation and mobility and, for that reason, were produced
in large scale, by identifying important buildings. In all countries, it was chosen a
central area of the Federal Capital, excepting for Brazil, which had part of São
Paulo downtown represented.
The maps were made in collage and copied in transparent plastic in order to
add the printed information to the whole. Beyond the urban maps, it were built
models of classrooms from schools that collaborated to the evaluations of the
first stage and offered to give graphic information. The result was 18 urban maps,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 171
Joint ICA Symposium
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

4 enlargements of these maps (La Paz, São Paulo, Quito and Lima) and 16 maps
from schools participating in the classroom project.
For constructing the tactile graphic representations tests on the several mate-
rials durability and heat resistance were made. (The thermophorm machine which
reproduces the maps works with a vacuum and heat system, therefore, the origin-
als must be resistant). Thus, the originals can make a large number of copies. After
the tests, it were selected several types of card paper, metals, wood sticks, sandpa-
per and several threads for representing information in a tactile shape. Braille was
firstly made in paper, but as its durability was low, it was replaced by aluminum
foil, more resistant and durable.
The tests of the materials were made in schools that have visually disabled
students in 16 from the 18 Latin American countries belonging to the OEA.
These tests confirmed the efficacy of tactile graphic representations, especially
maps and graphics, seeing that these are important elements in the teaching of
Cartography, Geography and History, by helping the communication of special
information. 85% of the participants considered the importance of the materials
to their learning, stating that they are pleasure to touch, easy to handle, with
clearly well represented information. (Coll e Pino, 2007).
A great number of students suggested the insertion of printed information in
the maps in relief, in order to make easy the low-vision people’s reading. This
aspect was also pointed by the teachers who evaluated the material, emphasizing
that maps in relief and paint help on the inclusion intensification, since the vi-
sually disabled student uses the same material as his “non-disabled” mate. It
must be highlighted that the urban maps built in the last stage of the project con-
sidered printed information, being reproduced in transparent PVC.
In addition to the material making, it was offered five qualification courses to
several Latin America teachers. The courses took place in Argentina (December
2004), Chile (2003, 2005, 2006) and Mexico (September 2004), providing an ex-
changing of information and experiences that was fundamental to the definition
of methodologies for the application of the materials in classroom. More than 50
professionals were trained throughout the project. All the information acquired
in the courses were took by these teachers to their mother countries.
As oriented for specialized in visual disability teachers who are not neces-
sarily experts in Geography, it was necessary to introduce basic notions on carto-
graphy to deal with the techniques of construction and methodologies of the use
of the materials.
The courses were organized in this manner: cartography basic notions (scale,
geographic coordinates ans graphic symbology); techniques for the construction
of tactile map (collage and aluminum), creation of games in EVA and tactile
maps reading methodology.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 172
Joint ICA Symposium
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

Figure 7. Teachers producing materials during the course

The courses’ participants gave a very important contribution to the devel-

opment of the research on Tactile Cartography, by pointing out the difficulties
on finding tactile graphic representations in their countries and also by identi-
fying the students’ necessities, like their need of specific graphic representations,
such as the representation of an specific neighborhood where services considered
important by them are placed (school, hospital, therapist and others). Or yet the
detailing of a political map of their countries for the comprehension of their or-
iginal state. That reinforces the importance of the teachers’ qualification for the
production and using of tactile didactic materials.
Considering that great part of schools which attend visually disabled students
have access to few resources for the materials acquisition, the use of simple and
low-cost materials was emphasized. The alternative use of different papers, re-
cycled tissues and rests in general, made possible the improvement of the repre-
sentations used in classrooms by some of the participating teachers.
The second project to be remarked is called “Integrando Los Sentidos en el
Manejo de la Información Geoespacial, Mediante la Cartografía Táctil, con Espe-
cial Énfasis en las Personas Ciegas y Sordas de América Latina”. It was developed
in the period from 2007 to 2009 with the financial support of IPGH, in a partner-
ship among the University of São Paulo (LEMADI, Brazil), the Metropolitan
University of Technology (UTEM), Latin America Tactile Cartography Center
(CCAT, Santiago, Chile), and also the School Nuestra Señora del Carmen (Cusco,
Peru).
The general purpose of this project was the adaption of tridimensional carto-
graphic material and the developing of new process for the construction of geog-
raphic information models to auditive and/or visual disabled people from Latin
America. The project was followed by an intense discussion and the set up of a
theoretical landmark on Geography teaching for visual and/or auditive disabled
people by the use of Tactile Cartography.
Physical and political maps of the metropolitan regions of Santiago, Chile,
Cusco and São Paulo, were made by the use of the collage technique. The bases
were reproduced in transparent plastic and the representations were, afterwards,
evaluated by visually disabled students from the three countries.
It is important to point out that the standardization discussed and evaluated
in the previous projects was kept and the new evaluations reinforced the efficacy

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 173
Joint ICA Symposium
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

of the use of patterns to the tactile graphic representations. Besides, this project
reinforced the necessity of the creation of resources that can be used simultane-
ously by visually disabled people and other sort of disabled people.
In this sense, it attempted at making the representations in transparent plas-
tic, which superposes a printed copy with written information beyond the graph-
ic ones. (Figures 10 and 11)

Figure 8. Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (Political): example of material

produced during the project (original and copy in thermoform)

Figure 9. Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (Physical): example of material

produced during the project (original and copy in thermoform)

Final considerations

The experience acquired in the area of cartography for visually disabled people
and a positive evaluation of the tactile resources built until now, also in schools
for auditive disabled people, demonstrated that the tactile didactic materials can
and must be used by auditive and visually disabled people in the learning of
Geography, motivating the learning through senses: touch, sight and hearing.
The materials produced make it possible to work in an integrated manner,
with children and young visually disabled people, and also with “no-disabled”
students, starting a new area for the cartographic discipline development.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 174
Joint ICA Symposium
Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

Beyond school, the midia frequently uses different types of graphic repre-
sentations (maps and mainly graphics) in newspapers, magazines, internet and
TV, to illustrate or explaining several subjects. The visually disabled ones receive,
thus, this sort of information through an oral representation, not always conve-
nient. The tactile cartography may reduce and also overcome this information
restriction.
The use of graphic resources in relief, therefore, provides the overcoming of
the informational barriers, contributing to the inclusion of the disabled ones at
school, at work and in daily-life. This way, the tactile cartography benefits those
who depend on the touch and on the hearing to apprehend images, to use maps
and to comprehend graphics. Besides, it can be used in every classroom, in every
school, with all students.
Developing materials and methods to help Geography teaching for all, inde-
pendently of its differences, by respecting each one’s necessities, is an important
step for the concept of inclusion.
This inclusion can only be put into practice with the partnership between re-
searchers and teachers. In this sense, the projects’ experiences provide the
organi-zation of courses and workshops for the diffusion of techniques and
methodo-logies on the using of didactic adapted materials, by the constant
exchange of ex-periences on the theme and the discussion of its process at
school.
LEMADI–DG–USP is nowadays an important space in the area of Tactile
Cartography, a space to the development of discussions on inclusion, where the
whole community can benefit on the materials and on the results reached up to
this moment.

Bibliography

Almeida, Regina: A Cartografia Tátil no Ensino de Geografia: Teoria e Prática.

In: Almeida, R. D. (Org.) Cartografia Escolar. São Paulo: Ed. Contexto, 2007.
Carmo, W. R.: Cartografia Tátil Escolar: experiências com a construção de mate-
riais didáticos e com a formação continuada de professores. São Paulo, 2010 Dis-
sertação de Mestrado. Departamento de Geografia, FFLCH, Universidade de São
Paulo.
Coll, A.: Contribución al proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje en la educación de
personas ciegas por medio de la cartografía. Informe final año 2004 Proyecto
Diseño y Producción de Cartografía para las personas ciegas de América Latina.
Anexo IV publicaciones 2004.
Coll, A e Pino, F.: Impacto de la Cartografia táctil em La enseñanza de La Geo-
grafia em America Latina. In: Conferencia da ICA/ACI. 2007. Moscou.
Edman. Polly K.: Tactile Graphics. American Founation for the Blind. New York.
1992.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 175
Joint ICA Symposium
Carla Cristina Reinaldo Gimenes de Sena, Waldirene Ribeiro do Carmo

Sena, Carla C. R. G de: O Estudo do Meio como Instrumento de Ensino de Geo-

grafia: desvendando o Pico do Jaraguá para deficientes visuais. São Paulo, 2002.
Dissertação de Mestrado. Departamento de Geografia, FFLCH, Universidade de
São Paulo.
Sena, Carla C. R. G de: Cartografia tátil no ensino de Geografia: uma proposta
metodológica de desenvolvimento e associação de recursos didáticos adaptados a
pessoas com deficiência visual. São Paulo, 2008. Tese de Doutorado. Departa-
mento de Geografia, FFLCH–USP.
Sena, Carla C. R. G. Carmo, Waldirene R.: Produção de mapas para portadores
de deficiência visual da América Latina. In: X Encontro de Geógrafos da América
Latina. São Paulo. Março de 2005.
Sena, Carla C. R. G. Carmo, Waldirene R.: Tactile Map Production For The Vi-
sually Impaired User: Experiences in Latin America. In: XXII. International Car-
tographic Conference. La Coruña. Espanha. Julho de 2005.
Sena, Carla C. R. G. e Carmo, Waldirene R.: Uso de maquetes no ensino de
conceitos de Geografia Física para deficientes visuais. In: XXVI Congreso Naci-
onal y XI Internacional de Geografia. Santiago. Chile. Outubro de 2005.
Sena, Carla C. R. G. Carmo, Waldirene R.: Uso de maquetes no ensino de con-
ceitos de Geografia Física para deficientes visuais. In: XI Simpósio Brasileiro de
Geografia Física Aplicada. São Paulo. Setembro de 2005.
Vasconcellos, R.: A Cartografia Tátil e o Deficiente Visual: uma avaliação das eta-
pas de produção e uso do mapa. São Paulo, 1993. Tese de Doutorado. Depar-
tamento de Geografia. FFLCH–USP. São Paulo.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 176
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Children map the World

MAP DRAWING COMPETITION FOR

CHILDREN IN INDONESIA

Rizka Windiastuti
BAKOSURTANAL (Indonesia)
[email protected]

Abstract: The National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping of Indonesia (BA-
KOSURTANAL) has been organizing map drawing competitions for children in Indonesia
as a way to popularize map to children. These competitions were always handled seriously
and such competitions were always participated by more than expected numbers of child-
ren. This paper will share how BAKOSURTANAL organized the competitions, from the
publicaion until the judgments to get the winners.

Introduction

The National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping of Indonesia

(BAKOSURTANAL) is a government body that is responsible to conduct go-
vernmental duties in the field of surveys and mapping according to prevailing
regulations. As the coordinating agency for survey and mapping activities in
national scope, BAKOSURTANAL has an obligation to disseminate information
about services and products of survey and mapping activities, especially the ones
performed by BAKOSURTANAL. It is also necessary to raise awareness about
maps and the usages to various levels of community, including the children.
Some of the methods used to raise public awareness include organizing various
exhibitions, workshops, seminars, trainings, map adventure games, and map
drawing competitions.
The map drawing competition was initially inspired when the International
Cartographic Association (ICA) in cooperation with UNICEF invited BAKO-
SURTANAL to coordinate a map drawing competition in Indonesia. The best
five drawings were then sent to Durban, South Africa, to be enrolled in an inter-
national map drawing competition held during ICA Congress in 2003. That was
Rizka Windiastuti

the first time BAKOSURTANAL, in cooperation with ICA and also Indonesian
Cartographic Association (AKI), organized a national map drawing competition.
Following the success in 2003 and considering the number of children parti-
cipated in the competition, BAKOSURTANAL organized the next national map
drawing competitions in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011, and always sent the best
drawings to go into Barbara Petchenik competitions in the year. In addition to
the national competitions, BAKOSURTANAL also held local competitions in va-
rious areas:

• 2005 in Cibinong (West Java),

• 2006 in Surabaya (East Java) and Jakarta,
• 2007 in Jakarta,
• 2008 in Bandarlampung (Lampung),
• 2010 in Pontianak (West Kalimantan).

Children map drawing competitions, which allow the children to explore

their imaginations in drawing, have been used by BAKOSURTANAL to intro-
duce maps to children. By following such competition, children will be driven to
open their atlases and learn about the world, such as the richness and beauty of
their country or even province, through maps. Hopefully, this competition
would (directly or indirectly) contribute to Cartography education in Indonesia,
and to increase the children’s care and respect to their country and the Mother
Earth.

Organizing map drawing competitions

The map drawing competitions held by BAKOSURTANAL always participated

by an unexpected number of participants. The national competition in 2003 was
followed by 1045 participants from 27 provinces in Indonesia, in 2005 by 1002,
in 2007 by 1377, in 2009 by 1179, and in 2011 by 1205 participants. The local
compeitions in various regions in Indonesia were also interested by no less than
200 children. Here will be explained how BAKOSURTANAL organized the com-
petitions.

Preparation

The preparation to organize a map drawing competition was started since about
the middle of the preceding year, i.e. when BAKOSURTANAL prepared the bud-
get for activities in the subsequent year. The organization of a national map draw-
ing competition was somewhat different from that of a local competition. For the
national competitions children drew at home or school then sent the result to
BAKOSURTANAL, so the children had plenty of time to draw. For the local com-
petitions the children came to the venue and drew on the site for about 3 hours.
Initial stage in executing a map drawing competition was to form an organ-
izing committee at the beginning of the year when it will be run. The organizing
committee of the national competitions comprised about 10 to 15 staff of BAKO-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 178
Joint ICA Symposium
Map Drawing Competition for Children in Indonesia

SURTANAL, where as for the local competitions, especially the ones held outside
Jakarta or Cibinong area, we collaborated with other institutions as the local
hosts. In 2006 we cooperated with Surabaya State University (UNESA), in 2008
with Yayasan Xaverius Tanjungkarang, and in 2010 with Tanjungpura Univer-
sity, Pontianak. In general, the organizing committee consisted of three teams:

• Secretariat team who was responsible to do administrative tasks, accept

the drawings or registrations (for local competitions), collect data about
the drawings, and answer any questions regarding the competitions that
were asked by the public.
• Publication team who was responsible to let general public know about the
ongoing competition through advertisements in mass media (national
newspaper, radio etc.) and/or brochures that were distributed to schools
and other public areas.
• Selection team who was responsible to communicate with the juries about
selection criteria, prepare and assist the juries during the judgment.

In addition to the organizing committee, at this initial stage were also formed
boards of juries. For the national competitions, because we expected to have
more participants then the local ones, we prepared two kinds of juries, namely:
internal juries and national juries. The detailed duties of these juries will be ex-
plained later in this paper. The juries were selected considering their knowledge
in cartography and art.
The organizing committee would then create a theme and rules for the
competition and set up some important dates, including: when were the pro-
motions, the last day to receive drawings/registration, the judgment, the winner
announcement, and the delivery of best drawings to ICA (for national compe-
tition). The theme and rules for national competitions would stick to those of
Barbara Petchenik competitions, including the drawing groups based on the ages
of the authors (group A for ages below 9 years old, group B for ages 9–12, and
group C for ages 13–15). For local competitions, we classified children into three
groups based on their school grades (group A for grade 1–3, group B for grade 4–6,
and group C for grade 7–9).

Drawing Collection

After the organizing committee was formed and the information about the com-
petition was open to public, the secretariat team got ready to accept registration
or to collect the drawings by preparing a database to store data of the partici-
pants. The database was developed using Microsoft Access and for the national
competitions it included data about the authors (name, school and home ad-
dresses, date of birth, etc.) and the drawings (title, received date, etc.). Every
drawing received was stamped and given a unique ID number. For local com-
petitions the database prepared for the registrants was much simpler. Data entry
was performed soon after the drawings arrived.

Figure 1. Database form to enter participant’s data during national

competition in 2009

During the national competitions, where the participants sent drawings to

our address, the packages were usually delivered near the end of the deadline.
Figure 2 showed the number of drawings received on a specific day during the
national competition in 2007. The deadline at the time was post stamped on 30
March 2007. We can see from the graphic that most participants sent the draw-
ings on or slightly before 30 March 2007 such that most drawings arrived on 2
April 2007. From this experience, since the following national competition in
2009 the deadline was no longer the delivery date, but the date the drawings were
received by the organizing committee.

700

600 601
of
gambar

500
Number

400
i
Jumlah

300
d

185
200 207
98
100 54 97
5 18 22 5
1 2 1 2 6 3 11 8 48
0 3
02 b

23 r

26 r

27 r

28 r

29 r

30 r
ar
07 r

08 r

15 r

16 r

20 r

21 r

22 r

03 r
pr

16 r
pr
a
a

p
e

-M

-M
-M

-M

-A

-A
-F

13
23

Figure 1. Number of drawings received on a specific day during national

competition in 2007

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 180
Joint ICA Symposium
Map Drawing Competition for Children in Indonesia

The data entry was a crucial step during execution of map drawing
competitions. We used the data entered in previous years to inform participants
about succeeding events. For local competitions, the registrant data were used on
the competition day when children came to the venue. The children were asked
to re-register so they could get an ID badge, T-shirt and snacks. Children who
did not register beforehand were allowed to register at the time only when the
space was available for them.

Judgement

National Competition

As mentioned previously, for national competitions we had two boards of juries:

internal and national. The internal juries comprised of 3-5 staff of BAKOSUR-
TANAL who met the criteria as a jury for map drawing competitions. The na-
tional juries comprised of 3 persons; at least one of them came from BAKO-
SURTANAL with a strong knowledge about cartography, and at least one of
them came from an art institute or was a professional artist who had experience
in judging children’s drawing competitions.
The mechanism of judgment for national competitions was as follow: before
being evaluated by the boards of judges, the drawings were selected by the selec-
tion team of organizing committee based on their administrative completeness.
The drawings that used paper size other than A3, had incomplete author’s iden-
tity (such as no address or date of birth written either on the back of the drawing
or on a separate piece of paper) and were out of the predefined theme, were eli-
minated. In fact, many drawings did not include maps or only had maps, so these
drawings were considered out of theme.
If the number of drawings were more than 250, then the judgment would be
done in 3 steps for every group; the first step was performed by the internal ju-
ries to eliminate about a third or half of the drawings, the second step was
performed by the national juries to select 15 best drawings for each group, the
last step was also performed by the national juries to select the best drawings to
be enrolled into Barbara Petchenik competition and 3 best drawings from each
group.
If the number of drawings were equal to or less than 250, then the judgment
would be done directly by the board of national juries to select 10-15 best
drawings for each group, then select the best drawings to be enrolled into Bar-
bara Petchenik competition and 3 best drawings from each group.
During the selection process performed by board of internal juries, each of
the juries was given an evaluation sheet to evaluate the drawings, as shown in
Figure 3 below. The drawings were hung in front of the juries, 20 drawings at a
time, and each of the juries decided whether each drawing had the following
criteria: composition of world map, scale proportion of the map features (ap-
plicable for group B and C), relative position of the map features (applicable for
group C only), theme suitability, color composition, and creativity. Each jury
checked the criteria that existed in the drawing, and let the organizing committee
do the counting.

Figure 3. Evaluation sheet for internal juries

Figure 4. Judgment by board of internal juries

During the selection process by board of national juries, it is important for

the juries to be able to see all drawings at once. Therefore, all drawings from each
group were put on the floor with the drawing side up. The juries then looked a-
round and eliminated the drawings by turning the drawing side down. It was not
so hard in the beginning, but as the drawings got fewer, the juries would discuss
to determine the best 15 drawings.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 182
Joint ICA Symposium
Map Drawing Competition for Children in Indonesia

Figure 5. Judgment by board of national juries

Figure 6 showed the result of judgment during the 2009 competition. At that
time we received 1179 drawings, 13 were sent by children whose ages above 15
years old and 5 had no author’s identity, thus 18 drawings were eliminated from
the competition.

Number of drawings enrolled

After elimination by organizing

After elimination by board of internal juries

Finalists selected by board of national

Figure 2. Elimination process during judgment of national competition in 2009

After we found the 45 finalists, the juries would then determine the overall
winners who would represent Indonesia in Barbara Petchenik competition. The
juries individually nominated 2 drawings for each group, totaling 18 drawings. A
drawing that was nominated by most juries automatically became an overall

winner. The juries would then discuss to select the drawings nominated by only 1
jury until we obtained 5 overall winners. Each jury would then give a score of 1-
100 to the rest of 40 finalists, considering map contents, theme suitability and
creativity. The score was necessary in case the winner candidates failed verifi-
cation process.
Because the drawings enrolled in the national competitions were drawn at
home or school, we need to verify that the drawings were really the work of arts
of the children. Therefore, we established a verification process when we came to
their home or school and asked them to prove that they drew it by themselves.
During the verification process, we also checked the children’s date of birth from
their school report or birth certificate in order to assure that they really belonged
to an age group and thus were eligible to follow the competition.

Local Competitions

Local competitions were usually held from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in a hall provided by
the local hosts. The children, unaccompanied by their family members, sat on the
floor according to their ID numbers. After all participants sat in the place as-
signed to them, organizing committee distributed drawing papers to be used. The
judgment process begun soon after the organizing committee collected all the
drawings.
Board of juries for local competition usually comprised of 3 persons: at least 1
of them came from BAKOSURTANAL and at least 1 jury taken from a local
paint artist who had experience as a jury for children’s drawing competitions. Si-
milar to the judgment process of national competitions, here all the juries to-
gether determined the best 15 drawings from every group, to get the total of 45
finalists. The winners were determined by the total scores given by all juries.
During the scoring stage, every jury individually evaluated each drawing
based on certain criteria. Each component of the criteria was given a weight:
suitability with theme of competition (weight = 30), map contents (weight = 20),
creativity (weight = 20), color composition (weight = 15), and drawing technique
(weight = 15). The juries gave a score of 1-100 to every criteria component for
each of the 45 finalists. The organizing committee then assisted the juries to cal-
culate the final scores. Table 1 and 2 below illustrates how the final score of the
drawings were obtained.

Table 1. Sample of initial scoring sheet by individual jury

Total
Drawing Theme Map Color Drawing Score
Creativity
ID Suitability Contents Composition Technique by
Jury 1
1 95 90 80 80 80 86,5
2 90 95 85 80 80 87
3 95 90 80 80 80 86,5
4 95 95 90 90 90 92,5
… … … … … … …

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 184
Joint ICA Symposium
Map Drawing Competition for Children in Indonesia

Table 2. Sample of final scoring sheet

Drawing Participant Score by Jury Score by Jury Score by Jury TOTAL

ID ID 1 2 3 SCORE
9 26 93,65 76,85 93,95 264,45
8 21 94 73,95 95,7 263,65
4 20 92,5 75,85 94,95 263,3
11 2 79,25 75,95 92,1 247,3
… … … … … …

Winner Announcement

Winners of local competitions were announced soon after the final scores were
obtained, and the presents were given directly to the children. BAKOSUR-
TANAL provided presents in forms of money, BAKOSURTANAL’s products,
trophy, certificate, and school equipments.

Figure 7. The champion’s drawing of group A (grade 1–3) at local competi-

tion in 2008, entitled “Natural Resources of Lampung”, created by
Syifa Putri Atalia Sadil in less than 3 hours

Winners of national competitions were announced at BAKOSURTANAL

website, national newspaper, and a letter was sent to each winner. The winners
who resided around BAKOSURTANAL office were invited to pick up their pre-
sents. For those who lived in other areas, the presents were delivered by mail and
the money was transferred to their bank accounts.

Conclusion and recommendation

BAKOSURTANAL has been successfully organized map drawing competitions

for children in Indonesia since 2003. The high number of participants showed
that the information about these competitions was well distributed. However,
most of participants for national competitions were from Java Island. For ex-
ample, percentage of participants coming from 6 provinces in Java Island was
73.93% in 2007 and 83.88% in 2009. This data suggested that BAKOSURTANAL
needs to socialize maps to children outside Java Island, perhaps through local
map drawing competitions. BAKOSURTANAL can also establish partnership
with regional institutions, such as universities, local government or even painting
studios to organize map drawing competitions in the region. Hopefully, BAKO-
SURTANAL’s task to raise awareness about maps and the usages to entire levels
of community can be well implemented.

References

Warta BAKOSURTANAL, 2005. Lomba Gambar Se-Jabodetabek dan Tingkat

Nasional 22 Mei 2005 [online] Available at:
http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id/bakosurtanal/warta-bakosurtanal-edisi-ii-juni-2/
[Accessed 19 March 2011].
Warta BAKOSURTANAL, 2007. Indonesia Siap Kirim Wakilnya di Kompetisi
the Barbara Petchenik Award [online] (Updated 22 April 2007) Available at:
http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id/bakosurtanal/indonesia-siap-kirim-wakilnya-di-
kompetisi-the-barbara-petchenik-award [Accessed 19 March 2011].
BAKOSURTANAL’s Website, Lomba Gambar Peta Untuk Anak Se-Provinsi
Lampung [online] Available at:
http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id/bakosurtanal/lomba-gambar-peta-untuk-anak-se-
provinsi-lampung/ [Accessed 19 March 2011].
BAKOSURTANAL’s Website, Lomba Gambar Peta Untuk Anak di Pontianak
[online] Available at:
http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id/bakosurtanal/lomba-gambar-peta-untuk-anak-di-
pontianak/ [Accessed 19 March 2011].
BAKOSURTANAL’s Website, Lomba Gambar Peta Untuk Anak di Pontianak
[online] Available at:
http://www.bakosurtanal.go.id/bakosurtanal/lomba-gambar-peta-untuk-anak-di-
pontianak/ [Accessed 19 March 2011].

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 186
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Children map the World

CHILDREN'S MENTAL MAPS OF THE WORLD

Shimshon Livni
Kaye College of Education (Israel)
[email protected]

Abstract: This paper will report on a study into the children’s graphic, cartographic and
verbal performance in their impressive entries sent to the Barbara Petchenic Competition
of the years 2003 and 2007 and were published accordingly by J. Anderson (2005) and by
T. Bandarova (2010). Following K. Gurjanovaite (2007) and J. Reyes (2010), the author
sees those entries as mental maps and to study them by Reyes’ (2010) Judging Model
application and add the research tools of K. Lynch (1960) and O. Eide (2010) about the
verbal expressions which are completing the graphic data depicted in maps (and mental
maps).

Introduction

In the last two decades the International Cartographic Association (ICA) organ-
ized two international contests intended to children and youngsters. The central
target of the contests was “to promote the creative representation of the world in
graphic form” (Reyes, 2010, p. 1) when the participants supported were to draw a
map on a general theme, that was changed in every contest. In the last years the
procedure of judging the “young cartographers” entries was made systematical
on the following Model (Reyes, 2010):

1. The population of the participants was divided into three age-groups:

under 9, age 9–12 and above 12
2. The participants’entries had analyzed as “Maps” and studied by cartographic
tools such:
2.a Types of representation of the world
Shimshon Livni

2.b Types of projections used in the maps

3. Those entries analyzed too as “Mental Maps” when they studied their
3.a Pictorial and “unusual" representations
3.b Pictorial connection to the “direct” Environment and “Outer Space”
3.c Type of valued attitude to the Competition’s Theme
3.d Interest to activate the Competition’s Theme.

The author activated in his study the judging tools of the Reyes (2010) Model
when he added two further instruments:

3.e K. Lynch (1960) elements of inquiring mental maps

3.f O. Eide (2010) described verbal expressions.

The Age-groups in par. 1 were the independent variables of the reported

study. The Analyzing tools in par. 2 end 3 were the dependent variables of this
study.

Aim, assumption and hypotheses

The aim of this study was to evaluate the children’s entries according to their
graphic, cartographic and verbal expressions.
It was assumed that the children’s entries should be studied as mental maps
by using the relevant research-tools of J. Reyes (2010), K. Lynch (1960) and O.
Eide (2010). Hypotheses tested by using quantitative statistical method:

a) significant differences between the entries of the age groups that studied
two Years of Competition – will be obvious.
b) significant differences connected with the impact of the Competitions’
general theme on the participants’ performance – will be observed.

Hypotheses studied by using the qualitative assessment method: as is de-

scribed in the Introduction Chapter of J. Anderson etc. (2005) and T. Bandrova
etc. (2010).

Method

Population: 100 entries of the Year 2003 Competition compared to 100 entries of
Year 2007 competition. Each year-population divided to three age group respec-
tively. See Figure 1. Procedure:

1. The participants sorted into age groups (as the independent variables of
this study), see Figure 1.
2. The research-tools of Reyes (2010), Lynch (1960) and Eide (2010) (as the
14 dependent variables of this study) identified in the participant’s en-
tries, see Figure 1.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 188
Joint ICA Symposium
Children's Mental Maps of the World

3. The relative value in percentages of the 14 depended variables calculated,

see Figure 2.
4. The Hypotheses examined quantitatively using Two paired Ttest, see
Figure 2.

Findings

Outcome of quantitative evaluation:

a) The differences between the performances of age groups of Years 2003

and 2007 was insignificant.
b) The differences between the performances of age groups of each year
separately was insignificant.
c) The differences between the Means of the tested age groups on the de-
pendent variable “the Theme is not mentioned” was insignificant.

Outcome of qualitative evaluation (main dependent variables) see Figure 1.:

a) Size of the age groups: the largest age group in Year 2003 was – “above
12” in Year 2007, “age 9–12”.
b) Reference the K. Lynch’s landmarks: the age group of “above 12” in Year
2003 excels his greatest interest when describes the World and/or the
Theme by activating many landmarks; see Figure 1.
c) Activating the Competition’s Theme – most of the entries in age group of
“above 12”, Year 2007.
d) Interest in the Competition’s Theme – nearly 40% (!) of the participants
in age groups of “age 9–12” and “above 12” in both years didn’t mention
this detail in their entries.
e) Verbal Expressions further the Landmark’s names, appeared in about 1/3
of the entries, except of the age group “under 9” of 2003.

Conclusion

The Barbara Petchenik Competition invited the Children and the Youngsters in
the interested countries to express their mental images about the World respec-
tively to the officially declared “general Theme”. The “young cartographers” en-
tries in the Years 2003 and 2007 Competitions studied by using the ICACC Jury’s
judging Model (Reyes, 2010) as supplemented by the author.
It should be interesting if an additional research would be made, to inquire
the next Competition’s entries, to refine the reported studying mode and give
some new ideas about the World as is percepted by the “young cartographers”.
Such work could be very helpful for the cartographers, who are functioning in
the Cartographic Industry aimed at the new generation of mapmakers and map
users.

Figure 1. B. Petchenik Competition, number of items in the entries

Theme: “Save our Environment” 2003 2003 2003

Theme: “Many Nations – One World” 2007 2007 2007
Age group Age Age Age Age Age Age
(independent variables) <9 9-12 12< <9 9-12 12<
Dependent variables: Cartographic analysis of the entries as “maps”

Types of representation of the World

2D representation – Continents and Oceans
Hinted 7 8 17 7 10 14
Copied 3 4 1 1 26 7
3D representation
Hinted Spheres 3 4 5 13 9 9
Copied Spheres 3 12 10 1 6 5
Mapmaker centered represetation 10 12 3 9 3
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

2D Projection of the Earth (Copied Cartographic Projection as: )

Mercator 2 12 22 4 17 12
Eliptic 1 6 8 1 12 5
Azimuthal, Conic 2 1 2 3 1
Rarely used Projection as Cubic 1 3 5
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Non-cartographic analysis of the entries as mental maps

K. Lynch’s tools for studying mental maps
lines 2 2 3 3 4
edges 3
districts as continents and oceans 7 27 34 16 40 19
continents only 1 5 1
landmarks as
Statue of Liberty, N. Y. 3 4 1 1
Statue of J. Ch., Rio de Janeiro 2
Opera, Sidney 1 3
Kremlin, Moscow 2 1
Totem, S. Africa 1
Totem, Vancouver 1
Pyramids, Egypt 1 1 4 1
Tower, London 3 1 1
Padoga, Great wall, Chine 2 1 1
Torrai Gate, Japan 2 1
Eifel Tower, Paris 1 4 1
McDonald, KFC 2
Eskimo Igloo 3
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona 1
Akropolis, Athen 1
Statue of Buddah 1
Khaba Rock, Mecca 1
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 190
Joint ICA Symposium
Children's Mental Maps of the World

Theme: “Save our Environment” 2003 2003 2003

Theme: “Many Nations – One World” 2007 2007 2007
Age group Age Age Age Age Age Age
(independent variables) <9 9-12 12< <9 9-12 12<

Pictorial representation of the Earth

Human shapes as eye, head, hand, girl,
dancing child, heart 1 1 4 1 1 6
Fauna shapes as dove, cat, panda, snail,
butterfly, fish, ladybird, cow, dog 1 10 2 5 1
Flora shapes as flower, leaves, tree,
walnut-shell 7 3 2
Articles as pipe, ice cream, flag, umbrella,
balloon, basket ball, pieces of maps,
medal, card, puzzle, pizza, dancing sirt,
a moon-face, a drop of water, dove’s
nest, knitted plate, shoe, bus, chess,
ligths, skirt, lamp, balance, stitched, table
cloth, tootem South Africa, anchor 1 6 12 8 9 9
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Connecting the Earth to some pictorial environment

Human connection as girl, agriculturist,
worker, mother, triffled girl, Noah’s ark,
caress child, skull, in the heart, children,
united nations, drawing youngs,
astronauts, publicized people, dancing
children, demostrating youngs,
irrigation, crowd, Earth in hand, embryo,
multinational children, angel, Hope and
dispair, transportation, crying child 3 14 13 14 14 20
Annimal connection as cat, dove, bear
(toy), tiger, eagle, whale, snail, turtle,
birds, rabbit, songbird, giraffes, mouse 3 5 4 4 8 4
Botanical connection as trees, flower,
fertile env., olive, leaf, root 7 2 1 5
Connection to the “Outer-Space” as
moon, stars, sun, polluted space, political
conflict, rainbow, natural hazards,
satellite 3 15 9 5 15 6
Artificial connection as suburb, sattelite,
icecream, reef, rural env., national flags,
life belt, raptured chain, flask, cliff,
umbrella, plastic bags, living room,
weapon, toys, carpets, children’s
drawings, piano, balloon, ligths 3 5 4 3 7 3
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Ways to represent the competition’s Theme

Positive 6 25 33 15 22 29
Negative 2 4 2 2 2
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 191
Joint ICA Symposium
Shimshon Livni

Theme: “Save our Environment” 2003 2003 2003

Theme: “Many Nations – One World” 2007 2007 2007
Age group Age Age Age Age Age Age
(independent variables) <9 9-12 12< <9 9-12 12<

Tools used to express idea of the copetition’s Theme

Realistic depiction 2 3 14 2 5 7
Fantastic depiction 5 21 26 11 28 22
Humorousness depiction 2 9 4 2 5 5
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

How the Theme “Save our Environment” should be activated

UN should save 1
On-line connections save 1
trade connections save 1
Angels save 1
Children surround the Env. 2 1 3 2
Env. saved in child’s dream 3
Env. saved in child’s heart, belly, hand, 4 5 5 1
bosom
Cats save 1
Dove(s) save 1 1 1
Rabbit save 1
Birds save 1 1
Children clean, maintain, irrigate the
Env. 5 2 2
Env. saved as Home, peacefull, a
common place, surrounded by flowers,
as a drop of orange 1 2 3 1 4
to save as flora, fauna, ozon cover,
nuclear free 4
Env. bloomed as baloon 1
The Environment is threatened by…
economy, danger, pollution, loss of
endagered speciments, war, 2 9
smoking, natural dangers, useless bags 1

How the Theme “Many Nation – One World” should be activated

The Theme in a balloon, in smily
children’s face, 5 7 2
dancing continents, Earth ligths up
multinationality, colorfull cloth, a dove
carry olive leaf 2
The Theme appears – in flags, dancing
children, living in harmony, creating a
multinational World, colored states,
multinational connections, together
eating icecream, working, help to avoid
poverty, racial discrimination 8 15 14
The Theme “Save our Environment” is
not mentioned 3 17 18

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 192
Joint ICA Symposium
Children's Mental Maps of the World

Theme: “Save our Environment” 2003 2003 2003

Theme: “Many Nations – One Worl” 2007 2007 2007
Age group Age Age Age Age Age Age
(independent variables) <9 9-12 12< <9 9-12 12<
the Theme “Many Nations – One
World” is not mentioned 2 23 13
Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Verbal expressions in the entries 1 12 19 6 17 14

Number of entries in the Age group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Figure 2. B. Petchenik Competition, number of items in percentage and Ttest

Variables B C D E F G
Theme: “Save our Environment” 2003 2003 2003
Theme: “Many Nation – One World” 2007 2007 2007
Age group Age Age Age Age Age Age
(independent variables) <9 9-12 12< <9 9-12 12<

Number of entries in Group 10 40 50 20 47 33

Dependent variables: Cartographic analysis of the entries as “maps”

2D representation of continents and
oceans 100 30 36 40 77 63
3D spherical representation 60 40 30 70 26 42
Mapmaker Centered representation 0 25 24 15 19 9
2D Projections 33 50 64 35 75 100
Districts as Continents and Oceans 70 68 68 80 85 57
Landmarks 20 15 54 0 28 21
Connecting the Earth to some
pictorial environment 150 116 64 135 104 100
Positive 60 63 66 75 47 88
Realistic 20 7 28 10 11 21
Fantastic 50 53 52 50 61 67
Humorousness 20 27 8 10 11 15
The Environment should be saved 100 48 40 20 9 15
The Environment should be
threatened 0 5 18 5 0 0
How the Theme “Many Nations –
One World” should be activated 0 0 0 65 47 31
Verbal expressions in the entries 10 30 38 30 36 42
The theme “Save our Environment is
not mentioned 33 40 40
The Theme “Many Nations –
One World” is not mentioned 10 49 40

Statistical Analysis: Two paired Ttest

N (number of dependent variables) = 14
df(2N-2) = 26, p(0.05) = 2.06
Ttest: B:E; C:F; D:G between the Age groups
0,8143198
0,72996876
0,601866384
Ttest: B:C; B:D; C:D in the Age groups 2003
0,580289874
0,595540736
0,928288251
Ttest: E:F; E:G; F:G in the Age groups 2007
0,983271031
0,873040878
0,845469892
Ttest: 2003:2007 – the dependent var.: “the Theme isn’t mentioned”
N (number of Age groups each year) = 3
df(2N-2) = 4, p(0.05) = 2.78
0,732813749

References

Anderson, J. M. etc., ed.: 2005, Children Map the World. ESRI Press. Redlands,
California.
Badarova, T. etc. ed.: 2010, Children Map the World, Vol. 2. ESRI Press. Red-
lands, California.
Gurjanovaite, K. etc.: 2007, Cartographic analysis of general geographic elements
in children mental maps. Geography. Scientific Journal. Vol. 43 (1).
Reyes, J.: 2010, The perception of the world in maps made by Hungarian child-
ren. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. In:
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/dolgozo/jesus.htm
Lynch, K.: 1960, The Image of the City. MIT Press. Cambridge MA.
Eide, O.: 2010, An inquiry into relationship between verbal and map-based ex-
pressions of geographic information. Unpublished PhD Thesis. In:
http://folk.uio.no/oeide/dg/

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 194
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Children map the World

CARTOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS IN CHILDREN’S

DRAWINGS AS A RESPONSE TO THE RED
SLUDGE INDUSTRIAL DISASTER

Henrik Hargitai1, Pál Gábor Vizi2

1 Department of Physical Geography, ELTE TTK (Hungary)
[email protected]
2 KFKI RMKI (Hungary)

Abstract: Children respond to traumatatic events in many way. One way is drawing,
used as a form of psychoterapy. We have organized a “draing competition” among child-
ren affected by a 2010 industrial disaster in Hungary, asking the children to draw pictures
entitled “Red Mud and Mars”. The resulting collection contains drawing that use carto-
graphic elements as tools of artistic and metaphoric representation.

Introduction

On October 4, 2010, in Hungary’s worst ecological disaster, a spill of toxic red

sludge from an aluminum plant in western Hungary flooded three nearby locali-
ties. After the liquid part flew away, the red mud covered the area in a thick lay-
er. Ten people died in the accident. Children in the town of Devecser escaped the
flood as they moved from the playing ground, flooded minutes later, to higher
elevation. Children of the village of Kolontár watched the flood wave from the
Library – located at the highest floor – of their School building. The shocking ex-
perience caused serious psychological trauma in the children.
Henrik Hargitai, P. G. Vizi

The drawing competition

The children expressed their feelings related to the tragedy in many ways, in-
cluding psychosomatic disorders. A way for relief, a method also used in psy-
chotherapy, was to let the children draw images of the tragedy thus process the
shock mentally.
There have been several cases in the past when children affected by traumatic
events – mainly war situations – were encouraged to draw their stories, mainly in
order to be exhibited and to draw attention to the effect of war, conflict and vio-
lence on children – but from the perspective of the children (Chelsea Art Mu-
seum 2005, Geist 2002).
Encouraging children to draw is considered to be one of the methods of ob-
taining the children’s perspectives on issues that are important and relevant for
them which importance is emphasized by much recent research (Einarsdottir et
al. 2009).
Several classes participated in these opportunities, organized as “competi-
tions” (for motivation), at the time when the school was transferred from the af-
fected town to a nearby village for medical reasons. One topic for these drawing
competitions was “Red Mud and Mars”, because the landscape was described by
many locals as “Moon-like” or “Mars-like”, which was further supported by the
sight of chemical protection clothing of the rescue teams.
The drawing sessions (classes) were organized in Somlószőlős, a nearby village,
in a temporary classroom, because children have been evacuated for their school
time due to high levels of toxic dust in the air. We have made interviews with the
children during of the drawing sessions, which were recorded and broadcast on the
local radio (KHH 2010).
Our preconception was that children will draw a barren, red landscape with as-
tronaut-like rescue workers.

Results

In contrast to our hypothesis, the common topic in the drawings was that the
“little green men” from Mars travel to Earth by flying saucers and help the locals
in the recovery works. Martians appeared in most drawings, offering help or
bringing donation (nicely wrapped gift package). This suggests that the children
anticipated – triggered by the sight of rescue workers – that Martians will also
come and help the troubled earthlings. This may be considered as a representa-
tion of the children’s wish for a heavenly help which also includes the fact that
such help is impossible, since Martians do not exist. This shows a very complex
idea that the children could only communicate through images: they need more
help than it can be given by humans, but it would not come. Or, alternatively, it
shows that since the children experienced a huge wave of help (donations) from
every corner of Hungary, even Martians (symbolizing the whole universe) join
the donations and wish to help. If we use this interpretation, it shows a very po-
sitive response as the children acknowledge donors and trust that even Martians
will help them.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 196
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Elements in Children’s Drawings as a Response to the „Red Sludge” Industrial
Disaster

Several of the images are “taken from Space”, thus showing both planets and
Martian fleet of space ships approaching the Earth. This view also has a strong
cultural context: since H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, Martians visit the Earth as
enemies. Despite this strong cultural background, pupils show Martians as good
natured beings – may be as a result of the positive experience from a large num-
ber of “alien” help, never-seen volunteers arriving to these country localities.
It worth also mentioning that in the drawings both Martians and Humans work
together in masks and special clothing – they both need protective clothing, thus
the difference between them is eliminated.
In one of the drawing, may be ironically, a human in space suit visits Mars
and says “It is just like the Earth”.
Also unexpected, many drawings show Mars as a globe and Earth as a globe
with continents and oceans displayed in a cartographic way. Several drawings
show both planets in several scales from local to global which may be influenced
by television news transmission’s visual style.
The two planets in most cases are depicted as global or partially visible global
images. The Earth appears as it is shown in topographic maps: continents are
well visible and are colored green, mountain ranges brown, oceans blue and arid
spot marks the location of Devecser as seen on a satellite image. Mars is either
red and featureless or craters are shown as flat or somewhat elevated circular fea-
tures, holes with a rampart or rim, and, in some cases volcanoes of the same size
are also shown. Various symbols are used for crater representation. Their nature
is clear in all cases.

Conclusions

The pupils affected by the disaster used very complex and often metaphoric re-
presentation of a mixture of their feelings, hopes and reality. Cartographic ele-
ments, including colors and various relief representation methods, helped them
in telling a complex message and have been used as a proper form of art repre-
sentation of surface features have been arranged in an artistic way. Despite the
young age and the relative obscurity of the pupils, they showed that such a com-
petition can help not only as a psychotherapy, but also it brings out true artistic
values of the children. Such artistic expressions of children’s hand-drawn maps
are also highlighted in the Barbara Petchenik Competition, organized by ICA’s
Commission on Cartography and Children (Reyes Nuñez 2007).

Appendix: A selection of the drawings

Bakos Beatrix and Vinter Bernadett: “Destination: Planet Earth”. The location of
the red sludge disaster is marked by the red spot.

Fenyvesi Fanni: “We come, we help”. Both planets have a equal area of various
landforms: on the Earth, unrecognizable – stylized – continents with mountains
and oceans, plus an anomalous red area (the disaster site), on Mars there is no
anomaly: the planet has three major land cover type: positive landforms: vol-
canoes, negative ones: crates and plains in between.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 198
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Elements in Children’s Drawings as a Response to the „Red Sludge” Industrial
Disaster

Göcsei Eszter. Earth has oceans, continents and a broken polar ice cap, while
Mars is almost featureless

Habor Konrád: “Destiny: Devecser”. A very complex, “motion picture” represent-

ation with picture-in-a-picture technique and zoomings in and out. Mars has
positive landforms (crater or volcano) cracks and plains.

Joó Virág: “It is just like the Earth” Several planets appear here, with Mars having
3D craters, the Moon having a 2D representation of craters, the other bodies are
featureless.

Kálmán Alex. Mars shows the same texture as the red sludge, black fragments on
red backgound. Black and red are clearly of different physical nature in the two
cases but their representation is the same.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 200
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Elements in Children’s Drawings as a Response to the „Red Sludge” Industrial
Disaster

Nagy Viktória: “Hold on, we help”. On the Earth, the broken ice caps are clearly
visible, while Mars have a red plain background with various sized circular fea-
tures.

Nagy Viktória. Mars has craters or volcanoes – it is not clear from the drawing,
which unconciously calls back the uncertanity on the origin of Lunar craters in
the 19th–20th century. In contrast to Mars, Earth is represented as flat: only the
known colors, well known from color coded topographic maps refer to relief.

Szilvágyi Bence. Colorful Erth with a similary colored space ship heading to uni-
formly colored Mars, through the black space in between.

Pápai Szabina. Color of the Earth became Martian: however, they are cleared by
the almost similarly (but still, well distinguishably) equipped and dressed Mar-
tians and Earthlings together.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 202
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartographic Elements in Children’s Drawings as a Response to the „Red Sludge” Industrial
Disaster

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the help of the Veronika Trombitás, the Teacher of Arts at
Gárdonyi Géza Elementary School in Devecser and the children who partici-
pated.

References

Einarsdottir J., Dockett S., Perry B.: Making meaning: children’s perspectives ex-
pressed through drawings. Early Child Development and Care, Volume 179, Is-
sue 2 February 2009, p. 217–232.
Reyes Nuñez, J. J.: Artistic Expressions in maps made by children. 2007. Avail-
able at http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/dolgozo/jesus/artandmaps/poster1.pdf
Chelsea Art Museum: Through My Eyes: Children’s Drawings from Conflict
Zones. Exhibition July 14–30 2005
Geist A. L. (ed) 2002: They Still Draw Pictures: Children’s Art in Wartime from
the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo. University of Illinois Press
KHH: Közös Hullámhossz Rádió, Devecser, Aired on Oct. 27. 2010.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 203
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Children map the World

THE SPATIAL NOTIONS OF THE CULTURAL

UNIVERSE OF CHILDHOOD

Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz¹, Rosângela Doin de Almeida²

Post-graduation Program in Geography Geography and Cartography Teaching
Research Laboratory, São Paulo State University (Brazil)
1 [email protected]
2 [email protected]

Abstract: In Brazil, the area of school cartography counts on an event called Colloquium of
Cartography for Children and Scholars. In the last edition of the Colloquium in 2009
themes which deserve some research were indicated, among them are the studies about
‘cartography and childhood’. We elaborated this project with the objective to contribute
with these studies. We are here investigating the elementary relations established by child-
ren aged 3 to 4 years old in the time-space-body organization. We will carry out an induc-
tive analysis of the data registered during teaching activities which mobilized the time-
space relations. This study has the objective to present the utilization of children literature
as a way to understand these relations in the children’s cultural universe.

The spatial notions in the cultural universe of childhood

In school activities students and teachers re-elaborate their personal experiences,

constructing and reconstructing knowledge, making the view from the inside of
the school an essencial element for the studies about teaching. Thus, the studies
carried out in the Geography and Cartography Teaching Research Laboratory (LA-
BENCARTOGEO, São Paulo State University, UNESP, campus Rio Claro) take the
school culture as reference. It is understood that the knowledge and school prac-
tices consist of social constructions, less connected to the knowledge prescribed in
the curriculums, therefore founded in the knowledge and practice endowed with
cultural values and with the school institution itself, which also fundaments the
present study.
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Studies developed in LABENCARTOGEO are the result of a trajectory of the

Brazilian studies about Cartography teaching at school, initiated after the I Collo-
quium of Cartography for Children, held in Rio Claro (SP) in 1995. The event
was held in 2009 and there some topics which need to be researched and studied
were recommended, among them are the topics concerning childhood. Although
there are several studies carried out by Brazilian researches about the genesis of
the spatial representation in children’s drawings, these studies do not reach kin-
dergarten.
In order to meet this demand, we outlined this master’s degree research en-
titled “A study about the cartographic language and the time–space representation
by 4–5 year-old children” (this research is funded from The State of São Paulo Re-
search Foundation – FAPESP). This research is mainly justified by the comprehen-
sion of time–space–body organization established by children and their represen-
tations, aiming to contribute to a childhood-related cartography. For this, we need
to comprehend the motor-sensorial development of the child.

Time — space — body organizations

With the comprehension of the fact that time and space are inextricably linked
comes a pertinent question: how this relation is present in childhood, once space
and time are fragmented and little by little acquire linearity and a sequential
sense? One of the clues to answer this question is to consider that it is through
the relations which are established in the social groups in which they are inserted
that the pre-school children become aware of the different dimensions and re-
lative values concerning time–space.
In this sense, we have an important reference on Vygostky and his successors
for the analysis of the registers of teaching situations. Oliveira (1992, p. 33) states
that ‘Vygotsky’s postulations about the biological and social factors in the psy-
chological development point to two complementary ways of investigation: on
one side, the knowledge of the brain as a material substrate of the psychological
activity, and, on the other side, the culture as an essential part of the constitution
of the human being, in a process in which the biological becomes social-histori-
cal’.
Considering this, the same author shows that the emergence of the orality
allows a new structural organization of the action, attributing to the symbolic
activity initiated with the speech an organizational function which produces fun-
damentally new forms of behavior. Almeida (1994, p. 9) states that ‘there is a
convergence between the speech and the practical activity (action) in a way that
the children control the environment through the use of the speech, before con-
trolling their own behavior. There is a relation among time, space and speech.
With the help of the speech, the children reorganize the visual-spatial field, e-
voking absent objects through the word and creating a temporal field that is per-
ceptual, real and visual as well.
In the same line, Wardswoth (1992) presents the language as a social know-
ledge of adaptive value, that in the period between ages two to four or five is not
characterized by the intention of communicating, and the thought that involves
this language (a form of representation of objects and events) is free from the

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 205
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

limitations of the direct action of the sensorial-motor thinking. With this, we can
notice the relation between thinking and language. It is possible to observe the
interaction of the psycho-physiological and social-cultural factors in the domain
of the space, as many situations can be favorable for the development of parti-
cular competences, such as the ones that mobilize the proprioception, which re-
fers to the sensibility of the movement of a particular part of the body or the
whole body, or kinesthesia, differentiating the parts of the body.
Several studies based on the psychology of development and learning have
indicated that the progressive acquisitions in the corporeal field amplify the do-
main of the space and that the posture influences the apprehension of the infor-
mation about the environment. With this, special references are established in re-
lation to the body itself, allowing the ingression in the founding factor of the spe-
cial organization: the corporeal scheme.
According to the wallonian perspective the corporeal scheme is the result of
the relation that is established between the postural space and the environment
space. The corporeal scheme is the cognitive basis on which the exploration of the
space which depends both on the motor functions and the perception of the im-
mediate space.
According to Le Boulch (1982) as soon as the children are aware of their ori-
ented body, the temporal space increases and its geometry allows them to spread
the axes of the body, serving as coordinates in the acquisition of the euclidian
space. When this happens, the articulation between the body and the more ab-
stract and less limitative space is reached.
In this acquisition, it is possible again to notice the importance of the lan-
guage in the formation of the concepts, making it possible to dissociate the cor-
poreal scheme of the body itself and Project it on the objects. Lurçat (1979) states
that we project the orientations from our body (above/below, left/right, front/
behind) in the space. As for the language scope, Le Bouch (1982) states that it al-
lows the children to establish their references and relate them in a topological
space, a process that can take place approximately at age three.
Le Boulch (1982, p. 124) complements saying that the definition and orienta-
tion of the axes of the euclidian abstract space influence the reintroduction of the
body which will represent the true reference system.
In addition, the corporeal scheme is amplified through graphical representa-
tions. Greig (2004) distinguishes five stages in the construction of the human fig-
ure: the tadpole figure synthesis, its verticalization, the organization of the head-
body structure, its improvement and the finishing with the drawing of well dis-
tinguished male and female figures.
The corporeal experiences in the space influence the internal space organiza-
tion which are present in the representation of the human figure. These repre-
sentations are originate in the acquisition of the closed forms that generate the
tadpole figure in the representation of a character, which will later create an dis-
satisfaction in relation to its property to represent the body. Thus, concerning
what we can consider a childhood-related cartography, the verticality of the body
plays a structuring role. Almeida (2009, p. 6) states: ‘we think that this point of
construction of the corporeal scheme is the fertile ground in which the notions
about other spatial coordinates germinate. The verticality becomes the main axis
of the whole human spatial organization (...). Therefore, it is in the childhood

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 206
Joint ICA Symposium
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

that the notion of special coordinates is originated. The drawing of a character is

not only a drawing, for it brings in itself the germ of cartography.
Concerning verticality, while addressing the corporeal scheme and spatial
organization, Le Boulch (1982) considers the vertical and horizontal references
fundamental to constitute a system of coordinates which establish relations of
order which will in turn orient the euclidian space, after the topological space.
Other authors have addressed the representation of the space, among them
and of great importance is Jean Piaget, author of Space representation in the
child, co-written by Barbel Inhelder. It is important to consider that Piaget’s stu-
dies did not consider the space as a geographic concept, as Almeida (2001, p. 59)
states: ‘the authors’ concerns were related to the mathematical and geometrical
space, which although not referring to the terrestrial space the same way as geo-
graphy, constitutes the basis of Cartography’. Still according to Almeida (1994, p.
al. 48) ‘the theory that Jean Piaget constructed with the help of a group of re-
searchers remains as a fundamental theoretical support for the studies about the
representation of the space, mainly because it addresses the construction of the
mathematical space by the children (topological, projective and euclidian rela-
tions) on which the geographical space leans’.
The sensorial-motor activities and their relation with the corporeal scheme
are fundamental in the construction of the space by the child. Therefore, we de-
veloped a number of teaching activities that mobilize the time–space–body orga-
nization with the objective to analyze the performance of children aged 3 to 4 in
learning situations.

The investigation path

To investigate the relations that children establish in the time–space–body organ-

ization we will carry out an analysis of the data obtained from ethnographic
registers, based on the methodology of the qualitative research (Bogdan and Bik-
len, 1994).
In this approach, the presence of the investigator in the place of the studies
allows the understanding of the actions of the individuals who are to be studied,
their activities and environment, aiming at the approximation between research-
ers and researched. Thus, according to Erickson (1989) the qualitative method
has as basis the intensive and long-term participation in the field, accurate regi-
sters about what happens in the field, analytic reflection on these data and
written register of the participative observations. Under this perspective, the re-
searcher should try to find ways to understand the meaning of the manifest and
latent of the behaviors of the individuals, while trying to maintain an objective
view of the phenomenon.
The researcher plays the subjective role of participant and the objective role
of observer, reflecting about the experiences of the students and about the nar-
ratives produced by these observations and recordings of activities in the class-
room. This type of narrative investigation is a variable of the qualitative research,
being justified by the fact that we – human beings – are story-tellers organisms
that, individually and socially live reportable lives. (Connelly and Clandinin,
1995, p. 11)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 207
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

After the activities performed by the children, narratives about the facts and
students’ dialogues are prepared, allowing the emergence of several “selves”
through the interventions and students’ productions, the reflections on the acti-
vities and aspects of the process (Conelly and Clandinin, 1995, p. 44). In this per-
spective, both the teacher and the students are story-telleers and also characters
of their own and other stories. Therefore, the narrative structures the experience
that will be studied and will be the way by which it will be analyzed and how it
will be presented.
As an example, we will present a teaching activity that was performed with
children from kindergarten. It is important to emphasize that the dialogues ex-
posed here use the initial letters of the students’ names and TEACHER refers to
the researcher who performed the practical activity.

Cartography in the children’s universe

To perform this activity, we chose a children’s literature book because this kind of
book mobilizes the imaginary of the children and is widely used by the teachers.
We used the book “A Pirilampéia e os dois meninos de Tatipurum” (The Pirilam-
péia and the two boys in Tatipurum), by José Rufino dos Santos, a story of two
boys who live in Tatipurum (a planet). Each boy lives in one side of the planet so
they always argue about who is upside down.
A cicada called Pirilampéia, helps them to find out that in the space there is
no upside or downside, no matter the side of the planet you are on. From this
story we notice that the spatial relations of neighborhood (upside/downside)
could be developed in the classes.
We planned a didactic sequence composed by three activities developed in a
class (Pré I A) with kids aged from three to four years old, at “Escola Municipal
Sueli Maria Proni Cerri”, in the city of Rio Claro, São Paulo. In this study we will
present the first stage of this didactic sequence, which has the purpose to get to
know and represent the story in a tridimensional material.
The activity was recorded – image and sound – making it possible to tran-
scribe the speech of the participants and also the gestures of the students, ele-
ments that sometimes scape from the teacher-researcher’s immediate perception.
For this transcription, we used the minuting technique, which consists in taking
notes of the observation in intervals and when necessary integrally transcribe
parts of the participants’ dialogues. , These transcriptions helped in the elabora-
tion of the narrative that reports the development of the activity.
To perform the activity, we divided the students in two groups so that we
could register the students’ dialogues and actions more accurately. ANA, GAB,
JES, JHE, MAR, VIN, participated in the activity, and they were chosen using
affinity as criteria, because the activity involved pair-word.
We had the students sit around a table and started the story by the obser-
vation of the book cover (Figure 1) and reading the title “A Pirilampéia e os dois
meninos de Tatipurum” (Pirilampéia and the two boys from Tatipurum). In the
beginning, the characters “Tom” and “Dick” are introduced, and to make it
easier to distinguish them we talked about the color of their hats, Tom wearing a

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 208
Joint ICA Symposium
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

blue hat and Dick a green one. JES anxiously asked what Tatipurum was. We
showed that it was a planet in which the boys lived.

(TEACHER) Tom and Dick lived in planet Tom lived in one side, Dick in
the other – each character is shown on different pages of the
book.

So we moved on, reading the story using the book’s illustrations:

(TEACHER) Tom and Dick did not have much to do. Tatipurum was a
boring planet. Tom was always chasing ants. He put them on
the palm of his hands and blew the little creatures to space.
Dick tried to spit farther and farther. Each time he tried to
break his own record. One day, tired of this game, he shouted
to Tom: ‘Hey, boy! Do you like to stay upside down?’

While reading this excerpt, some children laughed and looked curiously at
the illustrations. And, in this moment, the question “who is upside down” ap-
pears as the central conflict of the story, which promoted some questioning from
students like GAB, who asked after seeing the illustration (Figure 2):

(GAB) I want to see him upside down! Where is it?

(TEACHER) He is saying that he is right side up and that the other is
upside down. Let’s see who is upside down – I answered – So,
the other said: it is you who is upside down. I am right side
up.

Figure 1. Book cover

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 209
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

Figure 2. “Who is upside down?’

To prove that he is not upside down, Tom plants a tree called Jameleira and
says ‘Jameleira grows upwards, doesn’t it? So, if I am upside down it doesn’t
grow. When they saw the illustration (Figure 3) of the planet Tatipurum with
this tree the students asked to turn the book so that the illustration of the
Jameleira was vertical, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 3. Illustration commented by the students

Continuing the story, Dick made a balloon and asked Tom: ‘a balloon goes to
what direction?’. Tom said that the balloon goes upwards, so Dick stated that if
he were upside down the ballon would not go upwards. The balloon went up-
wards and the two boys began to fight. Then appears a cicada called Pirilampéia,
in the planet Tatipurum, She came from the planet Pirilampeu . She wanted to
know why the boys were fighting and when she understood what was going on
she explained: ‘I, who come from space, can land on Tom’s space. Then, Dick is
upside down.’ Then, Pirilampéia flew to Dick’s side and said: ‘Now it is Tom who
is upside down”. And I finally said that in the space there is no upside or down-
side, asking the students to change sides.
To talk about this change I said “one here” and gesticulated. The student JHE
also gesticulated and said “one there”. These gestures show the notions of ‘near’
and ‘far’ related to ‘here’ and ‘there’.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 210
Joint ICA Symposium
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Figure 4. Position asked by students

When we finished telling the story, we asked the students to get in pairs. I
informed that we would perform an activity with the materials I had brought
(Figure 4). These materials consisted of a green foam ball and the pictures of the
following elements: Pirilampéia, Tom, Dick, Jameleira and the balloon. The stu-
dents were supposed to place them in the correct place on the foam ball.
We distributed the material to each pair which caused some conflicts among
the students, as in this stage of development egocentrism is a characteristic of the
children. Some students explored the material rolling the foam ball on the floor
or throwing it up. After, we gave them character Tom.

(TEACHER) Who is this?

(JES) Tatipurum.
(TEACHER) Tatipurum is the planet that is on your table. This boy
wearing a blue hat is Tom.

Then we gave them character Dick. We asked them to place the two char-
acters (Tom and Dick) in the planet “Tatipurum”.We observed that some stu-
dents as JHE had already started to do this, before we asked them to do so.
However, we noticed that the pair MAR and JES was not doing what they were
supposed to, instead they were disputing the material. JES asked me which
figures were MAR’s, and it was necessary to talk about the division of the
material and the proposal of the pair work.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 211
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

As the pairs placed the characters, they talked a little about their actions. JES
stated that the characters were organized that way because MAR “did it the
wrong way”:

(TEACHER) Did it the wrong way? What do you mean?

(JES) She was supposed to put hers here and not where mine is.
(TEACHER) And, why do you think that hers is supposed to be put there?
– trying to understand if what she was saying had any
relation with the organization fo the characters in the story.
(JES) Because it cannot be put beside mine
(TEACHER) Why don’t you want one beside the other?
(JES) Because not.

Trying to understand MAR’s position in the activity, we asked:

(TEACHER) MAR, why did you want to put it in this side?

(MAR) Because I wanted to do so.
(JES) But I didn’t!

We observed that this pair was more concerned about the object itself instead
of considering the story and there was evidente dispute between the children
despite their affinity. Answering “because I wanted to do so” can be related to the
egocentrism t can also indicate that one of the students found out that the char-
acters occupied opposite positions and the other did not see this clearly.
The pair ANA and GAB stated that they had placed the characters one in
each side ‘because we like it this way’. The students shared the material in the
following way: GAB stayed with Dick and ANA with Tom. To show the way they
had placed the characters ANA placed Dick in the opposite side. In this case, we
noticed that the the character placed by GAB served as reference to ANA. GAB,
talking about the position of the characters concluded: ‘this here and that there’.
In the third pair, JHE stated that the characters were one in each side in the
activity because they were in this position in the book. Then, with the characters
placed on Tatipurum, I introduced other elements of the story that would also be
placed on the foam ball: Pirilampéia, Jameleira and Ballon. Some questions e-
merged:

(JES) Which of them made the balloon? Let’s see in the book? Does
anyone know who made it?
(JHE) The green one.
(TEACHER) Right. The one with the green hat, Dick, made the balloons.
The one with the blue hat, Tom, planted the Jameleira.

I felt the need of a referential which would allow the exploration of the no-tion
near/far, using the objects created by the characters and their location on the
planet Tatipurum. I observed that JHE and VIN were disputing the material and
were not in agreement about the position of the balloon. VIN indicated that he
would place it beside Tom, but before he had said that Dick had made the balloon
and JHE stated that it should be placed nest to Dick. VIN’s suggestion prevailed.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 212
Joint ICA Symposium
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Figure 5. Production by JES and MAR

Figure 6. Production by ANA and GAB

Figure 7. Production by JHE and VIN

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 213
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

To finish the activity, we had the students sat together and started a conver-
sation:

(TEACHER) The balloon near Dick and Jameleira near Tom, because he
palnted it. And Pirilampéia? – observing the material used by
ANA and GAB.
(GAB) To help them.
(TEACHER) What kind of help?
(GAB) Prevent them from fighting
(TEACHER) What did she say to make them stop fighting?
(JHE) To change.
(TEACHER) Let’s change here, in your activity?

The children accepted the suggestion and so we changed the position of the
characters. We observed that JHE changed the position of the characters and
other elements as well, placing the balloon close to Dick and Jameleira close to
Tom, actions that VIN did not adopt despite his suggestions. This demonstrates
the importance in developing individual activities with children from this age
group when the objective is to understand individual notions related to topo-
logical notions. To help in the comprehension we asked:

(TEACHER) What did they notice when they changed places?

There was silence and I moved on. They noticed that there was no upside or
downside, as Pirilampéia said: “when I am here, Tom is upside down and if I fly
here it is Dick who is going to be upside down. But in space there is no upside or
downside – I said using the concrete material.
This finalization – using the concrete material to explore the problem was
positive, as the students were able to Interact and explore once more the narra-
tive.

Final Considerations

Children’s literature is really a bridge to the universe of childhood. We observed

that as the story advances a sequence of facts is established which pre-establishes
the temporal sequence and that the Reading of stories can promote the construc-
tion of linearity in the relation time–space.
In this activity we could observe that the students took the story as reference
to locate certain elements, as in the case of the tree and the balloon (JES asked
the peers if they knew who had made the balloon before placing it). Some child-
ren used a previous action as reference, as ANA, who placed the character after
GAB had done it. We can state that some children may have placed their char-
acters according to the illustrations of the book (JHE anticipated the explanation
of the activity placing one of the boys in a side of the planet).
After this activity we noticed that it was important to perform more activities
to promote the relations of neighborhood and that it would be necessary to carry
out an individual activity to verify the performance of each student. So, two

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 214
Joint ICA Symposium
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

other activities were planned. The first consisted in the organization of the ele-
ments of the story through pasting (using bidimensional material) and the sec-
ond a drawing about the story.
The students’ productions are “registers” by the children themselves con-
cerning the theme and can be filed in an individual portfolio. In addition to these
materials, the dialogues show that this kind of activity promotes a collective dis-
cussion about some topics allowing the production of knowledge by the interac-
tion among people.
We emphasize the importance of the techniques used to register the activi-
ties, because they enabled us to obtain accurate information about the students’
thinking (in the dialogues transcribed in the recording minuting) As a result of
this research we hope to obtain a rich collection of registers and narratives to be
analyzed in the future, and also clarify some aspects about the relations time–
space–body and their representation.

References

Almeida, R. D.: 1994, Uma proposta metodológica para a compreensão de mapas

geográficos. 1994. Tese (Doutorado em Educação), Faculdade de Educação, Uni-
versidade de São Paulo, São Paulo.
Almeida, R. D.: 2001, Do desenho ao mapa. São Paulo: Contexto.
Almeida, R. D.: 2009, Cartografia e Infância. In: VI Colóquio de Cartografia para
Crianças e II Fórum Latino-americano de Cartografia para Escolares. Juiz de Fo-
ra, MG. 2009. Avaiable at
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/21198272/Cartografia-einfancia?
secret_password=1y7uc0bv6objyzc80osp> [Accessed 10 February 2010].
Bogdan, R.. and Biklen, S. B.: 1994, Investigação Qualitativa em Educação: uma
introdução à teoria e aos métodos. Translated by M. J. Alvarez; S. B. dos Santos
and T. M. Baptista. Porto: Porto Editora.
Connelly, F. M. and Clandinin, D. J.: 1995, Relatos de Experiencia e Investigación
Narrativa. In: J. Larrosa. Déjame que te cuente: ensayos sobre narrativa e educa-
ción. Barcelona: Editorial Alertes, p. 11–59.
Erickson, F.: 1989, Metodos cualitativos de investigacion sobre La enseñanza. In:
M. C. Wittrock. La investigación de la enseñanza II. Métodos cualitativos y de
observación. Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós.
Greig, P.: 1994, A criança e seu desenho: o nascimento da arte e da escrita. Porto
Alegre: Artmed.
Le boulch, J.: 1982, O desenvolvimento psicomotor: do nascimento até 6 anos.
Translated by A. G. Brizolara. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas.
Lurçat, L.: 1979, El niño y el espacio; la función del cuerpo. Translated by
Ernestina C. Zenzes. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 215
Joint ICA Symposium
The Spatial Notions of the Cultural Universe of Childhood

Oliveira, M. K. De: 1992, Vygotsky e o Processo de Formação de Conceitos. In:

Y. La Taille and M. K. de Oliveira and H. Danta, Piaget, Vygostky, Wallon:
teorias psicogenéticas em discussão. São Paulo: Summus. p. 23–34.
Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B.: 1993, A representação do espaço na criança. Trans-
lated by B. M. de Albuquerque. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas.
Rufino, J.: 2000, A Pirilampéia e os dois menino de Tatipurum. São Paulo: Edi-
tora Ática.
Vygotsky, L. S.: 2008, Pensamento e linguagem. 4th ed., Translated by J. L. Ca-
margo 2008. São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Wardsworth, B. J.: 1989, Inteligência e afetividade da criança na teoria de Piaget.
São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editora.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 216
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Children map the World

TEACHING CARTOGRAPHY TO CHILDREN

THROUGH INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Marli Cigagna Wiefels1, Jonas da Costa Sampaio2

Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)
1 [email protected]
2 [email protected]

Abstract: Computer technology arrives very quickly to schools where young students
from the first grades already utilize it for electronic games, for access to internet or for
video games, among friends or in family. The proposal to build an interactive media with
the basic information about the city of Niterói (State of Rio de Janeiro) was the first step
of an activity intended to help geography teachers in their daily work.
The municipality of Niterói, located in the State of Rio de Janeiro, has 458.465 inhab-
itants (2001) and is the scenario of all geographic information provided by this media.
The location of UFF in this municipality and the edition of the school Atlas of the
municipality of Niterói, implemented during a former university project, constituted the
main inspiration for the present project. Students and schoolchildren were mobilized for
the project and contributed providing information for the media.
All begins with a mental map of the schoolchild going to school, with different graphic
situations: the street of the school, the school itself, the classroom. It is in these places that
all events of the media happen.
According to the Brazilian National Programme Parameters (Parâmetros Curricu-
lares Nacionais – PCN) one should «know how to use different information sources and
technological resources in order to build the elements of knowledge». This is very propi-
tious to the introduction of this media in the first grades of the basic school.
The building of mental maps, the understanding of photographic images, orienta-
ion, environment and the graphical recognition of objects are the main themes treated in
the media. In the present project, school and graphic cartography provide the young pu-
pils with a material which stimulates them to learn and with recreational activities which
strengthen their liking for geography and cartography. At the end of the project, the me-
dia will be open to public on the university web site and dissemination seminars will be
provided to school teachers of the municipality.
Marli Cigagna Wiefels, Jonas da Costa Sampaio

Methodology

The idea

«Classroom in a shoebox». The idea appeared during the preparation of a model

of a classroom which was materialized in a shoebox. The model allowed the vi-
sualization of the physical elements of a classroom according to a vertical spatial
projection.
The elements of a classroom in the first grades of the basic school are very pro-
pitious to the project: they constitute significant fixed elements like the student
desks, the teacher desk, the blackboard, wall charts, the bookshelf, door and win-
dows. On the teacher desk we find a terrestrial globe, books, pieces of chalk, a
cleaner. On the sideboard in the corner, we find a small museum nearby an aqua-
rium. Based on these elements, other icons will be presented and activated in the
media.
The activity will be developed based on the classroom. But, before to arrive in
the classroom, other scales are presented, as the building of a mental city map, the
arrival at school and finally the classroom.
For this purpose, many proposals were suggested and selected. A bibliogra-
phy specialized in school cartography was consulted and surveys of electronic
games were necessary to perform the different stages of the media.
The presentation of the activity begins with a sketch drawn by a child (mental
map) symbolizing the way from home to school. In a second moment we see a
bus passing in the school street. It stops and a child gets out. He goes until the
pedestrian crossing and waits for the green light to cross. He is now just at the
entry of the school. During these stages, we see several situations that help in ac-
quiring knowledge. The teacher will be able to treat several aspects of localiza-
tion, orientation, and space with his pupils. He will also deal with the location of
the school in the district, the orientation of space according to the pupil’s home
and the representation of the near space related to the far space. All different
special points nearby the school will be observed and lived in the media.

Figure 1. The bus run to go to school

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 218
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartography to Children through Interactive Media

Organization and list of the themes

The themes selected for the media are: the Earth references, the rotation and
translation of Earth, the orientation with the compass, the cartographic and his-
torical representations of Niterói, the landscape, the coastal fauna and environ-
ment.
The presentation of these themes proceed from the fixed elements in the
classroom, as for instance the terrestrial globe on the teacher desk, which activate
many windows informing about geographic concepts and suggesting games to
pupils with demonstrative icons.

Figure 2. Localization game: where are the ships?

Human resources

Building up the team is the most important stage as well as the most difficult,
mainly when it is about preparing activities for children. The project is per-
formed as an University extension activity, entitled “Production and dissemi-
nation of didactic material for the teaching and practice of geography”. In the
team, we have a scholarship student from the computer science course and three
scholarship students from the secondary school programme «Young Talents for
Science»
“The Young Talents project is a scientific pre-initiation programme imple-
mented since 1999. This project is realized in partnership with research institu-
tions and with public and private universities of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
Through this mean, students of the public secondary and professional schools
are inserted in scientific pre-initiation”. (CECIERJ Foundation)
The “young talents” Felipe Correa Mesquita, Kenya de Oliveira Silva Souza
and Maicon Peclat are students of different secondary schools of a Niterói neigh-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 219
Joint ICA Symposium
Marli Cigagna Wiefels, Jonas da Costa Sampaio

bouring municipality and participate for the second consecutive year in the re-
searches for this project. They collaborated with the authors in graphical work
and in the design of the media, as well as in bibliographic research.

Resources and institutional support

The project is implemented at the UFF’s Institute of Geosciences, in its carto-

graphic laboratory, with the direct support of the Department of Geo-environ-
mental analysis and of the UFF’s Board of Extension, where the project is regis-
tered.
The project is very ambitious and the financial resources are limited to the
scholarships awarded to the students. It has a great educational value as it makes
secondary students work together with university students. As a matter of fact
the project has begun through an exchange of ideas between the members of the
team. The data inserted in the project were provided by the students of the
project team during their researches and of course also by the authors.

Creating and realizing activities

This includes the design of the boards as well as the illustrations included in the
work, the supporting pictures, the researches about the contents, the conception,
the graphic programming, the animation, and the final arrangement.

Evaluation

The evaluation of results will be done in schools where the media will be tested.
The results will be presented in the academic agenda of the UFF during the
Science and Technology week of the University. The results will also (and main-
ly) be presented to the teachers of the public schools network during a special
seminar.

Development of the media

The planning and execution of the project are based on the content of the media
with a special language adapted to the children of the first years of basic schools.
A special attention is given to the content and to the way this content can
interact in the education and in the learning motivation of geography and car-
tography. The progress attained in this training leads the children to be more
reflexive and clever in the content games and in taking notes. The selection of
themes is strongly associated to the “fix points” located in the classroom space.
The objective of the media is to allow a constant dialogue with the «playing»
child who will be able to play alone at home or in the school computer room
with the presence of a teacher who can intervene and orient him in the utiliza-
tion of this pedagogic tool.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 220
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartography to Children through Interactive Media

By clicking or by passing the cursor on the image, many elements are activa-
ted and a window opens in order to inform about the next steps of the proposed
activity. At this moment information and concepts are proposed followed by
games. The time taken to perform the games is measured and helps the player to
evaluate himself.

The creation of themes

Themes are grouped according to significant elements in the classroom (board,

teacher table, pupils desks…) that we call “fix points”. This group of objects al-
low the building of the contents.
The different points of view of the classroom image were graphically de-
signed based on pictures taken in a model classroom located in the premises of
the UFF’s Institute of Geosciences. These pictures were registered in different an-
gles. This allows the vision of space and environment according to different per-
spectives.

The Earth rotates (rotation and translation movements — seasons of the year)

These themes are developed based on the board «birthdays this month» located
near to the door. The media, in its basic conception stimulates the ordinary daily
life of a classroom in the first years of basic school.
In order to highlight the theme “The Earth rotates” we begin with a Globe ro-
tating from west to east, simulating the alternation day/night. Information about
this movement is presented since the beginning of activity. Passing the cursor on
the birthday board presents the months of the year as well as information about
the seasons. This part of the media is more informative in order to satisfy curi-
osity. It presents the interest of the media dynamism and allows a supporting in-
teraction of the teacher. .
On the same wall of the classroom we find a bookshelf with books and maps.
These elements are enabled to execute the media activities. The game box for in-
stance can be enabled and the activity hereunder will appear on the screen.
Continuing going around the classroom, the pupil will be stimulated top
observe the terrestrial Globe on the teacher’s desk and, by passing the cursor on
it, to activate it. New windows will then open with the presentation of different
representation concepts of the Earth, by means of terrestrial globes and maps.
The reference lines of Earth are indicated as well as the presentation of meri-
dians, parallels, latitudes and longitudes.
After the presentation of cartographic concepts and the illustration of the
main reference lines of the terrestrial globe, the pupil will be invited to partici-
pate in a game of identification of geographic coordinates on a map where small
ships appear. The pupil has to indicate their coordinates (figure 2).
All games count points and have a limited time to be realized. This is already
commonly what happens with electronic games. The timing in the different steps
allows competition among pupils and encourages their rapidity and smartness.
That is why the project team thought about introducing a chronometer.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 221
Joint ICA Symposium
Marli Cigagna Wiefels, Jonas da Costa Sampaio

Figure 3. Game: crossword puzzle

The pupil will always be invited to develop his knowledge and to participate
to the several activities proposed by the media during his virtual tour through the
classroom. In this school environment, designed for learning geography, we use
an attractive visual and graphic language, in order to provide a more friendly and
interesting training, and to offer challenges to advance in the reading of maps
and in practical cartography.
Other important fixed points in the media are the classroom windows. It is
through these windows that the landscape can be observed. The landscape can be
the community, the other side of the school building, the urban landscape or
even a beach. Regarding this theme, we try to stimulate the sketching of the land-
scape presented by pictures of Niterói, cut in 9 equal rectangles, making it pos-
sible to build a puzzle as a linked activity.
Another fix point is the waste bin in the corner of the room, nearby the
teacher desk. Pupils are invited to read short texts about garbage, their decom-
posing time and the care to be brought to environment. Afterwards they are in-
vited to a selective collection of garbage, with bins of different colours (green,
yellow, blue and red) according to the type of garbage to throw.
In the classroom we also have a small museum with relics of a thematic long
walk along seaside, and an aquarium with a fish. The question put to the pupil: is
the fish is its natural environment? At this moment an activity is introduced with
information about the fauna (fishes, crustaceans, molluscs and marine mammals)
of the Guanabara bay. The proposed game afterward is very like a “naval battle”,
using alphanumerical coordinates to localize each element of the game. At each
good shot, the player receives a picture of the animal (fish, crustacean, mollusc).
In this game the animals are only presented with pictures.
The daily classroom goes this way and the cards and posters stuck on the
board are elements of activities for these media players. The pupils will have the
opportunity to make their own board posters according to the suggested themes.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 222
Joint ICA Symposium
Teaching Cartography to Children through Interactive Media

Conclusions and perspectives

“Games constitute a resource still seldom used in classrooms. They are however
very valuable because they arouse expectation, anxiety and enthusiasm to the pu-
pils. A game is ludic by itself and presents challenges well accepted at all ages, in
the classroom as well as outside it. For students, it is something amazing, as the
game sounds like a challenge to their cleverness, bringing them to know more
about the rules and to think about winning strategies.” (Passini, 2007)
The didactic resource represented by this media and described in the present
document is the result of a research and of a dream. We have brought together
an heterogeneous group of students to build an educational and interactive me-
dia, where concepts and actions are mixed in order to allow the pupil training
through interesting activities and games.
The new communication technologies are essential instruments in a class-
room where teachers and pupils are integrated and make instruction and edu-
cation a dynamic and friendly training. Who does not like to have a game in a
classroom? However, we must also have in mind that not all teachers already live
in a digital era and that not every school has its own computer room. Our pro-
posal is therefore to have this media available as an important auxiliary tool in a
classroom for the teaching of the proposed themes.
Once we have completed this first model, it will be evaluated by the teachers
of the public schools network, as well as by those of the private schools, in order
to improve it even more.

References

Nogueira, Ruth E. (Org.): Motivações Hodiernas para o Ensinar Geografia – Re-

presentações do espaço para visuais invisuais. Florianópolis: [s.n.] 2009.
Passini, Elsa Yassuko, Passini Romão, Malyz, Sandra (org.): Prática do ensino de
geografia e estágio supervisionado. São Paulo: Contexto, 2007.
Pontuschka, Nídia N. Paganelli, Tomoko I. Cacete, Núria H. (org.): Para ensinar
e aprender Geografia. São Paulo: Cortez, 2007.
Internet: Parâmetros Curriculares Nacional (PCN):
portal.mec.gov.br/seb/arquivos/pdf/livro01.pdf
portal.mec.gov.br/seb/arquivos/pdf/geografia.pdf

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 223
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Development of Brazilian Cartography for Children

CARTOGRAPHY IN TEXTBOOKS PUBLISHED

BETWEEN 1824 AND 2002 IN BRAZIL

Levon Boligian1, Rosângela Doin de Almeida2

1 Universidade do Vale do Ivaí (Brazil)
[email protected]
2 Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Campus of Rio Claro (Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: The main focus of enquiry on this research is the historical evolution of Car-
tography contents from 1824 until 2002 and its role in the establishment of an educa-
tional geographic culture in Brazilian schools. It has identified curricular alternations,
permanence and transformations of these contents during the investigated period, taking
as source materials the official syllabus programmes, but especially the compendia and
Geography textbooks addressed to students in the first year of secondary school. Through
this socio-historical view of the curriculum, it was possible to evidence important episte-
mological differences between the scientific geographical knowledge and the educational
geographical knowledge.

1. Purposes for this study

This research investigated the hole that Geography textbooks, published since the
beginning of the 19th century, and the curricular contents contained therein
have in the socio-historical process of construction and reconstruction of an edu-
cational geographical knowledge considering the Brazilian educational system.
To achieve this aim, the evolution of Cartography contents presented by
authors of textbooks and by the Brazilian official programmes to students in the
first year of secondary school were analysed and, through a spreadsheet of sub-
jects, notions and cartographic concepts, it was possible to notice the alterna-
tions, the ruptures and the curricular transformations occurred between 1824 and
2002.
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

2. Analysis of the socio-historical evolution in school

cartography contents

A research conducted by Callai (1999) with a sector of students and teachers of

secondary education in Brazilian state schools, in the middle of the nineties,
revealed that, for the majority of people interviewed, Geography seems to be ex-
tremely fragmented and naturalistic. In this sense, names of places, their loca-
lisation and mainly their natural characteristics are studied, once “Physical Geo-
graphy” is a field in this subject considered to be the most “scientific”, because is
more observable and objective than “Human Geography”. Besides, according to
the above mentioned research, for the interviewees, the ideas of “map” and “car-
tography” are inseparable from “Geography”. For them, these concepts are prac-
tically synonyms. Martinelli (2000, p. 3) also highlights this aspect in his thesis,
writing that:

“When we talk about ‘maps’, immediately we associate them with ‘Geography’. It

is a cultural aspect. Maps, therefore, would represent Geography, what is geo-
graphic. They would be Geography themselves. [...] In this sense, we can verify
that a map is a symbolic representation of Geography. [...]”

We understand that this representation in the imagination of people is a so-

cio-historical construction whose origin is at schools, in the Cartography con-
tents worked by Geography teachers. It is a knowledge dictated by the curricular
programmes and especially by the textbooks published and used in Brazil in the
last two centuries. During this period, the cartographic contents have been worked,
roughly, in the volumes regarding the first years of secondary education. And these
contents are our main focus of analysis on this study.

3. The selection of documents and method of work

Information and data collection for this research in documentary sources were
carried out based on the Library of Textbooks (BLD) collection, located at the
Faculty of Education of Universidade de São Paulo. We complemented the sur-
vey of textbooks, asking the most important Brazilian publishers for an author-
ization to look up their private collections, in a way to have access to the major
works published in Brazil during the specified period. We had permission to
consult the private collections from the following publishers: Saraiva, FTD, Sci-
pione, Ática and Abril Educação.
Besides consulting the publishers’ collections, we had access to available do-
cuments at the Documentation Department and Memory of Colégio Pedro II
(NUDOM), in Rio de Janeiro, where we consulted the minutes of the Teachers
Council, Geography compendia and theses regarding the school since its estab-
lishment. Colégio Pedro II was the first institution of secondary education
created in Brazil, in 1837, in the same traditional mould of French collèges and
licèes. Until the end of the fifties, the teaching staff of Colégio Pedro II were en-
trusted by the State with the formulation of the syllabus for every subject taught

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 225
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil

in secondary schools in the whole country. Consequently, the access to the a-

bove mentioned documents was essential for the development of this work.
In relation to the criteria for selecting the textbooks used as source of in-
formation for the research, we used as major parameters: the works of authors
mentioned in the researches of Issler (1973), Colesanti (1984), Vechia & Lorenz
(1998), Gasparello (2002, 2006) and Vechia (2007), which, according to those
specialists, stood out in the Brazilian educational circle until the third quarter of
the 20th century; and, with relation to the most recent textbooks, published from
the seventies on, we opted for the ones that, according to information provided
by the person in charge of the collection in the visited publishers, stood out in
terms of adoption, both in private and governmental purchases in the last four
decades.
In the event of textbooks of a same author that were republished during a
long period of time – works called “editorial success” – we selected editions for
the first year of secondary education, with intervals of some years between them,
intending to verify developments carried out by the author in the way that the
contents of Cartography were worked. Actually, in several cases, there was not a
possibility to perform a sequential analysis of the editions due to shortages of
some of them in the consulted collections, even in the own collections of the
publishers. This fact referred us to a matter already mentioned by Bittencourt
(1993) related to a characteristic of textbooks. As they are products that are
quickly consumed, almost in a disposable way, in accordance with the changes in
the curricular and market context, these publications create a paradox. Even if
the titles have a great circulation, that is since the beginning of the 20th century,
they are badly preserved by the society in general, including the very publishers
which produce and commercialise them in the whole country, because, in accor-
dance with we could observe, few of them invest in the organisation and con-
servation of their own collection of works already published.
Regarding the consulted curricular programmes, our main sources were the
following documents: the book “Programa de ensino da escola secundária bra-
sileira: 1850–1951”, under the authorship of Professors Ariclê Vechia e Karl Mi-
chael Lorenz, from Universidade Federal do Paraná, in which the old official
programmes from Colégio Pedro II were consulted, all of them drawn up and
published during the period of Empire in Brazil; the dissertation “O ensino de
Geografia através do livro didático no período de 1890 a 1971”, under the au-
thorship of Professor Marlene Teresinha de Muno Colesanti, published under
orientation of Professor Lívia de Oliveira, in 1984, in which we looked up for the
programmes of curricular reforms occurred during the First Republic and the New
Republic in Brazil; the documents “Guias Curriculares Propostos para as Matérias
do Núcleo Comum do Ensino de 1o Grau”, drawn up by the Centre of Human
Resources and Educational Researches “Professor Laerte Ramos de Carvalho”
(CERHUPE), published in 1975, and the “Proposta Curricular para o Ensino de
Geografia /1o Grau”, drawn up by the Coordination Office of Studies and Pe-
dagogic Principles, first edition published in 1988, both institutions part of the
Education Department of São Paulo State, where we consulted the curricular
programmes of Social Science and Geography, for the second half of the seventies
and for the eighties and nineties, respectively. As in this period, the Federal Go-
vernment, through the Law of Directives and Bases of Education, No. 5692/71,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 226
Joint ICA Symposium
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

decentralised the establishment of curricular proposals, we tried to get information

about cartographic contents from these documents because we believe that São
Paulo has become a national reference; and lastly, the document “Geografia”, for
the 5th to the 8th grade, or the 3rd and 4th cycles of Primary Education from the
“Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais” (PCNs), established and published by the
Ministry of Education, in 1998.
Based on the criteria of selection already mentioned, for this study we con-
sulted 13 (thirteen) official curricular programmes and 37 (thirty-seven) teaching
materials, among compendia and textbooks.
After selecting the materials, the next step comprised of recording the data
and information extracted that would be the basis for our analysis. After trying
some resources, like making photocopies of books, we concluded that the best
way to store the pages of the books, in order to subsequently analyse them,
would be by means of digital photography. Therefore, we photographed the
pages of the official programmes and the minutes of the Teachers Council of
Colégio Pedro II, as well as the compendia and textbooks that had some concepts
(especially the ones of public use or model exercise) linked to Cartography. Al-
together, we accumulated around 5730 images in JPG format.
The criteria to choose the Cartographic contents present in the curricula and
textbooks were based on the analysis of the Simielli (1993, 1996, 2008), Almeida,
Sanchez & Picarelli (1997), Almeida (2003) and Le Sann (2005) studies, which
helped us to compile a set of notions, concepts and cartographic subjects. As far
as we understand, these contents were historically established as Cartography
contents to be taught in Geography classes in Brazil. The tables below bring the
contents extracted from the above-mentioned studies.

Table 1. Cartographic contents proposed by Maria Elena Simielli, 1993

Cartographic contents proposed by Maria Elena Simielli, 1993

Shapes Proportion
Symbols Measurements
Legend Scale
Oblique view Grids/tables
Vertical view Coordinates
Representation in the plane Maps (interpretation)
Generalisation Aerial photographs
Laterality Scale model
Direction / Orientation Localisation

Simielli, M. E., 1993. Coleção Primeiros Mapas. Teacher’s book. São Paulo: Ática.
Simielli, M. E., 1996. Cartografia e ensino: proposta de contraponto de uma obra di-
dática. Thesis of “Livre-docência”. Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Human Science,
Department of Geography, Universidade de São Paulo.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 227
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil

Table 2. Cartographic contents proposed by Rosângela Doin de Almeida,

Miguel Sanchez and Adriano Picarelli, 1997

Cartographic contents proposed by Rosângela Doin de Almeida,

Miguel Sanchez and Adriano Picarelli, 1997
Book 2
Cartographic subjects Knowledge relating to spatial representation
Conservation of measurement
Scale Conservation of distance
Proportional areas
Projection of sphere in the plane
Notions of circumference
Cartographic Projections Concept of angle
Notions of parallelism and perpendicularity
Parallels and meridians
Orthogonal projection
Planning of geometric solids
Notion of plane and curves
Topography
Perpendicularity between straight lines and planes
Landforms
Contour line
Projection in Conservation of a point of view
Orthogonal projection from a vertical point of view
the Plane
Symbolisation
Book 3

Cartographic subjects Knowledge relating to spatial representation

Location references on the globe: west-east and north-

Localisation south directions
Orientation Location and geographical orientations: parallels and
Coordinates meridians
Angle measurement
Notion of proportion
Metric system
Scale
Conservation of distance and measurement
Calculation of distance
Contour line
Topographical outline
Topographical Orthogonal projection from a vertical point of view
Classification and connection between classes
Representation
Relation between numerical and spatial proportions
Visual proportion and variable visual size
Visual order and variable visual value

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 228
Joint ICA Symposium
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Book 4

Cartographic subjects Knowledge relating to spatial representation

Localisation Geographical references on the globe

Orientation in the world map
Orientation
Geographical coordinates
Coordinates
Division of angles
Topographical Ratio and proportion
Perpendicularity between straight lines and planes
Representation
Contour line
Ratio and proportion
Scale
Cartographic projections

History of Cartography Cartographic projections

Ratio and proportion

Classification and connection between classes
Thematic Representations Relation between numerical and spatial proportions
Visual proportion and variable visual size
Visual order
Application of Cartographic Interpretation of aerial photographs
Topographical map
Knowledge
Land relief outline
Almeida, R. D. Sanchez, M. C. Picarelli, A., 1997. Atividades Cartográficas. Teacher’s book, vol.
2, 3 and 4. São Paulo: Atual.

Table 3. Cartographic contents proposed by Janine Le Sann - 2005

Cartographic contents proposed by Janine Le Sann - 2005

General plane
Main axes Cartographic notions
Shape of objects
Representation Free drawing
Photographs
Scale
Comparison
Relation-dimension
Standard measurement
Proportion
Perceptual measurement
Le Sann, J. G., 2005. A caminho da Geografia: uma proposta metodológica.
Belo Horizonte: Editora Dimensão.

Based on the contents indicated in these studies, we drew up a cluster of no-

tions, concepts and subjects, divided in some large thematic groups in order to
consider a universe of School Cartography contents developed in the Brazilian
secondary education. Below we present the groups created with their respective
contents.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 229
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil

Table 4. Cartographic contents (concepts, notions and subjects)

Cartographic contents (concepts, notions and subjects)

Geometric shapes Interpretation of maps

Shape of objects Plan
Shapes

Symbols Map

Cartographic representations
Legend World Map

(two-dimensional)
Points of view Sorts of projections
Mind Map Topographic map
Localisation Outline
Localisation

Orientation

Laterality Sketch
and

Direction / Orientation Thematic maps

Proportion Choropleth map

Scale

Measurement Anamorphosis
Cartographic scale Graphs and diagrams
(three-dimensional)

Geographical scale Scale model

representations

Coordinates
Cartographic
Coordinates and imaginary lines

Block diagram
(elementary notions)
Shape of the Earth /
Movement of celestial The Globe
bodies

Hemispheres Aerial photographs

Technology and

Imaginary lines / parallels

Cartography

Satellite images
and meridians
Latitude and Longitude GIS
Time Zones Cartographic techniques

Elaborated by Boligian, 2009 History of Cartography

Based on the table above, we started reading the official programmes and the
pages of the selected textbooks, trying to identify the presence of the chosen car-
tographic contents.

4. Results of the documentary analysis

The analysis of the selected official curricular programmes and teaching materi-
als allowed a “visualisation” of a historical evolution of cartographic contents in
the last two centuries in Brazilian schools.
We perceived that since 1824 the contents are becoming increasingly diver-
sified over time, with new notions, concepts and subjects being added to the syl-
labus prescribed, both in the official curricular programmes and in the teaching
materials (compendia and textbooks) of Geography. It is well known how com-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 230
Joint ICA Symposium
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

pendia and textbooks, in general, deal with more contents of Cartography than
the curricula themselves, which bring a more simplified programme, except for
the PCNs (1998).
In a more specific interpretation, we can observe the existence of a sort of
“hard core” of contents, which starts to be established in the 19th century. This
“hard core” consists of the following groups of contents:

• “Localisation and Orientation”, particularly the content that refers to “Di-

rection/Orientation”;
• “Scale”, particularly the content that refers to “Cartographic scale”;
• “Coordinates and imaginary lines”, particularly the contents “Shape of the
Earth/Movement of celestial bodies”, “Hemispheres”, “Imaginary lines/pa-
rallels and meridians”, “Latitude and Longitude” and “Time Zones”;
• “Cartographic representations (two-dimensional representations)”, parti-
cularly the content that refers to “Map”;
• And “Cartographic representations (three-dimensional representations)”,
particularly the content that refers to “The Globe”.

As it is possible to notice, the mentioned contents establish a continuity, a

“school tradition” that dictates certain cartographic notions that “must” be worked
in the first year of secondary education for almost two centuries, lasting for prac-
tically all the curricular reforms and the programmes of textbooks produced
during the 20th century and also permeating the 21st century.
Another important aspect that we perceived with the analysis refers to the
work done with the notions of “Symbols” and “Legend”. Even though some text-
books dealt with them during the thirties and forties, these contents reappear as
prescriptions in all consulted textbooks that were published from 1972 to 2002.
At this moment, there is a need to carry out some parallelisms between the do-
main of school knowledge and the domain of production of academic know-
ledge. We understand that working with these subjects has become more power-
ful due to the discussion in the academic sphere about the systematisation of
thematic cartography which is specially reinforced by the studies of Semiology of
Graphics developed by Professor J. Bertin, from the end of the sixties to the be-
ginning of the seventies (Martinelli, 2000, 2007). This parallelism points to an
educational transposition from this academic knowledge to a knowledge to be
taught, prepared especially by authors of textbooks. On the other hand, the de-
velopment of learning activities directed to the interpretation of maps, which is
recommended by the last three curricular programmes analysed, is not a proce-
dure that is transposed to textbooks.
However, as a general rule, we can notice a process, from the seventies on,
that makes Cartography subjects become more complex and the contents pre-
scribed by the curricular programmes and textbooks, during the nineties, more
comprehensive. We can see again the process of debates within the academic
domain reflecting on the work of professors and authors of official curricula and
teaching materials. This is because, right during this period, more accurate re-
searches on how to teach Cartography were conducted in Brazil. At first they oc-
curred by means of studies of few researchers, like the case of pioneering re-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 231
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil

searches developed by Professor Lívia de Oliveira, from Universidade Estadual

Paulista (UNESP), in Rio Claro, during the seventies (Almeida, 2007).
However, from 1995 on, for the first time in Brazil, it was established a fo-
rum for debates concerning Cartography and its implications in teaching Geog-
raphy, called “Colloquies of Cartography for Children”, which are held approx-
imately every two or three years. The colloquies became, therefore, a way to
exchange information and to spread researches through their annals. The aca-
demic production in this field of research has also been spread and featured
prominently in periodicals and newspapers, becoming the core for discussions
in important events, like in the National Meeting of Geography Teaching
(ENEG) and the Meeting of Geography Teaching Practice (ENPEG). Thus, it is
possible to notice in the last decades, a process of transposition of this academ-
ic production to a knowledge to be taught through the curricular programmes
and teaching materials.

5. Conclusion

According to what we observed, a great part of the group of geographical con-

cepts and, more specifically, of the geographical concepts prescribed in the na-
tional teaching materials, doesn’t have its origins in a systematic academic know-
ledge. We verified that its origins are supported by a sort of classical and erudite
knowledge, based on the spirit of humanities, which formed the foundation for
the secondary education in our country, before the establishment of the first uni-
versities.
Also, much of this classical geographical knowledge and, as a result, Carto-
graphy is part of it, is still present at schools by means of what we call “hard core
of cartographic contents”: a set of notions, concepts and subjects such as “Di-
rection and Orientation”, “Shape of the Earth and Movement of celestial bodies”,
“Imaginary lines: parallels and meridians”, “Geographic coordinates/Latitude and
Longitude”, “Map” and “Globe”, that have lasted in the Brazilian curriculum of
Geography addressed to secondary education for the last two centuries, approxi-
mately. These explicit concepts, as well as the teaching method historically estab-
lished by teachers-authors of textbooks, whom most of them also contributed to
the production of the official programmes, at least until the forties, demonstrate
a distinguished cultural production in which we verified that school Geography
appears not only as a vulgarisation or an adaptation of scientific Geographic
knowledge, but as a characteristic and original knowledge from the educational
institution for the educational institution. Thus, two different groups of know-
ledge were set up: the one intended for teaching and another for the academy.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 232
Joint ICA Symposium
Levon Boligian, Rosângela Doin de Almeida

References

Almeida, R. D. Sanchez, M. C. Picarelli, A.: 1997, Atividades Cartográficas. Teach-

er’s book, vol. 2, 3 e 4. São Paulo: Atual.
Almeida, R. D.: 2003, Cartografia na escola. [online] Available at:
<http://www.tvebrasil.com.br/salto/boletins2003/ce/index.htm>
[Accessed 3 May 2005].
Almeida, R. D.: 2007, Apresentação. In: R. D. Almeida (organiser), ed. 2007. Car-
tografia escolar. São Paulo: Contexto.
Bittencourt, C. M. F.: 1993, Livro didático e conhecimento histórico: uma his-
tória do saber escolar. Doctorate. FFLCH – Universidade de São Paulo.
Brazilian Department of Elementary Education (1998). Parâmetros curriculares
nacionais: Geografia. Brasília: MEC/SEF.
Callai, H. C.: 1999, A Geografia no Ensino Médio. Terra Livre. 14 (July 1999),
p. 60–99.
Colesanti, M. T. M.: 1984, O ensino de Geografia através do livro didático no
período de 1890 a 1971. Master’s Degree. Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sci-
ence – Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus of Rio Claro.
Gasparello, A. M.: 2002, Historiografia didática e pesquisa no ensino de história.
In: X Encontro Regional de História – ANPUH-RJ. “História e Biografias”. Uni-
versidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Gasparello, A. M.: 2006, Traduções, apostilas e livros didáticos: ofícios e saberes
na construção das disciplinas escolares. In: Usos do Passado – XII Encontro Re-
gional de História ANPUH–RJ. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Issler, B.: 1973, A Geografia e os Estudos Sociais. Doctorate. Faculty of Philoso-
phy, Science and Arts – Presidente Prudente – São Paulo.
Le Sann, J. G.: 2005, A caminho da Geografia: uma proposta metodológica. Belo
Horizonte: Editora Dimensão.
Martinelli, M.: 2007, A sistematização da cartografia temática. In: R. D. Almeida
(organiser), ed. 2007. Cartografia escolar. São Paulo: Contexto, p. 193–220.
Martinelli, M.: 2000, As representações gráficas da Geografia: os mapas temáti-
cos. Thesis of “Livre-docência”. Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Human Science.
Universidade de São Paulo.
Simielli, M. E.: 2008, Cartografia no ensino fundamental e médio. In: A. F. Car-
los, ed. 2008. A geografia na sala de aula. São Paulo: Contexto, p. 92–108.
Simielli, M. E.: 1996, Cartografia e ensino: proposta de contraponto de uma obra
didática. Thesis of “Livre-docência”. Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Human Sci-
ence – Department of Geography, Universidade de São Paulo.
Simielli, M. E.: 1993, Coleção Primeiros Mapas. Teacher’s book. São Paulo: Ática.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 233
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography in Textbooks Published Between 1824 and 2002 in Brazil

Vechia, A.: 2007, Os livros didáticos de história do Brasil na escola secundária

brasileira: a produção dos saberes pedagógicos no século XIX. In: CD-ROM
Simpósio Internacional Livro didático: Educação e História. São Paulo, Brazil 5–
8 November 2007.
Vechia, A. Lorenz, K. M.: 1998, Programa de ensino da escola secundária bra-
sileira: 1850–1951. Curitiba: Authors’ publisher.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 234
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Development of Brazilian Cartography for Children

THE TRANSITION FROM THE ANALYTIC TO

SYNTHESIS REASONING IN THE MAPS OF
GEOGRAPHIC SCHOOL ATLASES FOR
CHILDREN

Marcello Martinelli
Departamento de Geografia, Pós-graduação, Programa Geografia Humana
Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo
São Paulo, SP (Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: At the end of 19th century, geographic school atlases gained credit among
didactic materials. The “Atlas do Império do Brazil” of Almeida was the first Brazilian
school Atlas. Currently there are many geographic school atlases on a variety of formats.
Elaborating a school atlas is not a simple task. The first step for its coordination is the in-
tegrated interlacement of two fundamental orientations: the teaching of the map, based
on the construction of the space notion by the student and its representation; the teach-
ing through the map, founded on the knowledge of the world from the nearby, the place,
to the distant, the worldwide space. Regarding the thematic maps, the representation of
the reality can be carried out within analytic or synthesis reasoning. Analytic maps re-
present places, ways or areas characterized by attributes or variables. Synthesis maps iden-
tify groupings of places, ways or areas characterized by groupings of attributes or vari-
ables.
Marcello Martinelli

Opening

In the teaching and learning environment of Geography since its institution as a

school subject, first in Germany and after in France, on the second half of the
19th century, geographic school atlases gained credit among didactic materials,
increasingly adapting themselves to this function in the classroom.
They have appeared as selections and simplifications of the great general ref-
erence atlases, which evolved from simple collections to a systematic organiza-
tion with specific and intellectual purpose.
The “Atlas général Vidal-Lablache: histoire et géographie” of 1824 was a clas-
sic that inspired several derivations in France as well as in other countries of the
continent.
In 1868, the first Brazilian school atlas was published, called “Atlas do Impé-
rio do Brazil” of Cândido Mendes de Almeida. It was adopted by the Colégio Im-
perial Pedro II, in Rio de Janeiro.
As a result of the whole evolution and epistemological transformation of at-
lases cartography, a great number of assorted geographic school atlases is cur-
rently available in print and electronic formats.

Elaborating a geographical school atlas

This elaboration is not a simple task. It will have to start with the lucubration
about the construction of the space notion and its representation by the student.
As chief sources, among others, there are the psychogenetic studies of Jean Piaget
and his team and of other researches, like the ones from Vygotsky and Wallon.
(Piaget and Inhelder, 1972; Wallon, 1995; Vygotsky, 1998).
In Brazil, we count on the contributions of Doctor Professor Lívia de Oli-
veira, who established the master lines for a correct orientation of these works,
having instituted a proper school with high qualified disciples (Oliveira, 1978,
2006; Almeida and Passini, 1989; Almeida, 2001).
A school atlas will not be only a collection of maps, ready and finished, but a
systematic organization of representations developed with a specific intellectual
purpose. With this intent, the articulation of two fundamental methodological
bases has to be taken into account: the methodological basis of the map and the
methodological basis of the acquisition of knowledge in geography trough the
map.
Therefore, maps would not be seen as mere illustrative figures of didactic texts,
but as representations that reveal questions that will be tackled and discussed with-
in the geographic speeches, opening space to critical and conscious reflections.
The atlas enterprise considers the integrated interlacement of two basic ori-
entations as a first step for its coordination:

• The teaching of the map, propagated on the theorist-methodological pos-

tures about the construction of the space notion and its respective repre-
sentation by the scholar, involving initial cartography practices,

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 236
Joint ICA Symposium
The Transition from the Analytic to Synthesis Reasoning in the Maps of Geographic School
Atlases for Children

• The teaching through the map, accomplished on geography, promoting

the knowledge of the world from the spatial inclusion and continuity,
starting by the nearby, experienced and well known – the place – to the
distant unknown – the worldwide space.

The atlas content is organized in consonance with the context of the geog-
raphy methodological bases.
The spatial outline definition, ranging from the local place to the worldwide
space, would come linked to the question of the thematic and scale structure.
Afterwards, the atlas Thematic Cartography is based upon the map elabora-
tion as a construction within the parameters that consider the graphic represen-
tation as a language, integrating a monosemic semiotic system (having only one
meaning) (Bertin, 1973, 1977).
Within this context, the atlas thematic maps can be constructed by selecting
the most appropriate method to the characteristics and forms of manifestation
(on dots, on lines, on areas) of the phenomena of the reality took into account on
each theme, following a qualitative, ordered or quantitative approach.
The representations can also undertake either a static or dynamic apprecia-
tion of the reality. Yet, the phenomena that compose the reality to be represented
on a map could be glimmered within analytic or synthesis reasoning. Thus, on
the one hand, there is an attention to the constitutive elements, the places, paths
and areas characterized by attributes or variables but on the other hand, there are
integrated spatial units, which mean groupings of places, paths and areas being
characterized by groupings of attributes or variables.

The analytic reasoning

The analytic reasoning in maps is directed to the scrutiny of the geographic

space, mobilizing procedures of classification, combination and search for expla-
nations about facts or phenomena seen indistinctly on the reality. The mental
operations undertaken, regarding analytic maps, will allow the student to formu-
late conjectures about what would elucidate the phenomena geography. How-
ever, before a more rigorous critic, authors affirm that they would not be able to
suggest the causalities or give the explanations by themselves, but to indicate new
researches (Rimbert, 1968; Claval and Wieber, 1969).
Analytic maps are the most widespread on school atlases. They can display
the representations on a qualitative, ordered or quantitative approach, consider-
ing manifestations on dots, lines, and areas, according to the static or dynamical
point of view.
Qualitative maps express the existence, the location and the extension of the
events on a certain situation on the time, that are distinguished by their nature,
species, allowing them to be classified by criteria established by the sciences that
study them.
Ordinate maps show, on a certain date, categories that are enlisted on a sole se-
quence, defining hierarchies, or focalize, on a single map, aspects that were being
consolidated over the time.

Quantitative maps evidence the relationship of proportionality between quan-

tities that characterize places, paths or areas for a certain moment. Look at the fol-
lowing example: the map shows in analytic form the ternary structures of Brazil
land use of the establishment total areas in 2006 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The distribution of ternary structures in the country

From a dynamical point of view, maps can show qualitative, ordered and
quantitative variations on the time or qualitative, ordered and quantitative di-
rected movements on the space.

The synthesis reasoning

Synthesis maps would have, as their first function, pointing out the correlations,
evidencing connections between distinct phenomena (Claval and Wieber, 1969:
p. 103).
Synthesis is a necessity, but it has to be treated in a way that makes new con-
figurations to emerge, completely different from those resulted of a simple sum
of the elementary configurations. Just in this manner, an overview of the reality
would be achieved.
These maps become a privileged instrument of the geographer, who is inte-
rested in regional studies.
Despite this entire methodological base, established with the evolution of the
cartographic science, it is noticeable that still exist a lot of confusion about what
synthesis cartography is. And this is transferred to school atlases.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 238
Joint ICA Symposium
The Transition from the Analytic to Synthesis Reasoning in the Maps of Geographic School
Atlases for Children

Many people still conceive it, by means of maps stated – synthesis maps –
but, not like logical systems, but like superposition or juxtaposition of analyses.
Then, very confused maps appear, on which a lot of symbols are accumulated,
denying the very idea of synthesis.
On synthesis, we cannot have the elements on superposition or juxtaposition
anymore, but their fusion in “types”. This means that, regarding maps, it is pos-
sible to identify groupings of places, paths or areas – as elementary spatial units
of observation – characterized by groupings of attributes or variables (Rimbert,
1968; Bertin, 1973, 1977; Martinelli, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2008; Martinelli and Fer-
reira, 1995).
To explain what synthesis reasoning is, it was borrowed an experimental
piece of work done by Gimeno (1980, p. 174). Its aim was to discover which
groupings could be formed in a set of 42 elementary data: seven objects related to
six attributes. The following diagram shows the transition of the analytic mo-
ment; where, in a matrix, each object relates to one or more attributes; to the
synthesis moment, achieved with reiterated permutations between columns and
rows of the matrix, revealing three groups of objects characterized by three
groups of attributes. This is the revealed information (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The transition from analytic to the synthesis reasoning

Synthesis cartography can be done by an assorted gamma of methods that

were being developed together with an accurate search, involving qualitative, or-
dinate or quantitative data, on a static or dynamical appreciation, by employing
entities like dots, lines, areas.
Thus, according to the objectives and established fields of study, basically
three main groups can be pondered: traditional superposition and manual com-
bination of many analytic thematic maps, graphic methods and statistic-mathe-
matic methods.

The Triangular graph method will be considered here due to its intrinsic sim-
plicity. It is employed on a particular case in synthesis cartography, the one
which searches for the representation of the “types” of specific ternary structures
on space, that is, for variables formed by three collinear components. In this way,
such graphic would participate as an algorithm for the treatment of the data and
for the legend organization.
The different combinations of the three components I, II and III of the stu-
died variable are synthesized through dots inside the triangle. Since the variable
refers to areas, each dot of the graphic represents the structure of each one
(Béguin and Pumain, 1994).
Based on the visual analysis of the resultant point pattern, the areas are
grouped according to categories defined by the position they assume in the
triangle. Sometimes the groupings are not that easy to be discerned. A more ac-
curate control is required. The categories, defined as such, will be later trans-
ferred to the map, which will represent the synthesis of the ternary structures
grouped into significant classes. The triangular graph will be its legend, giving
total transparency to the reasoning undertaken on the map construction
The following representation shows the synthesis of the Brazil information
displayed in the figure 1 as “types” of land use structures (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The map represents the synthesis of the ternary structures grouped
into significant classes described in the legend

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 240
Joint ICA Symposium
The Transition from the Analytic to Synthesis Reasoning in the Maps of Geographic School
Atlases for Children

Generally, synthesis cartography worked by graphic methods, is explored a-

long with static situations. However, it is also possible to elaborate it in dyna-
mical approaches like in the case of the establishment of demographic evolution
“types” for a certain period of time with various census data.
To get to this synthesis it is mobilized a graphic treatment of the data, which
consists in elaborating an evolution graph in semi-logarithmic graph-paper for
each observation unit. After ready, these diagrams will be visually classified,
approximating those that are more similar, trying to form groups with similar
evolutionary characteristics. Each group will consist of a “type” that will be qua-
lified on the legend by a symbol and its respective epithet, expressed in a concise
manner.
Each rubric of the legend, thus specified, will receive either an indicative col-
our or texture to be plotted on the map that will express the synthesis.
A remark on this topic is extremely important for school atlases. It is insuffi-
cient to use analytical and synthesis maps only to show the existence of these two
kinds of reasoning. A consistent presentation of the synthesis map is only valid
when the analytical maps, employed to accomplish the synthesis representation,
are available to the students.

Final remarks

These methodological directions are considered imperative to sustain all and

any undertaking directed to the geographic school atlases idealization, when
dealing with analytic and synthesis maps. They will confirm to them, in consis-
tently form, their pedagogic role in geography, preparing the citizen for the
practice of social transformation.

References

Almeida, Rosângela D.: 2001, Do desenho ao mapa: iniciação cartográfica na

escola. São Paulo, Contexto.
Almeida, R. D. and Passini, E. Y.: 1989, O espaço geográfico: ensino e representa-
ção. São Paulo, Contexto.
Almeida, Rosângela D. et al.: 1977, Atividades cartográficas. (4 vol.). São Paulo:
Atual.
Antunes, A. R. et al.: 1993, Estudos sociais: teoria e prática. Rio de Janeiro: AC-
CESS.
Beguin, M. and Pumain, D.: 1994, La représentation des données géographiques:
statistique et cartographie. Paris: Armand Colin.
Bertin, Jacques: 1977, La graphique et le traitement, graphique de l’information.
Paris: Flammarion.

Bertin, Jacques: 1973, Sémiologie graphique: les diagrammes, les réseaux, les
cartes. Paris: Mouton, Gauthier, Villars.
Claval, P. and Wieber J-C.: 1969, La cartographie thématique comme méthode de
recherche. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Gimeno, Roberto: 1980, Apprendre à l’école par la graphique. Paris: Retz.
Martinelli, Marcello: 2005, A student geographic atlas for the natural and social
spaces learning. In: International Cartographic Conference, A Coruña, Spain.
Poster. A Coruña: CD – Global Congresos.
Martinelli, Marcello: 2003, Atlas geográfico: natureza e espaço da sociedade. São
Paulo: Editora do Brasil.
Martinelli, Marcello: 1998, Mapas e gráficos: construa-os você mesmo. São Paulo:
Moderna.
Martinelli, Marcello: 2008, Os mapas da geografia e cartografia temática. São
Paulo: Contexto.
Martinelli, M. and Ferreira, G. M. L.: 1995, L’atlas géographique illustré: un pre-
mier atlas pour les enfants. In: Proceedings. Poster Session. 17th. International
Cartographic Conference Proceedings, Barcelona: ICA/ACI.
Oliveira, Lívia: 2006, Os mapas na geografia. Geografia, 31(2): 219–239.
Oliveira, Lívia: 1978, Estudo metodológico e cognitivo do mapa. São Paulo: USP–
IG.
Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B.: 1972, La représentation de l’espace chez l’enfant. Paris:
PUF.
Rimbert, Sylvie: 1968, Leçons de cartographie thématique. Paris: Sedes.
Vygotsky, L. S.: 1999, A formação social da mente. São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Wallon, H.: 1995, A evolução psicológica da criança. Lisboa: Edições 70.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 242
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Development of Brazilian Cartography for Children

CARTOGRAPHY AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

LEVEL: CONTINUING EDUCATION OF
TEACHERS AND EXPERIENCES IN
THE CLASSROOM

Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP (Brazil)
[email protected]

Abstract: The main aim of this article is to present a methodology for the continued
education of teachers at CECEMCA/UNESP, (Center of Continuing Education for Math-
ematics, Science and Environment/ São Paulo State University) in the area of Carto-
graphy, based on the formation of study groups arranged by tutors. I also aim to share
some information about some of the Cartography activities related to the preparation of
sketches, led by a professor who attended the Continuing Education Course. In the
activity related to the sketch of the way to school, we selected 3 pieces of work that illus-
trate the diversity of possibilities of representation on the part of the students, in accord-
ance with their previous experiences and their level of cognitive maturity. The results of
this study highlighted the fact that teachers, in general, find it difficult to prepare records,
which limits their effectiveness, hindering the transformation of the practical work in the
classroom.

Introduction

Today, Cartography is a mandatory and widely taught discipline in Geography

degree courses and aims to provide graduates and undergraduates with know-
ledge that will allow them to read and interpret cartographic, systemic and them-
atic documents in either analogical or digital form. Whilst observing the work of
professionals at elementary school level, we noticed that there was an enormous
discrepancy between the material that was presented in their classes and a large
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

amount of material from the textbooks, which, as a rule, contain cartographic

material related to Geography. We have observed, through experience of Car-
tography courses taught throughout Brazil, that a significant number of Ele-
mentary School teachers are reluctant to give their students cartographic acti-
vities and exercises. They claim that this is due to limited education in this area,
which should be taken into consideration given that the majority of these teach-
ers come from Pedagogy courses, which don’t have a tradition of offering sub-
jects that deal with these topics. Even for the Geography graduate, working in the
Cartography area it is no easy task, since, and despite the significant number of
hours dedicated to Teaching Practice, courses such as School Cartography for ex-
ample, are rarely present among the compulsory disciplines that make up the
core curriculums of tertiary courses in our country. We consider that the gradu-
ate’s education should take into account the specialties of school education,
which, according to Santos and Kulaif (2006), should be one of the instruments
that allow a human being to become a conscientious and free individual. For the
authors, well-taught School Geography teaches a student to become conscious of
his/her spatial reality and for this to occur the intervention of the teacher is ne-
cessary, in terms of integrating local spatial logic together with global spatial
logic in his/her classes. In the attempt to give credit to such a thought, Carto-
graphy, and other related disciplines, are fundamental in educating the graduate.
The authors stress that “cartography being a visual medium (language) is a power-
ful tool in creating a school geography that is more dynamic at elementary and sec-
ondary school level” (Santos and Kulaif, 2006 p. 412).

Objectives

This article’s main objective is to present a methodology of continuing education

for teachers from CECEMCA/UNESP1 , in the area of Cartography, based on the
P

formation of study groups conducted by tutors. It also aims to share some of ac-
tivities in Cartography related to the preparation of sketches, conducted by a
teacher who attended Continuing Education Course for Primary School Teach-
ers. This study aims to illustrate the possibilities of representation the students
came up with in the early years of elementary school, as results of the experi-
ments in the classroom that were organized and applied by teachers that partici-
pated in the study groups. These participants can contribute as specialists in the
area and Primary School teachers, with the view of increasing studies and reflec-
tions of the theme.

Continuing education course for teachers and the practice

of recording

In the book Teacher Knowledge and Professional Education, by Maurice Tardif

(Tardif, 2010) the author asserts that it is not possible to disassociate teacher
knowledge from aspects involved in their daily work routine, from the teacher’s
personal life and professional background:

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 244
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

“In reality, in the area of employment and professions, I don’t believe that we
can speak of knowledge without relating it to the key factors and the work con-
ext: knowledge is always the knowledge of someone that works on something
with the purpose of achieving some goal (objective). Furthermore, knowledge is
not something that floats in space: a teacher’s knowledge is his/her knowledge
and it is related to his/her person and to his/her identity, to his/her life experi-
ences and professional background, to his/her relationship with the students in
the classroom and to other individuals in the school, etc. Therefore, it is neces-
sary to study it by relating it to these essential elements of a teacher’s job.”
(Tardif, 2010, p. 11)
According to the author, teacher knowledge is social knowledge because it
consists of shared knowledge among a group of agents, their peers, with a similar
level of education initially, that operate in the same organization and are subject
to similar work situations, such as the programs, the subjects and the rules of the
teaching institution.
Taking into consideration the views of the author and our own experience,
we can consider the way for us to have success in teaching practices, which in-
clude, besides the initial stages, the continued education of teachers exercising
their profession, is to take a closer look at the subjects taught and the teaching
practices used:
“What is needed is not just the dispensation of disciplinary logic from teacher
training programs, but at least open a larger space for professional education
logic [initial and continuing], which recognizes the students [and the teachers in
continuing education] as subjects who have knowledge and not simply as virgin
spirits to which we simply provide disciplinary knowledge and procedural infor-
mation without doing a thorough job related to cognitive, social and emotional
beliefs and expectations, through which future teachers [and teachers in conti-
nuing education] receive and process this knowledge and information. This pro-
fessional logic should be based on the analysis of practices, tasks and knowledge
of professional teachers, and it should be a process of reflective focus, taking into
account the actual teaching conditions and the strategies used to eliminate these
factors in operation.” (Tardif, 2010, p. 242)
The structure of the proposal for the continuing education courses conducted
on the premises of CECEMCA/UNESP came closer to the one presented by Tardif
(2010). The interaction with the knowledge of the teachers in training, through
practices, exchanging experiences and experience in the study groups that were
formed, aims at continuing education that interacts with teaching practices, consi-
dering the cognitive aspects, reality of life and work outside the social context.
The teacher in the classroom, as a rule, works alone. “In this setting, he/she
never gets an immediate response. The silent understanding that accompanies
this makes it difficult to know how it was, how well his/her discourse is being re-
ceived...” (Fontana, 2003, p. 168).
The exchanges and interaction in the classroom are critical and need to be
encouraged, as they are during continuing education. The results of these ex-
changes should be recorded in the form of texts or narratives that detail not only
the events involving the teachers and their professional performance, but also the
questions, struggles and reflections about the teaching practice.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 245
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

The act of recording makes high demands on the teacher, because it differs
from the daily routine in the classroom by allowing our interaction with the act
of teaching, recording our feelings arising from it, recording what remained in
our memory, that which stimulates and incomodates in the quest for transfor-
mation and transcendence:
“In the written report, we document our work of interpretation, through its
gestures and words, the evidence of the relationship they share with education,
whether it be to evaluate it or us, or to scrutinize our teaching practices.” (Fon-
tana, 2003, p. 169).
“[...] None of us was prepared and ready to do it and nor was it necessary, as
they made (and make) us believe. When we were sharing experiences, it became
evident that the record as well as all the activities that make up the list of things
that our teachers have to do, go beyond the demands in the course of our profes-
sional training, producing complex and arduous activities, which include diffi-
culties that need be learned and developed in their principles and fundamentals
(they are those that guide the procedures)”. (Fontana, 2003, p. 173)
In detailing some aspects of the record, the author stresses that there are
many ways that you can get these records, “asking questions, asking our peers for
help, sharing this knowledge with our colleagues, provided that students, to-
gether with a teacher, dispense with routine practices whose meaning we had
forgotten” (Fontana, 2003, p. 173).
Given the statements exposed here, the record is a fundamental tool for the
teacher, giving concreteness to the ideas, fears, reflections, certainties and uncer-
tainties arising from the practice in the classroom. It should be seen as an ally of
the teacher who seeks self-knowledge and understanding of his/her profession,
striving for continuous improvement of his/her performance in the education of
children and youth.
Training for Primary School Teachers is not restricted to their initial training
and continuing education courses. As stated by the researcher Maria Lucia Gio-
vani (Giovani, 1998), in a study on the formation (education) of teachers and on
the role of the university in this process:
“It is recognized that the training of teachers and education specialists cannot
be achieved through accumulating information, attending courses and acquiring
techniques, rather by learning and real-life practice, individual and collective,
critical reflection on practices and work contexts, providing opportunities for
reconstructing professional and personal identity. It also recognizes the impor-
tance of “knowledge through experience” and providing opportunities to ex-
change experiences or “knowledge sharing” as a starting point for a new professi-
onalism of staff in service. It is, above all a starting point, to initiate and sustain
the effort of active appropriation of theoretical knowledge that supports and
guides the competency to be put into practice.” (Giovani, 1998, p. 3)
Thus, learning on the job, “knowledge through experience”, whether it be in-
dividual or collective, should be viewed as opportunities for the stimulation and
the appropriation of theoretical knowledge and instruments that enable the
transformation of teacher practices in the classroom.
Also Freire (2005) in his lengthy debate of “thinking right” emphasizes the
importance of thinking and doing together, sharing, communication between

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 246
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

teacher and student, a “communicative act” whose understanding is “co-parti-

cipated”:
“Right thinking is not – one isolating themselves, one hiding himself away in
a secluded place, rather it is a communicative act. There is no right thinking
without understanding and this understanding, from a correct thinking point of
view, is not something transferred but co-participated. [...] The task facing the
individual who thinks right, is not transferring, depositing, offering, donating to
another, to become a victim of his own thinking, the intelligibility of things, facts,
concepts. The task of the educator who consistently thinks right, is employing, as
a human being, the irrecusable practice of understanding reality via objective
logic, challenging the student with whom he/she communicates and producing
understanding of what is being communicated. There is no intelligibility that is
not communication and intercommunication, and that is not based on dialogi-
cality. Right thinking is dialogical and therefore not controversial.” (Freire, 2005,
p. 37–38).
The authors presented here agree about knowledge through practice, gaining
knowledge through means of challenge and communication, whose experiences
can and should be shared through records of teaching practices. According to
Freitas and Yokoro (2009), in the article Cartography in Continuing Education
of Teachers: Myths, Fears and Living Experiences, which presents some of the
results obtained in training activities of teachers from CECEMCA/UNESP, the
teacher’s training will only be of an effective, definitive and permanent character
when they are aware that they are first and foremost responsible for their edu-
cation and retainers of the knowledge and experiences arising from their
teaching practices, which must be shared and improved for the consolidation of
knowledge in their students.

Experiences with school cartography

Cartography is presented in Geography as a discipline whose theoretical and

technical foundations allow for the exploitation and enhancement of the capa-
bilities of primary school students, such as their observation skills, acquisition of
knowledge, power of explanation, comparison and representation of space and
its transformation, by means of elementary topological relations, reading and in-
terpretation and preparation of sketches and maps to represent characteristics of
their living space, personal space, as well as different landscapes and geographical
space.
The pioneering work of Livia de Oliveira, which lays the foundation for
School Cartography in Brazil was based on the theoretical framework of Piaget
and was the reference point for a significant amount of the work that researchers
produced afterwards.
In her thesis for full professorship, defended in 1978, Oliveira presents the
Methodological and Cognitive Framework for Maps, Oliveira (1978), a contribu-
tion to laying the methodological foundations of map study in Geography.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 247
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

“In this study we set out to approach the map from a cognitive and methodo-
logical point of view. It was designed, therefore, in order to contribute to the
foundations of a map methodology.” (Oliveira, 1978, p. 11)
The author adheres to Piaget’s studies on the child’s intellectual development
over space, “which states that topological spatial relations are the first to be es-
tablished by the child, both on a perceptive and representative level, and it is in
the framework of topological relations that the projective and Euclidean relations
will be developed” (Oliveira, 2008, p. 17).
From the perspective of education, it is considered that “a qualitative analysis
of the map is justified from a cognitive point of view”, requiring the teacher to
have “flexible teaching guidelines that are easy to manage and of low cost” (Oli-
veira, 2008, p.18).
We agree with Oliveira’s assertions (2008) when considering that “the value
of the map is determined by what the teacher intends to do with it” meaning that
it is up to the teacher, who possesses knowledge of this instrument, to use and
apply this “model of reality” to situations that arise during their lessons (Oliveira,
2008, p. 24).
According to Almeida (2003): “Piaget, with the support of a team of re-
searchers conducted several studies that enabled him to create one of the more
complete genetic theories on the cognitive development of humans. Even though
today, in the light of other theories, Piaget’s proposal suffers certain restrictions,
his studies remain fundamental in terms of their representation of space.” (Al-
meida, 2003, p. 59)
In a study of Geography for a child’s learning, Callai (2005) points out the
importance of cartography for the education of children at Elementary School:
“One way to read space is through maps, which are the cartographic repre-
sentation of a given space. Scholars of cartography teaching/learning consider
that, for an individual to be able to read space critically, it is necessary for him/
her to know how to interpret the actual/concrete space and as well to be capable
of interpreting of his/her representation, the map. It is, of course, commonly un-
derstood that the individual who knows how to make a map will be in a much
better position of being able to read a map. Drawing routes, paths, plans of the
classroom, of their home, of their schoolyard may well be the beginning of the
student’s work for ways of representing space. These are tasks that children
generally perform in their early years at school, but it is worth remembering that
the interesting thing is that they base them on concrete and real data/facts and
not on things that are imagined. That is to say, that they are trying to represent
that which actually exists.” (Callai, 2005, p. 244)
The author emphasizes here that which was pointed out by Oliveira (2008);
the need to construct models that are close to the reality of the child, their con-
crete spatial domain, representing through sketches, plans and models their ev-
eryday living environment.
In this study, with reference to the cited authors, we consider it necessary that
cartographic activities be experienced and incorporated into the everyday prac-
tices of teachers of the early years at Elementary School. They should be prepared
for this when doing their undergraduate courses, and courses undertaken once in
the profession, called continuing education courses. Thus, the disciplines related
to topics such as School Cartography and Teaching Methodology for Cartogra-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 248
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

phy, in undergraduate courses, should be valued more, whether they be Geog-

raphy or Pedagogy to ensure that children and youth are adequately instructed in
the subject.

Methodological guidelines

In order to develop our work, we undertook a literature review, consulting docu-

ments related to the initial and continuing training of Primary School teachers in
the areas of Education and Cartography.
The basic data for the research were drawn from our experience in creating
and coordinating the CECEMCA/UNESP continuing education courses on the
theme Cartography and the Environment, especially the reports prepared for
UNESP and MEC in 2007/2009, as well as the reports of the educators, tutors and
professors involved in the process. We still had access to final reports of the par-
ticipating teachers, who developed practical activities with their students in the
classroom, some of which were selected to give concreteness to the ideas ex-
pressed here.
To develop the research we referred to the qualitative methodology, which is
explained in Bogdan and Biklen (1994):
“We use the term qualitative investigation as a generic term that includes
numerous research strategies that share certain characteristics. The data collected
are called qualitative, which means rich in descriptive details regarding people,
places and conversations, and complex in terms of statistical analysis. The issues
to be investigated are not established through operationalizing variables; rather,
they are formulated with the objective to investigate the phenomena in all their
complexity and natural context. Although the individuals who carry out quali-
tative research might select specific issues as they collect the data, the approach
to the research is not designed to answer previous questions or test hypotheses.
They favor, in essence, the understanding of behaviors based on the point of view
of the subjects of the investigation.” (Bogdan and Biklen, 1994, p. 16).
Thus, stories, photos, drawings and descriptions of tasks performed by the
teacher and his/her students, are presented in the attempt to comprehend how
effective the education of the teachers in Cartography and the Environment was
and understand the results of the practices developed throughout the course.
The Center for Continuing Education in Mathematic, Scientific and Environ-
mental Education (CECEMCA–UNESP) is a UNESP Extension Program run by
the Dean’s Office, which began its operation following approval of the project
submitted by UNESP to the Ministry of Education (MEC), which culminated in
the creation of CECEMCA/UNESP, in March 2004. From this date on, CECE-
MCA went on to set up the National Network for Continuing Education of
Teachers of the Secretariat of Elementary Education (SEB) of MEC.
All the teaching material prepared by the CECEMCA team, makes up the
SEB/MEC2 network file. In this experiment of educating teachers about Carto-
graphy and the Environment, through the continuing education courses at
CECEMCA–UNESP, we referred to the book Cartography and the Environment,
by Freitas (2005).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 249
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

There was a condition in these courses that all registered teachers had to be
part of a study group, in which there was a mediator appointed by the Secretary
of Education, called the tutor, who had prior training in a specific course. We
placed the responsibility on the teaching leaders, the Education Secretary and his
team, to choose the local tutor, who was relieved from some of the learning
activities to act as coordinator of the Study Group, which allowed 10 and 30
teachers of his city and region to pursue their continuing education course.
The training courses for tutors ranged from 40 to 120 hours, while the teach-
er/professor training courses, mediated by tutors, were from 40 to 180 hours,
depending on the demands of the systems of teaching partners. One standout
feature of the training courses for the tutors and teachers was the semi face-to-
face format, with part of the work carried out in long distance mode. In the case
of the tutor-training course, we adopted a The Long Distance Education Envi-
ronment TelEduc3, to facilitate communication between the educators at CE-
CEMCA and the teachers-tutors.
In their continuing education courses, the tutors were prepared to coordinate
study groups for teachers, and were also responsible for the descriptive activities
in the Cartography book, organization of practical activities, debates and discus-
sions, monitoring the group, with the central themes: Cartographic Representa-
tion of the Environment, Thematic Cartography in Environmental Studies, Re-
mote Sensing in Environmental Studies and Environmental Awareness and Edu-
cational Excursions.
The local tutors were instructed to draw up an agenda for each meeting to be
held which was then sent to the center, through the Virtual Environment Tel-
Educ before each meeting. Secondly, the tutors would post up personal details
regarding the meetings, such as the activities undertaken and records of the
participating teachers, on a board.

Figure 1. Tutors Training Course in Piracicaba, SP conducted at UNESP

Source: UNESP (2008)

The records made at the end of each learning activity, face-to-face or in

distance learning mode, assisted part of the discussions in the study groups and
made it possible for local tutors under the supervision of the trainer and
coordinator of the course, to modify the activities at each meeting, according to
the needs and concerns reported.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 250
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

Reports of teachers and educators

This experience of integrated education can open new possibilities for the
teacher’s performance in the classroom. In the stories that follow appear the
mechanisms that the teachers adopted to carry out their work, reflecting on the
teaching material available and the necessity to adapt it to the needs of their stu-
dents with respect to age and their life context. Given the ready acceptance of the
course by teachers, it was interesting to note the initial comments of some teach-
ers about the versatility of the material in the disciplines, because the study
groups were comprised of teachers of different subjects and year levels.
“I noticed the enthusiasm of teachers at the start their study of cartography,
the associations made between theory and practice made them reflect and under-
stand the great need to develop activities for cartography, not only in geography
but in all areas of knowledge. The teachers thanked us for the opportunity to
participate in the course offered, because in their reports they were happy to say
that: “It was very valuable because up to this point my greatest resource was the
textbook”. Those words made me think and see that the course offered, will be as
it was for me, a great new interdisciplinary development applied in context.
Another participant concluded: “Knowing how to read, interpret, analyze and
find one’s place in the earthly representation, makes the student a real being,
capable of guiding him-/herself and defining his/her place (space).” (Instructor
Antonio, Naviraí, MS, 2007)
The difficulty of access to communication equipment via the Internet slowed
down the training courses and resulted in many tutors delivering their reports
late. The difficulty of reporting their experiences during the study group meet-
ings, in either the face-to-face or long distance mode meetings, was shared with
the instructors from CECEMCA online.
Another differentiating aspect of the training courses concerns the prepa-
ration of the reports by the tutors, and we would like to include some remarks by
an educator from CECEMCA:
“Sometimes they were actually reports, they mentioned that they had done a
certain activity in the classroom and [that], sometimes the class had difficulty un-
derstanding [the content] ... These results came to us in two ways: reports from
the face-to-face meetings (once a month) and through Teleduc (every week).
Thus, most of them were delivered in person because of the difficulty they had
registering and sending them via Teleduc which was a little vague. When we
went to the face-to-face meetings it was emphasized even more, with more detail
and so [we realized that] not only the students were having difficulties, but some-
times the instructors when they were trying to teach the students, realized that
there was something they had not understood.” (Rafael, 2010, personal informa-
tion)
The activities developed in the study groups on Thematic Cartography and
the Environment, led to the proposal to conduct studies and experiments in-
volving the group of teachers and their practices in the classroom. To illustrate
these activities we selected one of the practices involving the preparation of a
Sketch of the Route from Home to School, which made up part of an account by
one of the teachers participating in the Continuing Education Course at CE-
CEMCA/UNESP.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 251
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Map sketches of the route from home to school

One activity present in the practices conducted by teachers in training was the
preparation by the students themselves of sketches and drawings of a space
closeby, usually a classroom, but also of other environments such as home, the
home street, the route from home to school, among others.
In Piaget’s theoretical systematizations, knowing means organizing, struc-
turing and explaining reality based on our own experiences. Knowledge is always
the product of the subject’s action on the object. Therefore, the operation is the
essence of knowledge: the interiorized action modifies the object of knowledge,
imposing order on space and time.
“[...] Upon analyzing its principles it is possible to infer that the Piagetian
thread of argument, that is, the basic orientation of his work, expresses itself in
the idea that knowledge does not originate in perception, but in action.” (Palan-
gana, 2001, p. 71–72)
From the activities related to sketches of the route from home to school
carried out with students of the 4th year, we selected three pieces of work that
illustrate the diversity of possibilities of representation by the students, according
to their previous experiences and their stage of cognitive maturity to represent a
mind map showing the Home-School Route on a sheet of paper.
Figures 2, 3 and 4 correspond to the representations of the route from home
to school, prepared by students of a teacher called Agatha (Piracicaba, SP), who
describes the activity undertaken, in his report to the study group:
“In order that they would have a notion of a sketch, I asked them to draw the
route that they take from their home to the school, including the important
places along the route so that I could get there. This activity has had great results,
with many details.” (Teacher Agatha, Piracicaba, SP, 2007)
In Figure 2, we see a drawing by a student called Gio, with a bird’s eye view
of the street, and images of the house fronts facing upwards in order to represent
clearly the objects along the route, where the most important thing is not the
accuracy of the route itself, rather the depiction of the references which show
where it is, such as the pub, the vegetable garden and the market, distinguished
from the common houses by the labels on their fronts and a sign (in the case of
the vegetable garden). In the case of Figure 3, the student Leo, also opted for a
bird’s eye view, showing the route to be a long trajectory, with detailed repre-
sentation of the reference points showing the path to be followed, from his home,
such as the pub, park, bakery, traffic light, butcher’s shop, supermarket and
health clinic, respectively.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 252
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

Figure 2. Sketch of the route from home to school by Gio – Grade 4

Figure 3. Sketch of the route from home to school by Leo – Grade 4

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 253
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Figure 4. Sketch of the route from home to school by João – Grade 4

In the case of student João (Figure 4) the representation was a profile of the
route, causing us to infer that the topographic references to height, or differences
of level, stood out on the route and in the student’s understanding about the
environment he lives in, and for this reason they were included in the drawing by
means of representation in profile.
Upon analyzing the work developed by Telmo (1986 cited in Almeida, 2003)
of a study that addressed the representation of space by children, in this case the
route from home to school, the author concludes:
“The results of this study showed that, although children have different
points of view, they are far from knowing how to coordinate them within a single
system of perspectives. They also showed that one of the keys for the representa-
tion of three-dimensional space is the ability to manipulate the inclined lines to
draw an object. The appearance of this ability appears to be linked to the discov-
ery that an inclined plane represents implicit information rather than concrete
information.” (Telmo, 1986 cited in Almeida, 2003, p.30)
Figures 2, 3 and 4 illustrate the difficulty the students have with coordination
as cited in Almeida (2003), in which representations are depicted from different
points of view in the same representation.
In figure 2 the object “street” was represented as an aerial view, while the
homes and businesses were facing up. In our view, the effect of this depiction of
the buildings adopted by student, sought to explain to the reader the differences
between the objects that are on the route, i.e., the homes, the businesses and the
vegetable garden, the latter represented by a clear sign. The student intuitively
sought to explain in this representation, implicit information vertically that might
not be visible in a representation from above. This fact confirms their difficulty in
coordinating the representation of all the objects in a single perspective, which is
due to them not having sufficient conceptual elements to present the representa-
tion vertically when preparing the sketch.
For Figure 3, we observed that the student possessed a greater mastery of
spatial representation in conventional sketches or maps. The student conveys to
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 254
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

the reader through the drawing, the long trajectory he takes to get to school. He
selects some common day-to-day objects, for example, businesses and services
(pub, bakery, butcher’s shop, supermarket and health clinic) and uses symbols to
make certain objects stand out on the route, such as a traffic light and an amuse-
ment park (represented by drawing two swings for children). His effort, in prac-
ticing cartographic generalization, simplifying the route, while informing the
reader about the complexity of the path (represented by a series of curves) and
its main objects for reference to assist movement and orientation in the space,
makes his representation similar to the representation used in standard carto-
graphic products such as house plans and maps.
Figure 4 shows a topographic factor as the determinant for representation of
House – School, whose trajectory traverses a valley that separates the two main
objects of interest. The representation of the road from a bird’s eye view (the di-
vision of the two lanes indicated using a dashed line as the symbol) and represen-
tation of the vehicles in profile (cars and motorcycle), indicating horizontal or
lateral vision, as well as the representation of the houses in perspective, demon-
strate the confusion pointed out by authors Telmo (1986) and Almeida (2003).
The student’s drawing is the only one that includes an allegorical drawing of the
sun, sky and clouds, embellishing the representation and functioning as a back-
drop for the image.
Analyzing the projects that were presented, allows us to consider how, in the
same class with students of a similar age (between 9 and 10), representations of
the route from home to school can be presented in so many ways. The teacher
should be aware of these situations, which are routine in the classroom, and
value the way that each child tackles the task to prepare a map-sketch, individu-
ally. The way of understanding and exploring our living space varies from person
to person, according to their previous experiences. Referring back to Tardif
(2010, p. 11) mentioned at the beginning of this article, the knowledge of indivi-
duals, whether they be teachers or students, is directly linked to their identity and
life experience.
Examples of map-sketches presented by children from Grade 4, show that the
same proposed activity can be tackled and done differently, depending on how
the students interpret the teacher’s request, according to their cognitive devel-
opment, their experiences and relationships with each other and with the envi-
ronment in which they live. This diversity is repeated in many of the activities
proposed in the training course at CECEMCA and reflect the diversity of people
and the creative ability of each to face up to the daily challenges in the classroom,
whether they are teachers or students.
We highlight here a brief report by Aghata (classroom teacher), to which
figures 2 to 4 presented here were annexed. Upon selecting the drawings pres-
ented and considering them “great results”, led us to believe that the diversity of
approaches taken by the students of the class to the proposal to prepare the
sketch was understood. It is not possible, however, to gauge the teacher’s level of
comprehension of the results achieved by their students in performing the
activity, based on the record made.
This kind of situation occurred several times in the continuing education
courses offered by CECEMCA, indicating the teacher’s difficulty to conduct an
analysis of the effectiveness of their own work in the classroom. Being aware of

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 255
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

the value of the material prepared by the students in question, allowed the
teacher to select them to present to the study group, although it was not possible
for her to interpret and analyze the results achieved from the practice in her re-
cord, leaving a gap between what was achieved and understood and documented
in the course and the practice in the classroom.

Conclusion

The working environment of the continuing education courses at CECEMCA,

through the establishment of study groups, allowed those who accepted the chal-
lenge of this experience, to grow as professionals. The compiling of records, by
the tutor and the teacher, although adopted in all teacher-training courses of-
fered by CECEMCA, presented difficulties among those involved. Teachers, in
general, have a greater mastery of speech than of writing, when it comes to giving
expression to their reflections of the teaching profession and their experiences in
the classroom. This leads us to believe that this kind of difficulty in preparing
records limits teacher performance by putting obstacles in their way, that they
individually and collectively, need to overcome to transform their practices in the
classroom. This is based on the experiences of the activities undertaken in the
continuing education courses conducted by CECEMCA/UNESP.
Children from the 1st stage of Elementary Education develop the activities in
different manners, depending on how they interpret the teacher’s request and
according to their cognitive development and their previous experiences. The re-
presentations provided by the teachers were mostly displayed vertically with a
flat or upturned view of the objects (e.g.: houses and buildings), or the pictorial
profile (horizontal view of the street with allegorical elements such as sun,
clouds, among others), as illustrated in the examples presented here. Drawings
that depict the images from an exclusively vertical point of view are rare. The
confusion with regard to the presentation of different objects is crucial in re-
presentation by this age group, which is consistent with the literature devoted to
the theme of this age group.
The experiment reported here and the resulting reflections, although being
the results of experiences of Brazilian Primary School Teachers during the conti-
nuing education course, according to theme, have repercussions in the different
countries that include a system of references for Cartographic Initiation for
children and youth in their School Cartography courses, and have therefore, a
universal character.

Notes

1 http://cecemca.rc.unesp.br/cecemca/index.htm
2 http://portal.mec.gov.br/seb/arquivos/pdf/Rede/catalg_rede_06.pdf
3 TelEduc Environment: Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) created by Cen-
tro de Computação (Center of Computation) of UNICAMP (University of
Campinas) in 1997, with various tools for virtual interaction such as a menu of

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 256
Joint ICA Symposium
Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and
Experiences in the Classroom

activities and tasks, posting of reading material, slides, films, chat room, e-
mail, agenda, place for posting tasks, among others, that permit the creation
and administration of long distance courses, partially face-to-face and also
used as support in the face-to-face classes.

References

Almeida, R. D.: Do Desenho ao Mapa: Iniciação cartográfica na escola. 2ª ed. São

Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2003. p. 115.
Bogdan, R.; Biklen, S.: Investigação Qualitativa em Educação: Uma introdução à
teoria e aos métodos. Porto: Porto Editora LDA, 1994. p. 335.
Callai, H. C.: Aprendendo a Ler o Mundo: A Geografia nos Anos Iniciais do En-
sino Fundamental. Cadernos Cedes, Campinas, vol. 25, n. 66, p. 227–247, maio–
ago. 2005 Disponível em http://www.cedes.unicamp.br. (consulta realizada em 10
de dezembro de 2010).
Fontana, R. A. C.: Como nos tornamos Professoras? 2ª ed. Belo Horizonte: Au-
têntica Editora, 2003. p. 204.
Freire, P.: Pedagogia da Autonomia: Saberes necessários à prática educativa. 31ª
ed. São Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra S/A, 2005. p. 148.
Freitas, M. I. C.: Cartografia e Meio Ambiente. 1. ed. Bauru: Edição do CECEM-
CA–UNESP/MEC, 2005. v. 1. p. 156.
Freitas, M. I. C.; Yokoro, C. M.: A Cartografia na Formação Continuada de Pro-
fessores: Mitos, Medos e Experiências Vividas. In: 12 Encontro de Geógrafos da
América Latina, 2009, Montevidéu, Uruguai. Anais do 12 Encontro de Geógrafos
da América Latina. Montevidéu, Uruguai: Universidad de la Repúb-lica, 2009. v.
1. p. 1–12. Disponivel em:
http://egal2009.easyplanners.info/buscar.php Acesso em: 3 Dez. 2010.
Giovani, L. M.: Do professor informante ao professor parceiro: Reflexões sobre o
papel da universidade para o desenvolvimento profissional de professores e as
mudanças na escola. Cadernos CEDES, Campinas, v. 19, n. 44, 1998. Disponível
em: <http://www.scielo.br/scielo. Acesso em: 03 Dez. 2010. p. 11.
Oliveira, L.: Estudo Metodológico e Cognitivo do Mapa. In: Almeida, R. D.
(Org.) Cartografia Escolar. 1. ed. 1ª reimpressão. São Paulo: Editora Contexto.
2008. p. 15–42.
Oliveira, L.: Estudo Metodológico e Cognitivo do Mapa. São Paulo: Novalunar
Gráfica e Editora Ltda, 1978. Tese de Livre Docência. p. 128.
Palangana, I. P.: Desenvolvimento e Aprendizagem em Piaget e Vygotsky: A rele-
vância do social. 3ª ed. São Paulo: Summus Editorial, 2001. p. 168.
Santos, C. E Kulaif, Y.: O Ensino de Geocartografia nos Cursos de Formação de
Professores de Geografia no Brasil: apontamentos e reflexões. In: Simpósio Ibé-
rico do Ensino de Geologia, I; XIV. Simposio sobre Enseñanza de la Geologia;

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 257
Joint ICA Symposium
Maria Isabel Castreghini de Freitas

Curso De Actualização De Professores De Geociências, XXVI, 2006, Aveiro. Ac-

tas Simpósio Ibérico do Ensino de Geologia. Aveiro: Universidade de Aveiro,
2006, p. 126–161.
Tardif, M. Saberes: Docentes e Formação Profissional. Tradução: Francisco Pe-
reira. 10 ed. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes Ltda. 2010. p. 325.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 258
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Development of Brazilian Cartography for Children

RESEARCH ON CARTOGRAPHY FOR SCHOOL

CHILDREN

Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho, UNESP (Brazil)
[email protected] or [email protected]

Abstract: The aim of this article is to present research about cartography for school
children carried out in the Research Laboratory for the teaching of Geography and
Cartography (LABENCARTOGEO) of the Postgraduate Program in Geography of the
Geoscience and Exact Sciences Institute of the State University of São Paulo (Rio Claro
Campus, São Paulo, Brazil). This laboratory was created/founded in 2005 with the objec-
tive of carrying out research with teachers and schools, based on the Qualitative Research
of Education approach. Since 1996, we have conducted theoretical studies using this
methodology. However, in this article we are going to include information from previous
studies so that the reader can follow our line of approach. We are going to present you
with some background information regarding studies of teaching maps to children in
Brazil, with the purpose of embedding the themes that we investigated in our research
framework. At the end we will recommend future directions for the research to be con-
ducted by researchers from LABENCARTOGEO.

Introduction

When LABENCARTOGEO was founded, two pieces of research were carried out
on the base of Jean Piaget's learning theory and his recommendations for the
teaching of maps, which will be mentioned at a later stage. We developed three
extensive studies from 1998 to 2008 as to how to produce local school atlases and
the professional development for teachers. More recently, we have been working
with multimedia cartography and the Internet and also with time and space
references in kindergarten and pre-school education. We intend to present the
methodology used and the results of all this research.
Rosângela Doin de Almeida

Research based on the jean piaget's approach

The impact of Jean Piaget's theory in Brazilian education was very strong
throughout the 70s and 80s. Regarding the teaching of maps, Lívia de Oliveira's
(1978) thesis influenced studies in this area and served as a reference for various
research papers afterwards. This paper was the first to present a detailed study of
Piaget's ideas regarding a child's representation of space. In accordance with this
line of studies, we published a book, which has been used by teachers for
teaching maps (Almeida and Passini, 1989). We based our thesis (Almeida, 1994)
on Piaget's ideas, which lead to other publications about cartographic concepts
for primary school children (Almeida, 2002; 2007).
In order to continue this approach, we supervised Miranda's research (2001)
on the construction of a contour line concept by students of 11 and 12 years of
age through observations in the field and of a model done to scale. The results
showed us that the students are capable of identifying contour lines on large-
scale maps (1 : 1000) and indicating which way the water should drain. How-
ever, they had some difficulties in drawing contour lines on hydrographical maps
and landmarks they are familiar with.
Another study which followed the same approach was carried out by Valéria
Cazetta (2002) and dealt with the concept of land use based on aerial photo-
graphs. She used aerial photographs of the city's neighborhoods with students of
12 and 13 years of age (scale 1 : 5000) to produce layers with a pre-defined key.
In order to identify the urban areas (built-up areas, unihabited areas, squares and
areas occupied by large buildings). The research showed that the students had no
difficulties constructing the layers, however not all of them were able to identify
different types of neighborhoods based on the designated land use. We con-
cluded that additional knowledge is necessary for this concept to be learned, for
example, learning the historical background of the city.
We consider the Piagetian approach suitable for investigating the acquisition
of concepts related to spatial relations (topological, projective and euclidian) and
to the logical structure of thought, however there are other factors, which inter-
fere with the learning process such as symbolic exchanges (through speech, ges-
tures, written forms, visual images etc.) and the factors in the institutional and
social context. Thus we attempted other theories for producing school atlases
with the collaboration of the teachers. We changed the way we approached the
projects on the basis of the premise that time interferes in the production of
knowledge. It is necessary to allocate more time to the discussions so that there is
interlocution between the researchers and teachers (Bakhtin, 1981). It is in the in-
terlocution that new knowledge arises and this is a methodological condition for
the nature of the research that we do. Another fundamental point is language, as
knowledge and language go hand in hand in terms of understanding the issues
related to the representation of space.

Other approaches for research

A new approach enabled us to attain the objectives that we had defined related to
the curriculum, school culture and the teacher's qualifications. We mainly based

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 260
Joint ICA Symposium
Research on Cartography for School Children

our research of the curriculum and school culture on Ivor Goodson's (2001)
ideas. He considered the curriculum to be a result of the power plays between the
dominant groups within higher educational institutions and the social lobby
groups that have a direct influence on schools and the community. This enabled
us to observe how effectively this cartographic knowledge is implemented in the
school's curriculum. We are aware that in the educational process that the teac-
ers are the most important agents, therefore we observed the teacher's practices
in the classroom. To this end we used L. Stenhouse's, John Elliott's and Kenneth
M. Zeichner's publications presented by Corinta Geraldi (org., 1998). Other
authors that were important in shaping our research methodology were D. Jean
Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly (1995; 2000).
This theoretical approach confirmed various studies related to the production
of local school atlases at Master and Doctorate levels, as is shown in the table
below:

Date Level Title Short abstract

2002 M The production of the The greatest difficulty faced by teachers at-
municipal atlas of San- tempting to produce a local Atlas was their lack
ta Maria (RS) of knowledge of cartographic visualization that is
adequate for primary school students. This re-
sulted in maps that were confusing, inaccurate
and overly detailed for the students (Viero, 2002).
2004 M A history of Ipeúna, SP As this city didn't possess historical records, the
researcher put together a historical acount for the
School Atlas based on the methodology of re-
search using oral history and statements of form-
er residents (Machado, 2004).
2005 D Educational practices, The researcher presents cartography as passage be-
mapping processes and tween human experiences in space and a search for
aerial photographs: Pas- the production of sense (Cazetta, 2005).
sages and constitution of
knowledge.
2006 M Challenges that arose in The researcher observes and analyses a series of
the teaching–learning pro- classes of one group of students whose families
cess of place in the early had moved (migrated) a number of times. Use of
primary years: Possibilities the school atlas during classes had a certain im-
to achieve citizenship. pact on the comprehension of local space and its
representation, once the neighborhood where the
school was located a long way from the city. This
made it difficult for the students to comprehend
the city and its cartographic representation (San-
tos, 2006) .
2006 D The official curriculum The researcher discussed the teacher's practices
and the curriculum prac- who participated in this networking group. The
ticed by teachers of a par- focus of the research was the material dimensions
ticular net-work. and symbols of the idea of “place” (Gonçalves,
2006).
2006 D The connection between The researcher discusses the connection between
orality and visuality: orality and visuality on the thematic maps in the
reading the world Atlas of Rio Claro. She uses Deleuze's theory of
through maps. mediation and the presuppositions of Mikhail
Bahktin and Lev Vygotsky as references (Aguiar,
2006).

Date Level Title Short abstract

2007 D Establishing fundamen- This research uses the school atlas of Rio Claro
tal Theories for the In- (Sao Paulo State, Brazil) as a case study. The ori-
ternet Atlas Executed ginal files used for the production of the paper at-
and applied in the Bra- las were evaluated and then procedures for con-
zilian Primary Educa- verting them to an SVG product were developed.
tion System. To achieve this goal different graphical packages
(held at RMIT Universi- were evaluated and an interactive prototype was
ty, Melbourne, Au, un- built in using JavaScript. The interface was devel-
der the supervision of W. oped using simple colors and basic shapes, so that
Cartwright) the final template can be imple-mented by people
with a basic knowledge of graphic design, and little
prior knowledge of SVG. The online atlas proto-
type was imple-mented and tested in real class si-
tuations in Bra-zil (Ramos, 2007).
2008 M Here, there and every- Upon looking at ethnographic records of the
where: ways and experi- classes of three teachers the researcher realized
ences of teachers in teach- that knowledge and mainly the involvement of
ing of place. the teacher with the place where that teach inter-
feres to a great extent in their classes. The use of a
local atlas doesn't change the teacher's way of
teaching, rather the notion that the teacher has of
the place (Camargo, 2008).
2008 M Teacher's practices in This study discusses how the teachers that
terms of place and school participated in this group of collaborative re-
cartography in the con- search brought about an exchange and produc-
text of collaborative re- tion of knowledge in terms of teaching about
search. place through the means of a local atlas. It was
concluded that the change in their practices
could not be obtained without interacting with
the research group. The teachers learn to use
the maps and photos of the atlas as a way to
teach geographical concepts, which they didn't
do adequately before the study (Locali, 2008).

Based on this body of research we reached the following conclusions about

teaching with a local atlas and the fallout of a collaborative group:

• The teachers’ knowledge and practices about place are not composed of a
clearly defined and continuous space. Their knowledge is composed of
fragments of space and time, mediated by physical and symbolic
elements with which they come into contact, so are fragmented too.
• Immigrants and the media give rise to “place” a cultural diversity,
leading to a historical discontinuity between the concepts of social
groups who attend the school. This causes serious difficulties when
teachers are focused only on the teaching of geography and historical
development of the region without taking into account the cultural
references of the students.
• The local Atlases should be less standardized and more open to the
inclusion of cartographic representations with content related to the
culture of the students and the teaching practices of teachers.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 262
Joint ICA Symposium
Research on Cartography for School Children

Another important topic for the study of School Cartography is related to the
origins of the content of cartography in the school curriculum. Based on the
ideas of Ivor Goodson (2001), a study was conducted of the didactic Geography
books published from 1824 to 1940. In this study, concluded in 2010, we dis-
covered that a set of notions, concepts and topics, such as “Direction and Orien-
tation”, “Shape of the Earth and the “Movements of the Stars”, “Imaginary lines:
Parallels and Meridians”, “Geographic coordinates/Latitude and Longitude”,
“Map”and “Globe” are items that have remained in the curriculum throughout
the last two centuries (Boligian, 2010). Besides this, they are taught in nearly the
same way even today. Even though teachers today use advanced resources, the
teaching method remains quite descriptive.
Currently, we are carrying out investigations of the topic Multimedia Carto-
graphy, Internet and Knowledge. In 2010, research about Cartography in the
Cyber Culture Age: mapping other types of Geography in Cyberspace (Canto,
2010) was completed. Mapping projects were analyzed using new programs that
are available on the Web. These resources permit the users to obtain maps in the
following ways:

• The users took advantage of the open, interactive and global quality of
this new space of communication to construct collaborative representa-
tions or map out personal stories.
• As these systems allow one to surf the Earth virtually, users create spatial
relations that are only possible on the Internet with the real places they
know.
• Users create spatial relations with places that they got to know in in the
virtual media. Thus, the new term of space-time made the map an instru-
ment capable of presenting new realities.

One of the sites analyzed was the Urban Post (http://post.wokitoki.org)

created by Daniel Perosio in Rosário, Argentina. This site is the result of a com-
bination of Google Maps with other tools for the production of collaborative
mapping. The objective of the project was to show to the inhabitants and visitors
areas hidden by the city's planning. By means of notes- posts- added to satellite
images and maps, the people would describe their experiences in the city and
afterwards posters with these messages were put up in the areas of the city that
marked that site.
Another two studies were carried out in 2010 about cartography and the
Internet. One of them dealt with the concept of interactivity in multimedia carto-
graphy projects. The term multimedia was incorporated into cartography and is
used for a combination between cartographic representations with other forms of
media such as texts, figures, videos, sound and animations (Peterson, M., Cart-
wright, W., Gartner, G. (Org.), 1999). The word “interactivity” was created to
emphasize a qualitative change in relation to the user with computer interfaces,
when devices that allow for the input and output of data were incorporated in
computational systems. These allow for interaction between man and machine.
With the purpose of analyzing multimedia cartography projects, the researcher
(Gomes, 2010) created the following classification of level of interactivity:

Levels of
Category Inter- General Characteristics
activity

Interactivity Level 01 It is not permitted to interfere in the sequence of the presenta-

of tion (stop, interfere, return), nor the interaction through means
Animation of any modification of any variable that alters the simulation.
The interactivity is restricted to the option of repeating the
presentation.

Level 02 It is permitted to interfere in the presentation (stop, continue,

return, repeat) through means of manipulation of variables that
may alter the simulation, enabling the visualization of other si-
tuations foreseen by the creator of the project.

Interactivity Level 01 This interactivity is limited to the option of choice before

of selection stopping, continuing or going back, following an order of linear
movement according to the content, within a certain hierarchi-
cal framework.

Level 02 Allows the linearity of movement to be broken by the project,

making it possible for the user to choose the content which
he/she wishes to access in a non-linear way.

Interactivity Level 01 This allows for the comparison of items, through means of si-
of recreation mulation, using preexisting information, in accordance with an
individual characteristic and the necessity of the user.

Level 02 This allows for updating information, modifying the content

and recomposing the message as needed, making co-authoring
possible.

Other research that was completed last year looked at the concept of inter-
activity in cartographic multimedia projects and the use of Google Maps as a di-
dactic resource for mapping local space for children from 11 to 12 years of age
(Fonseca, 2010). Both studies look at interactivity, which is the fundamental
concept for studies regarding mapping in multimedia projects that involve time,
space and culture.
We have recently begun a study looking at pre-school children's representa-
tion of space. The objective is to put together a collection of files recording teach-
ing situations with children of 3 and 4 years of age. This collection enables us to
analyze how children in this age-group deal with situations that mobilize rela-
tions between time-space-body.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 264
Joint ICA Symposium
Research on Cartography for School Children

Conclusion

At the start of the article we mentioned that we are carrying out our research
based on the idea of school culture. In a nutshell, knowledge and school practices
are considered to be social construction and not as knowledge originating from a
prescribed curriculum. This knowledge is loaded with cultural values coming
from the education institution itself. The power relationships exercised in the
school context modify the traditional hierarchy between student-knowledge-
teacher. In the context of school culture knowledge becomes a social construc-
tion and the method of teaching is affected by the influences originating outside
the school. Even though learning is a personal construction, there are many con-
cepts that are common because they are formed by the interaction of personal
experiences in the same cultural context. The school is seen as a scenario where
the students develop their personal experiences, allowing them to reconstruct
and construct them together with new knowledge. Different language types (oral,
written, graphic, imagery...) allow for this construction, and the construction of
social-spatial knowledge is achieved through cartographic language.

References

Aguiar, L. M. B.: 2006, A cumplicidade entre a oralidade e a visualidade: lendo o

mundo através dos mapas. Tese de doutorado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciên-
cias Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo,
Brasil.
Almeida, R. Doin: 2002, Do desenho ao mapa. Iniciação cartográfica na escola.
São Paulo, Contexto.
Almeida, R. Doin (org.): 2007, Cartografia Escolar. São Paulo, Editora Contexto.
Almeida, R. Doin: 2005, Cartographic language and production of knowledge:
teaching local geography with a municipal school atlas. In: ICA Proceedings of
XXII International Cartographic Con-ference. Mapping approaches into a
changing world. La Coruña, Spain. 2005. La Coruna: ICA.
Almeida, R. D.: 2003, Atlas Municipais Elaborados por Professores: A experiên-
cia conjunta de Limeira, Rio Claro e Ipeúna. In: Formação de Professores e Atlas
Municipais Escolares. Cadernos do Cedes/agosto, p. 149–168. São Paulo: Cortez.
2003.
Almeida, R. Doin.: 1994, Uma proposta metodológica para a compreensão de
mapas geográficos. Tese de Doutorado. Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de
Educação. São Paulo (Brazil).
Almeida, R. D., Passini, E. Y.: 1989, O espaço geográfico: ensino e representação.
São Paulo: Editora Contexto.
Bakhtin, Mikhail: 1981. Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem. São Paulo, Editora
Hucitec.

Boligian, L.: 2010, Materiais escolares, imperativos didáticos e currículo de Geo-

grafia: contribuições para a história da Cartografia Escolar no Brasil. Tese de
doutorado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual
Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
CADERNO CEDES, 2003, Formação de professores e Atlas municipais escolares.
vol. 23, n. 60. São Paulo: Cortez, Campinas: CEDES, ago. 2003.
Camargo, P. E. B.: 2008, Aqui, Ali e Acolá: Caminhos e Experiências do Lugar
em Práticas Docentes. Dissertação de Mestrado. Universidade Estadual Paulista.
Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas.
Canto, T. S.: 2010, A cartografia na era da cibercultura: mapeando outras geo-
grafias no ciberespaço. Dissertação de mestrado. Instituto de Geociências e Ci-
ências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo,
Brasil.
Cazetta, V.: 2002, A aprendizagem escolar do conceito de uso do território por
meio de croquis e fotografias aéreas verticais. Dissertação de Mestrado. Univer-
sidade Estadual Paulista. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas.
Cazetta, V.: 2005, Práticas educativas, processos de mapeamento e fotografias
aéreas verticais: Passagens e constituição de saberes. Tese de doutorado. Instituto
de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de
Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Clandinin, D. J., Connelly, F. M.: 1995, Relatos de Experiencia e Investigación
Narrativa. In: J. Larrosa,et. al. Déjame que te Cuente: ensayos sobre narrativa y
educación. Barcelona: Editorial Alertes, 1995, p. 11–59.
Clandinin, D. J., Connelly, F. M.: 2000. Narrative Inquiry. Experience and story
in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Elliott, J.: 1998, Recolocando a pesquisa-ação em seu lugar original e próprio. In:
Geraldi, C. M. G.; Fiorentini, D.; Pereira, E. M. A. (orgs). Cartografias do tra-
balho docente: professor(a)-pesquisador(a). Campinas: Mercado de Letras/ALB,
p. 137–152.
Fonseca, R. A.: 2010, Uso do Google Mapas como recurso didático para mapea-
mento do espaço local por crianças do Ensino Fundamental da cidade de Ouro
Fino (MG). Tese de doutorado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da
Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Geraldi, C. M. G. (org.): 1998. Cartografias do trabalho docente. Campinas (SP):
Mercado de Letras.
Gomes, S.: 2010, Cartografia Multimidia: interatividade em projetos cartográfi-
cos. Tese de doutorado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universi-
dade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Goodson, I.: 2001, O currículo em mudança. Estudos na formação social do cur-
rículo. Portugal: Porto Editora.
Gonçalves, A. R.: 2006, Os espaços-tempos cotidianos na Geografia Escolar: do
currículo oficial e do currículo praticado. Tese de doutorado. Instituto de Geo-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 266
Joint ICA Symposium
Research on Cartography for School Children

ciências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Cla-

ro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Locali, R.: 2008, Práticas Docentes Sobre Ensino do Lugar e Cartografia Escolar
no Contexto de uma Pesquisa Colaborativa: Processos de uma Cosntrução.
Dissertação de Mestrado. Universidade Estadual Paulista. Instituto de Geociên-
cias e Ciências Exatas.
Machado, H. M. F. G.: 2004, Uma história para Ipeúna (SP). Dissertação de mes-
trado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Pau-
lista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Miranda, S. L.: 2001, A noção de curva de nível no modelo tridimensional. Dis-
sertação de mestrado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade
Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Oliveira, L.: 1978. Estudo metodológico e cognitivo do mapa. São Paulo, Instituto
de Geografia/Universidade de São Paulo. (Série Teses e Monografias, 32).
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B.: 1993, A representação do espaço na criança. Trad. Ber-
nardina Machado de Albuquerque. Porto Alegre, Artes Médicas.
Peterson, M., Cartwright, W., Gartner, G. (Org.): 1999.,Multimedia Cartography.
2. ed. Berlin: Springer Verlag.
Ramos, C. S.: 2007, Establishing Fundamental Theories for Internet Atlas Realisa-
tion with Application in the Brazilian Primary Education System. PhD Thesis.
Geomatics and Cartography . Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT
UNIVERSITY, Austrália.
Santos, G. A.: 2006, Desafios no processo ensino-aprendizagem do lugar nas sé-
ries iniciais do Ensino Fundamental: possibilidades para a formaçao para a cida-
dania. Dissertação de mestrado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da
Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus de Rio Claro– São Paulo – Brasil.
Viero, L. M. D.: 2002, A elaboração de um atlas escolar municipal como uma
contribuição para o ensino de Geografia- Santa Maria (RS). Dissertação de mest-
rado. Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual
Paulista, campus de Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brasil.
Wiegand, P.: Educational Cartography; mapping a theoretical framework. In:
Anais XXII International Cartographic Conference: Mapping Approaches into a
Changing World. La Coruña (Spain): Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,
2005. p. 151.
Zeichner, K. M.: 1998, Para além da divisão entre professor-pesquisador e pro-
fessor acadêmico. In: Geraldi, C. M. G.; Fiorentini, D.; Pereira, E. M. A. (orgs).
Cartografias do trabalho docente: professor(a)-pesquisador(a). Campinas: Mer-
cado de Letras/ALB. p. 207–236.
Vygotsky, L. S.: 1988, A formação social da mente. Trad. José Cipolla Neto, Luis
Silveira Menna Barreto e Solange Castro Afeche. São Paulo, Martins Fontes.
Vygotsky, L. S., Luria, A R., Leontiev, A. N.: 1988, Linguagem, desenvolvimento e
aprendizagem. São Paulo: Editora Ícone.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 267
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Diversity in Cartography

INTERPRETATION OF SURFACE FEATURES OF

MARS AS A FUNCTION OF THE LANGUAGE
OF PLACENAMES

Henrik Hargitai
Department of Physical Geography, ELTE TTK (Hungary)
[email protected]

Abstract: Does the language of place names affect the interpretation of a planetary map?
Is there any consistent change in the reading of a planetary map if the language of des-
criptor terms is changed from the official Latin to the mother language of the map read-
er? A survey made at a middle school in Hugary addressed these questions. The method
was to collect preconceptions on the landscape of Mars, then to show the pupils maps in
Latin and Hungarian, and again ask the same questions. The results show that there are
considerable differences in the two groups.

Introduction

What is the surface of Mars like? Two independent survey was made asking this
question. The first asked this question from 3 to 66 year old persons, including
university students. The results of this survey were reported by Hargitai (2008).
“Wasteland” was a common answer in all age groups. Even university students
responded that they previously imagined Mars as a global plain. This is in good
agreement with the 19th century picture of Mars in which Mars was seen as a
global plain (with some vegetation possible), a global network of canals seen by
some of the observers). Topographic features were never seen prior to spacecraft
observations from near orbit, because from the Earth it is not possible to see
shadows on Mars: Mars, seen from the direction of the Sun, is always in or near
full phase. (The case is the same for the Moon: during full Moon phase, to-
pographic features can’t be seen). The lack of visible topographic features were a
Henrik Hargitai

result of distortion of the observational data set (and partly due to the atmo-
sphere), but were interpreted as a lack of real topographic features. This could
have led to the common misconception of canals, which, according to the theory,
are used for irrigating the dry but otherwise fertile plains (Lowell 1908). This way
theory of a flat Mars helped paving the way to the theory of the canal system of
Mars. It is also easiest to imagine a global plain, since it requires no imagination
of more complicated geographic features.
Between the age of 12 and 18 the color red was often mentioned, but this
observational fact, known by anyone who have ever seen Mars in the night sky,
was interpreted differently: a 12 year old explained the color as “lava”, some 15–
22 years old natural science students said it is because of its Fe content, while one
student of humanities attributed the color to the atmosphere of Mars. This co-
incides with the history of discovery of Titan, which orange color was first inter-
preted incorrectly as the color of its surface by G. Kuiper (Kuiper 1944).
A 15 year old “terraformed” Mars: he placed “mountain chains, valleys and
volcanic mountains” to Mars. Apart from university students in Earth Sciences,
only one respondent mentioned craters and the polar caps. The other answers
were volcanoes, river valleys, dust and sand.

Methods

In 2011, this survey was made in four middle school classes in Hungary1 (two
classes studiyng geography in English, two in Hungarian, 16–17 years old pu-
pils). They were given a questionnaire. They first had to give a short description
of Mars, then they got two sets of maps of Mars. Half of them got a map using a
nomenclature in the official form, in Latin, the others got the standardized, Hun-
garian language variant (Hargitai et al. 2010, Hargitai and Kereszturi 2002). Then
they again had to describe Mars, but now using these maps (Figure 1a, 1b). The
maps were cutouts of the topographic map of Mars (Hargitai 2008).

Figure 1a. Detail of the map of Mars, with official IAU (Latin) nomenclature

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 269
Joint ICA Symposium
Interpretation of Surface Features of Mars as a Function of The Language of Placenames

Figure 1b. The same detail of the map of Mars as in Figure 1a, but with
Hungarian nomenclature

Results

Figure 2. Results of the survey

Previous concepts

Most students in this survey mentioned mountains, craters and hills the most,
plains only ranked 4th place. This is in contrast with a previous study in which
plains was the most common answer. Many students gave more details: rocky
surface, res soil, dust, buttes, snow caps, or mentioned other aspects of its sur-
face: dry and past water. (Figure 2)

Concepts after consulting the maps

Students reading the map in Latin, used the Latin names for surface description,
often without any comment. Names with Rupes, Sulci, Planitia could not be in-
terpreted by any of the respondents, but they mentioned (“copied”) the names.
Valles Marineris was interpreted as ravine or long valley. Plana was understood
as plains, Mons and Paterae were described as high mountains, Tharsis Montes
as mountain range. Craters were the most frequently mentioned as typical Mar-
tian landscape features.
Many of those who got the Hungarian version, described Mars using – sim-
ply listing - the descriptor terms used in the geographical names appearing on
the map. This made the description easier, but required no deeper thinking. As
for the landforms, in this group most respondents mentioned uplands, plains,
mountains, basins – as it could have been read directly from the descriptor
terms.

Discussion

Before. Of the landscape types described before consulting the maps, some
concepts have disappeared completely from the later description: deserts, buttes,
soil and dust, rocky surface are not mentioned any more. Buttes are too small to
appear on a map, surface characterization is not the task of a topographic map.
Arid and dry nature of the surface can’t be read from a topographic map. These
very important concepts which described the nature of Martian landscape cor-
rectly, have been exterminated and overridden by the stronger effect of the
nomenclature of the map. However, it is very important that these factors remain
in the horizon of the student’s knowledge on Mars: maps – especially computer
generated maps which are not suitable for showing features smaller than what is
visible at a particular scale – should have solution of communicating the surface
texture and the existence of smaller landforms in some way.
Latin names. The group who worked with the Latin names could not use the
descriptor term parts of place names as handles so they had to figure out the
geographical nature of the features. They had to use the map’s visual tools:
shapes and shaded relief representation of landforms. So they have to invent
English (or Hungarian) words instead of the Latin ones, in which they performed
well. In some way, even better than those who got the Hungarian version, trans-
parent in meaning: descriptor terms strictly reflect the shape of features (mor-
phology), while looking at the shape of them, their origin/genesis (or geological
nature) may become also clear for the students. So, students could correctly

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 271
Joint ICA Symposium
Interpretation of Surface Features of Mars as a Function of The Language of Placenames

name “volcanoes” instead of just “mountains”. A striking difference between the

two groups is the frequency of occurrence of mentioning craters: almost twice as
many students noticed craters in the Latin group than in the Hungarian one:
craters had no descriptive term, so they did notice them as landforms, while for
the students who got a map full of understandable names, but without any names
having a term “crater”, they may have seemed to be not very important or they
just overlooked craters because they concentrated on features named and named
with descriptor terms.
Hungarian names. The group who used Hungarian names (i.e. what they un-
derstood), used basically only the names that appeared as descriptor terms, but
some recognized the importance of craters and some also noticed volcanoes.
Many listed “uplands”, and “basins” which is a more detailed description than
just “plains” as “translated” from the visual aids of the map. Troughs were also
listed by many respondents – an equivalent of Fossae which have not at all been
recognized from their visual representation by the group which got only the
Latin names.

Summary

The language of Nomenclature does change the perception of the surface features
of a planetary body for a general map reader. It changes preconceptions, elimi-
nating some – even important and true – concepts, and makes others even
stronger. If the meaning of a descriptor term is opaque (used in a language not
known by the map reader), they had to interpret the features themselves; this
gives more importance to the visual representation of features. If the meaning of
a descriptor term is known, it makes it easier to interpret features, but since it is
an easy task, the map reader does not have to rely on visual representation and
will less notice features not named. Transparent names help interpreting features
which nature is hard to decipher from its visual representation.
Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, which should be
taken into account when the visual representation methods and auxiliary
data/texts appearing on the map are planned and realized.

Notes

1. Kürt Alapítványi Gimnázium, Budapest, 10a, 10b, 11a, 11b classes

References

Hargitai H (ed.): Topographic map of Mars, Lambert projection. Kozmikus Anya-

gokat Vizsgáló Űrkutató Csoport. 2008 Available online at
http://planetologia.elte.hu/1cikkeke.phtml?cim=planterkepeke.html
Hargitai H, Kozma J, Kereszturi Á, Bérczi Sz, Dutkó A, Illés E, Karátson D, Sik A:
Javaslat a planetológiai nevezéktan magyar rendszerére. [Suggestions for a Hun-
garian language system of planetary nomenclature, in Hungarian] Meteor csilla-
gászati évkönyv [Meteor Astronomical Yearbook] p. 280–302 2010.
Hargitai H.: Csillagászati ismeretek és téveszmék óvodáskortól időskorig, [As-
tronomical facts and fallacies from pre-schoolers to elderly people, in Hunga-
rian] Új Pedagógiai Szemle 58. 6–7. 2008., 122–148. p.
Hargitai H.and Kereszturi Á.: Javaslat magyar bolygótudományi szaknyelvi nor-
ma létrehozására [Suggestions for a Hungarian language standardized planetary
nomenclature and terminology, in Hungarian] Geodézia és Kartográfia LIV,
2002/9, p. 26–32.
Kuiper, G. P.: Titan: a Satellite with an Atmosphere. Astrophysical Journal,
vol. 100, p. 378–383, 1944.
Lowell, P.: Mars as the abode of life New York: Macmillan 1908.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 273
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Diversity in Cartography

MODELLING OF THE PLANT DIVERSITY IN

BIOSPHERE RESERVE “SREBARNA” AND
RELATED ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Georgi Zhelezov
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography (Bulgaria)
[email protected]

Abstract: Wetlands are one of the most dynamic and sensitive nature systems. The differ-
ent wetlands provide a number of goods, support permanent human activities and deter-
minate some of important ecosystem services. The lake Srebarna is the biggest natural wet-
land system along the Bulgarian sector of river Danube. The transformation of the wetland
system is connected with the level of ecosystem services. The investigation of the changes in
the basic elements of the wetlands (waters, sediments, vegetation and animal diversity) are
related with parameters of the ecosystem services in the wetland and surrounding territo-
ries.

Introduction

It is well established that human well-being is dependent upon ecosystem ser-

vices provided by nature (Costanza et al., 1997, MA, 2005, TEEB, 2008). The
ecosystem services cover the broad range of connections between the environ-
ment and human well-being, including , supporting servive (e.g. nutrient cycling,
soil formation), provisional service (e.g. food, fresh water), regulating services
(e.g. climate regulation, flood attenuation), and cultural service (e.g. recreational,
spiritual, aestehetic) (MA, 2005). The wetlands nature systems as one of basic na-
ture system provide the number of important servivces. The part of some basic
ecosystsem services are connected with spatial dimentions of the plant forma-
Georgi Zhelezov

tions in the reserve. Regulation of the productivity and spatial conditions of the
plant formation is foundamental in the sustainable development of the wetland
system.

Models and modelling

Spatial models observe as abstraction of the reality. They consist only this part of
realty, which is important for the interpret object. The model as abstraction
shows the aspects of the real world, which can be manipulate and analyzed in the
past, determinate present and give the opportunities for future (Smyth, 1998).
Robinson et al. (1984) draws the basic conceptions in the building of spatial
models (cartographic models) as everyone conception determinate focus, center of
any type of knowledge:

1. Geometrical focus: connected with the accuracy of the spatial model.

2. Technical focus: determinate the size, characteristics and the process of
producing of the models.
3. Presentation focus: this focus is based on the characteristics of the model,
which are product on the spatial data, using technologies, visualization
conditions, level of graphic art. The second group of signs is contents,
characteristics of the symbols, planning of spatial model and generaliza-
tion.
4. Art focus: connected with specification of spatial model. It is founded as
result of colors, lines, orientation, graphics, selection, balance, spatial pe-
culiarities, classifications and personal ideas and decision of the author of
the spatial model.
5. Communication focus: connected with interaction between author and
consumer of the spatial model. It consist two aspects: producing of spa-
tial model and using of spatial model.
• Producing of spatial model includes collection, classification, selec-
tion, generalization and symbolization of the data.
• Using of spatial model includes the whole specter of opportunities
for using of the spatial model: reading, analysis and interpretation of
model.

Spatial model must conclude and shows the real world in determinate form
and size. Some of the scientists in modelling theory present the real world as a
Cosmos with data. In spatial aspect we can model different system from local to
regional and global system. They include different parts of human knowledge:
natural and social, theoretical and practical, virtual and real. The most important
is opportunity for connection of two or three of these parts (Ziegler et al. 2000).
The structure of the models determinates simple and complex models:

1. Simple models: they are presented from net with points and lines or geo-
metrical figures as prism, cylinder, cone, cube and combination of these
figures. They determinate as basic frame model, which presented directly

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 275
Joint ICA Symposium
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related Ecosystem
Services

in GIS. The simple models are used in GIS analysis and operation pro-
cesses.
2. Complex models: they are presented net with points and lines or geo-
metric figures and their combinations with more complex data and de-
tails. The image structure can be used in process of modelling, realized
from modelling means. There is no analytic process in complex models.
They used only for visualization.

Kirkley et al. (1987) investigated models and the role of the models in phy-
sical geography. The models presented the effect of the actual or hypothetic net
of processes and forecasts with one or more consequences. The simulated situa-
tion can be simple and to includes only changes in equation or mechanical pres-
entation of the frame. In other direction the simulation situation can be show the
analog of the real world. More of the models determinates any net or forecast.
The other type of modes is stochastic model: they contain least accidental ele-
ments in any process and present a big number of consequences.
Spatial models can not show the whole real world, but they give analogies based
on lines and conditions. These differences are very big in the level of manifesta-
tion and give a different ways for simulations.
The physical determination can not guarantee that the model is effective. The
general image shows the small part of real lines. This determinate the basic lows
in the model based on characteristics of the real world.
The last spatial model is category based on mathematical foundation, which
describes the model. If there is no this type of base the model is ungrounded.
Computer models of the nature objects can present the real world on abstract
mathematical level. They give the right decision in process of interpretation of
the information from the computer models, forecasts and scientific theories. If
there is no spatial model we work only with data and suppositions. If the data are
correct we construct the computer model with right parameters and the supposi-
tion is proved.
The computer models must have the definitely logic and organization. They
are type of quantitative model, used in the process of looking of the forecasts.
The forecast must compare with real measurements, which are independent from
the data using in the model. This model can be compare with real world. We can
simulate any situations from the natural and social real world based on models.
Hägerstrand (1967) determinates this type of manipulations as social geographi-
cal simulations. The aim is not only the forecast, but using the forecast to control
the real processes. The simulation helps in the process of good management and
taking of right management decisions.

---- ---- ----

------- -------
------------

A B C

Figure 1. Simulation model (based on Hägerstrand, 1983)

State A show the begging of any process. If we have develop of this process
with force and direction show in model state B, we can wait develop of this
process to state C (Hägerstrand, 1983).
Based on the abstract character of the models map is also abstract system.
The map can be read only with reading of their key: system of signs, colors, lines,
projection, orientation and scale. The map can be use for analysis, forecasts and
collection of the information. We can make a number of models based on the
map. These models give the contents of the map. In this case the map translated
on the language of the other system, which gives the process of technical analysis,
build the analogical model. The map like the theory shows the image of the em-
piric processes. There are several levels of information transformations. The ba-
sic information is geographic environment. The next level is discovery of the ge-
ographic information, mapping and producing of the map images. Robinson et
al. (1984) describe three levels of transformation:

1. level: centralization of the general object, collection of the information,

compilation of the data and remote sensing,
2. level: selection, classification, generalization and symbolization,
3. level: reading, analysis and interpretation of the map.

Cartographic models every time are connected with geographical know-

ledge’s and comparisons, because it is based on spatial information. Cartographic
model is compulsory, when the model has determinate spatial spreading. The
base of the spatial models is data bases. The data can be primary and secondary.
Primary source of data is geographic phenomena. The data are result of in-
vestigations. Secondary sources are:

• Remote sensing: data from aerial photography, satellite images etc.,

• Cartographic: data from maps and data as result of analysis of abstrac-
tions,
• Administrative: statistical data.

Models and especially spatial models have several aiming groups:

1. Analysis and monitoring of investigated phenomena

2. Testing of the hypotheses and theories
3. Building and analysis of spatial-temporal systems
4. Presentation and management of data bases
5. Editing, transformation, determination of the parameters and interpre-
tation of the data
6. Creating of GIS
7. Presentation of the forecasts
8. Simulation of the process and activities in computer environment
9. Presentation of the management decisions

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 277
Joint ICA Symposium
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related Ecosystem
Services

Research problem

The basic research problem of present investigation is connceted with determi-

nation and spatial modelling of the plant formation in Biosphere reserve “Sre-
barna”, Northeasteren Bulgaria. The investigation of the basic plant formation is
connected with changes and elements of ecosystem services in wetland system.
Dynamic and transformations of the plant formation reflect to ecological situa-
tion in the lake and related ecosystem services. The determination of different
plant zones in the reserve is integrated with the environment conditions and
some elements of the ecosystem servives in the wetland. The level of eutrophica-
tion and ecosystem services are key point in the process of sustainbale develop-
ment and management of the protected area.

Study area

The lake Srebarna is one of the biggest wetlands along the Bulgarian sector of
river Danube (Table 1). It is situated in northeastern Bulgaria, near the village of
the same name, 18 km west of Silistra and 2 km south of the Danube. The reserve
embraces 6 km² of protected area and a buffer zone of 5.4 km², included the lake,
the territory between the lake and the river Danube and the Danubian island
Devnia. Diversity of the reserve and surrounding territories is determined in Co-
rine Biotope Project in 13 habitat types. The importance of the wetland system is
determine from diversity of the rare and protected bird species as Dalmatian Pel-
ican (Pelicanus crispus), Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), six heron species (Ardea al-
ba, Ardea cinerea, Ardea purpurea, Ardeola raloides, Egretta garzetta etc), cor-
morants (Phalacrocorax carbo and Halietor pygmaeus) etc.

Table 1. Limnological characteristics (Management plan, 2001)

Indicator Value
Elevation (m) 10,0–13,2
Water catchments (km2) 402
Length of shore line (km) 18,5
Reserve area (ha) 902,1
Open water body (ha) 120
Capacity (km3) – low water levels 2,81
Capacity (km3) – high water levels 14,35
Maximal depth (m) 3,3
Years flow (m3) 12,48
Time of stay (months) 2,67

Nowadays the lake has high level of nature protection. It is a breeding place
for waterfowl birds (1942), Nature reserve (1948), wetland of international im-
portance protected as Ramsar site (1971), Biosphere reserve protected by UNES-

CO (1975), Monument of World Culture and Nature Heritage (1985), CORINE

site (1992), Ornithological place of international importance (1997) and part of
the Natura 2000 network (2007). At present “Srebarna” biosphere reserve com-
prises an area of 902 ha. The Ramsar convention (1971) classifies the lake in cate-
gory “O” – permanent fresh water lake or open water body. Zhelezov (2010) de-
fined the lake of Srebarna as a lake – marsh type wetland.
Several influential anthropogenic measures have been undertaken on the ter-
ritory of the reserve in the last sixty years:

• the building of the artificial dike along the Danube bank of Ajdemirska
lowland, which interrupted the natural connection and interaction be-
tween the lake and the river in 1948;
• the opening of the dike in western part of the Ajdemirska lowland at the
13-metre-elevation of the river bank and the building of the second pro-
tection dike in 1978;
• the building of the artificial canal between the lake and the river Danube
in 1994.

Diversity of biogeographical provinces is determined from three provinces

based on Udvardy (1975):

• Middle European forest formations;

• Pontiac steps formations;
• Mountain territories.

Ecosystem diversity in the reserve “Srebarna” is determined from different wet-

land types based on the Ramsar convention (1971):

M Permanente rivers: river Danube between right bank and island Devnia;
O Permanente fresh water lake: open water body;
R Seasonal marshes and water bodies: area between left bank of river Da-
nube and river dike from Silistra to village Vetren;
Xf Fresh water bodies with domination of forest formations; seasonal
flooded forests: whole territory of island Devnia and part of the river
bank between Silistra and village Vetren and right bank of river Danube;
Xk Underground karst and cave hydrological systems: natural spring “Ka-
narichkata” in the south part of the reserve.

Methods

The methodology includes two levels of research:

• Fieldwork
- Spatial dimensions of the plant formations;
- Observation and description the status of the plant formations.
• Laboratory work
- Determination of basic plant formations;
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 279
Joint ICA Symposium
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related Ecosystem
Services

- Spatial modelling;
- Determination of areas with high level of ecosystem services.

Figure 2. Plantzones in Biosphere Reserve Srebarna

Danube river

- zone of Phragmites sp. - grass formations - village

- zone of water lilies - forest formations - dike

- zone of Pottamogeton sp. - agriculture areas

- zone of microphytes - vineyards

Fig. 2 Plant zones in Biosphere reserve Srebarna

Plant zones in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna”

The differentiation of the different plant zones in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarba”
is based on the system of Shilkrot (1970). We can determine six plant zones in
water surface and two zones in depth:

1. Low water zone: temporary flow zone, generally around karst springs;
2. Zone of Phragmites and Typha: zone of permanent water flow;
3. Zone of water lilies: zone of shallow waters;
4. Zone of broadleaved Potamogeton species as Potamogeton crispus, Pota-
mogeton lucens, Potamogeton natans and Potamogeton perfoliatus: zone
in depth 4–5 m, calibrate for Bulgaria – 1–1,5 m;
5. Zone of makrophytes: open water bodies;
6. Zone of microphytes: open water bodies.

In depth:

1. Zone of flow plants;

2. Zone of underwater plants.

The determination of the different levels in eutrophication is a result from

the analysis of the plant populations (Figure 2):

1. Zone of reed eutrophication zone with permanent hygrophyte popula-

tions;
2. Zone of water lilies: zone in process of eutrophication on the first level.
3. Zone of broadleaved Potamogeton species as Potamogeton crispus, Pota-
mogeton lucens, Potamogeton natans and Potamogeton perfoliatus: zone
in process of eutrophication on the second level.
The three zones are connected with shallow water in the wetlands of lake
type (until 1 m). They are characterized by stagnated waters and closely cov-
er with water plants. There are no open water bodies, except around the karst
springs.
4. Zone of microphites – zone without processes of eutrophication.

This scheme is used for separation of the lake Sreburna in zones with differ-
ent intensity of the ecosystem services (Fig. 3). They are also indicating the devel-
opment and intensity of eutrophication processes in the wetland system. The
spatial projection of the plants is combined with the results of the sedimentation.
The most intensive eutrophication processes are developed in the west littoral
zone. It is a zone of water lilies and Potamogetons species. The expansion of the
hygrophyte formations is not so strong in the east side. This is a result from the
karst activity and the influence of the water flow in the artificial channel between
river Danube and lake Sreburna.
The interaction between different plant species and plant zones determinate
some of the aspects of ecosystem services in the lake. These zones are connected
with small (interior) water bodies. The most representative areas are situated in
western, eastern and northern part of the wetland on the contact zone between

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 281
Joint ICA Symposium
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related Ecosystem
Services

lake waters and reed formations (dominated from Phragmites species). They pro-
vide rich water and food conditions and convenient places for nesting of bird
species. The diversity of habitats determinates the high level of ecosystem ser-
vices and biodiversity.

Figure 3. Zones with high level of ecosystem services

Danube river

- zone of Phragmites sp. - grass formations - village

- zone of Water lilies - forest formations - dike

- zone of Pottamogeton sp. - agriculture areas - zones of high level of

ecosystem services
- zone of Microphytes - vineyards

Fig. 3 Zones with high level of ecosystem services

Conclusions

The research modeling the spatial parameters of the basic plant diversity in Bio-
sphere reserve “Srebarna”. The wetland is divided on four plant zones: 1. Zone of
reed, dominated from Phragmites species; 2. Zone of water lilies; 3. Zone of
broadleaved Potamogeton species as Potamogeton crispus, Potamogeton lucens,
Potamogeton natans and Potamogeton perfoliatus; 4. Zone of microphites.
The second important part of the research is connected with determination
and spatial modeling of the zone with high level of ecosystem services. They are
based on the determination the plant zones. The services of these zones have key
importance in the ecological functions of the wetland system. The processes are
connected with control of water inflow and transfer of the waters between lake
and river Danube. They also provide the best nesting conditions fot the water-
fowl bird’s species. Development of the monitoring system for water fluctuation,
vegetation dynamic and productivity are the most important elements in present
development of the protected system and management strategy of the Biosphere
Reserve “Srebarna”.

References

Costanza et al.: 1997, The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural cap-
ital. Nature 387, 253–260.
MA (Millenium Ecosysem Assessment), 2005, Ecosystems and Human Well-
being: Biodiversity Sysntesis. World Resource Institute, Washington, DC.
Management plan of Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna”, 2001, MOEW. Sofia.
Ramsar convention, 1971.
M. D. F. Udvardy: 1975, A classification of the biogeographical provinces of the
world. IUCN Occasional Paper no. 18. Morges, Switzerland: IUCN.
M. D. F. Udvardy: 1975, “World Biogeographical Provinces” (Map). The CoEvo-
lution Quarterly, Sausalito, California.
TEEB, 2008, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: An interim report
Wel-zel+Hardt, Wesseling, Germany.
Hägerstrand T.: 1967, Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process. Chicago Univer-
sity Press. Chicago.
Hägerstrand T.: 1983, In search for the sources concepts. The Practice of Geog-
raphy. Longman. London.
Kirkley M. J., P. S. Naden, T. P. Burt, D. P. Butcher: 1987, Computer Simulation
in physical geography. John Wiley and Sons. Chichester, New York, Brisbane,
Toronto, Singapore.
Robinson A. H., R. D. Sale, J. L. Morrison, Ph. C. Muehrcke: 1984, Elements of
Cartography. John Willey and Sons. New York.
Smyth C. S.: 1998, Spatial and temporal reasoning in GIS. Uni Press. Oxford.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 283
Joint ICA Symposium
Modelling of the Plant Diversity in Biosphere Reserve “Srebarna” and Related Ecosystem
Services

Shilkrot, G. S.: 1970, Lake as water nature complex, Bulletin of USSRAS, Geo-
graphy 2, Moscow.
Zhelezov, G.: 2007, Spatial modeling and analysis of the wetland system. In In-
ventory of Bulgarian wetlands and their biodiversity, Edited by Michev, T. & M.
Stoyneva. Elsi-M, Sofia, 131–137.
Zhelezov, G.: 2010, Clasification of the wetlands in Bulgaria. Proceeding of the
international conference “Geography and Regional Development”, Sofia, 428–
436.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 284
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Diversity in Cartography

DEVELOPING MAP DATABASES:

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University
(ELTE), Budapest (Hungary)

Abstract: This article is an introduction to a several-year long development focusing on

the building of a digital map database, named EDIT [1]. The theoretical background, the
applied technology, the developed information system, and its perspectives will be de-
scribed. The classical relation database technology and the object oriented, document
based database management [2, 3, 4] are applied beside those web based tools and tech-
nological solutions which are in the world of the WEB2. The system is not only a rich
data source for researchers but also a virtual laboratory of the database technology where
various database management systems related to GIS can also be investigated. The EDIT
system has become an ordinary data source of the research and education at Eötvös
Loránd University and its partners in Hungary [5]. The role of the system is of remark-
able importance in the doctoral training too [6].

1. Introduction

Research projects and teaching at the university missed the availability of digital
maps for long, although there were many paper maps in the map collection. A
large number of map databases are now accessible in the Internet: some of them
are free, but they mostly charge for their use [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 23, 24]. The laws
regulating the use of maps are very different from country to country, and the
data policy changes from government to government. It is not surprising that
“sharp” maps are rarely found on free web pages. As for the fresh satellite images
and aerial photos, the case is the same. It is even more difficult to find free vector
maps, particularly those that have link codes to databases.
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

University researchers and teachers very much need a well-organized carto-

graphic database that is available for everyone at the university. The Department
has done important steps in this direction by setting up an information system
named EDIT. (The acronym stands for the Hungarian words of University Dig-
ital Map Collection.) More than ten thousand maps have been entered into the
database, which is completed with a data loading application and an online query
system (Figure 1). Although the original plan only counted with users from the
university, and the data loading is not complete yet, and a part of the users of the
system already comes from outside the university. In the beginning, the EDIT
system was only accessible from the nodes in the “elte” domain, that is for the
teaching and research units that take part in the training of students of earth sci-
ences and computer science. Later, the range of users greatly expanded. The Uni-
versity of Debrecen and the University of Pécs were the first to join the system.
Further members include the University of Szeged, two Academic institutions
(the Geographical Research Institute and the Balaton Limnological Research In-
stitute), and the Institute and Museum of Military History.
This paper introduces the EDIT system and its major parameters.

2. University Digital Map Collection (EDIT)

The EDIT is an information system built on the principle of relation databases

and made for the management, inventory, and service of raster and vector map
data. The raster data include scanned maps, orthophotos, and hyperspectral aer-
ial images, while the vector data are mostly available in ESRI shape and Mapinfo
tab formats.
The logic and the background structure of the system, and the applications of
the database provide the users with an easy and fine-tuned query, and a quick
presentation of the results (alphanumerical and graphical or map data). Further,
the access to the system can be easily regulated.
The system consists of two major parts: the EDIT is for data loading and
maintenance, while the EDITKE is for online query (Figure 1). The online query
system is accessible at http://mapw.elte.hu/edit for those on the elte domain. The
clients of the Virtual Private Network (VPN) can reach this URL through the
certificate of the VPN. The data maintenance application runs on the map server
of the system.

Figure 1. First page of the online query system

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 286
Joint ICA Symposium
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions

The system was made in Microsoft VisualStudio 2008. The loading applica-
tion is a win32 application. The online query was made in ASP.NET. István Elek
developed both application programs.

3. Structure of the database

The great differences between the formats of the raster and vector maps caused
difficulties for the planning of the database. Although there are various raster
formats, they all contain an m x n matrix, which stores the intensity values of a
picture according to a colour model in rows and columns. These data may come
from scanned paper maps or from the signals of digital images. They all follow
the simple structure of raster data models. Descriptive data such as scale, time of
making, sheet number can be added to the maps (namely, to each raster file).
This logic cannot be used for vector maps, because these maps are organized
into layers and feature classes. Several types of information, layers, and feature
classes together can only express the complexity of classical paper-based maps. In
addition, some of the usual descriptive data (e.g. scale, title, and sheet number)
cannot be interpreted for these data. It is obvious that different data structures
must be used for storing the raster and vector maps due to their basic differences.
Further, the vector data are often available organized in relation databases even
though they are exported into file groups (e.g. ESRI shape or Mapinfo tab files).
Consequently, the raster maps need a database structure completely different
from that of the vector maps.

3.1. Storage of raster maps

In most cases, the raster maps can be stored in a table structure in which one re-
cord represents one map with all its descriptive data as shown in the table below.

map_id title sheet number scale …

3455 Ödenburg P48 300 000 …
… … … … …

The present large capacity database managers allow the binary storing of ras-
ter files, graphical data and various kinds of data in BLOB type fields. BLOB is an
abbreviation of binary long object, which term expresses that it contains the ori-
ginal information converted into a series of bytes. To display the content of these
fields is not as simple as that of the usual alphanumerical fields. However, a great
advantage is its secure storage, because the authentification system of the data-
base manager automatically protects the BLOB type data too. This is very impor-
tant for the information systems that have a high risk of security.
However, the map collections do not belong to the category of high risk. In
addition, it may also happen that the raster files of the maps must be modified
(e.g. due to noise filtering, improving the quality of the image, georeferencing),

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 287
Joint ICA Symposium
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

when the storage in the BLOB fields would cause problems. Therefore, the maps
are stored in another way. The descriptive data are stored in data tables, while
the maps are stored in file systems outside the relation database. The descriptive
tables contain the name of the maps only, which is a reference in the map_id
field. Therefore, if the raster file is modified in any way, it will be immediately vi-
sible in the system without changing the database.
The raster map data are stored in two data tables. One stores the groups of
maps (table of groups, Figure 2), the other one stores the data records of maps
(rastermaps) (Figure 3). Individual maps are sorted into groups by referring to
the table of groups.

Figure 2. Table of groups

Figure 3. The structure of table rastermaps

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 288
Joint ICA Symposium
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions

This simple relation (of 1 : n type) link describes the grouping of maps. Sev-
eral other field values may be chosen for this purpose from the collection (e.g.
scale), but as the present project is a pilot plan, we decided to have a simple
structure first.

3.2. Storage of vector maps

There are various kinds of vector maps, and they are built up on different logic.
Their models are much more complicated than that the raster data models. This
explains why the present 3.0 version of the EDIT system does not store the vector
maps organized in relation tables, but in the file system in a hierarchical struc-
ture. When planning the system, its simple use was highly considered, and the
table structure designed for the raster data was not used for the vector subsystem.
Figure 4 presents a vector layer of the borders of blocks in Budapest, which can
be accessed by a hierarchic control (Tree View) shown in the figure. The layers
are sometimes grouped according to a region they belong to (e.g. Budapest),
sometimes according to the name of data products (e.g. ADC-WorldMap).

Figure 4. Navigation in the vector subsystem with a hierarchic control

The layers of the vector subsystem are available in ESRI shape or Mapinfo tab
formats. Although there are other file formats (e.g. ArcInfo personal database in
mdb file formats), we decided that these two standard formats provide the sys-
tem with enough flexibility, because every GIS software can now read or import
these file formats.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 289
Joint ICA Symposium
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

3.3. Query in the database

You can search in the raster subsystem according to the SQL (structured query
language) standard. The full functions of this kind of online search are only a-
vailable for special users with the help of a series of SQL commands and to a very
much limited extent for users without personal identification (such as queries
from any elte domain). Naturally, the whole arsenal of SQL can be applied in the
process of data loading and database building, because the data loading applica-
tion supports these processes.
There is no SQL interface in the vector subsystem. The expressive names of
libraries and files make the navigation easy in the file system. A table of metadata
might be put into service with the pure task of querying in the future, but it is
certainly not going to be a part of version 3.0.

4. Authentification, security and data loading

The authentification of the database against hackers in the cyber space is a very
important issue. It is not worth building large databases if we cannot protect the
server from the attacks of hackers, because the frequency and complexity of the
attacks will surely lead to data loss.
The protection must be guaranteed at two levels. Namely, the server and
database must be protected. The protection of the server is the task of the ad-
ministrator of the operating system, which includes the following tasks: virus
protection, setting up of the firewall, setting up of the Internet Information
Service, and the regular refreshing of the operating system of the server. The
server is not accessible from a local network. It has only one public directory,
into which certain files (e.g. tif, jpg, tab, shp) can be loaded from a few dedicated
computers. In this case, the data loading application imports the requested maps.
Although the protection of the server protects the database too, but the ef-
ficient protection of the database needs additional settings. It must be decided in
the administration of the database management system that which users have the
right to access the database tables and to what extent. There are users who, with-
out personal identification, have the select right only. (These are requests from
URLs on the elte domain.) Others, who have personal authentication, have not
only the select right to access the database. The series of SQL commands is also
available for them, and they can download the selected maps on their client com-
puter.
Only users with special rights are allowed to load and maintain the data. They
have the right to not only select, but also to update and delete information. How-
ever, they do not have the right to delete large amount of data, to drop tables or
to perform any other operation that would corrupt the data. The administrator
only has full rights over the database.
The loading and maintenance of data is performed by a win32 application
running on a server, which is available for registered users only. This application
allows the editing of the existing map data, the changing of the attribute data, as
well as updating the data and the manipulation of the existing maps (Figure 5).
In addition, the new maps are entered into the system by using this program

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 290
Joint ICA Symposium
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions

(Figure 6). The directory of the server that receives the uploaded data is only ac-
cessible with the right of writing from a few client computers. The map data to
be uploaded into the database are placed here, in the buffer. After loading the
map into the database, the buffer becomes free. The configuration file of the sys-
tem includes, among others, this place as well, which is specified at the setting of
the system.

Figure5. After starting the data loading application, you enter the database.
You can edit the data of a selected group of maps and you can move
and select in the table to view the chosen map. Browser and mapped
windows help view the data.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 291
Joint ICA Symposium
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

Figure 6. The data loading application can import not only single
maps, but also groups of maps into the system

5. Query and servicing

The system includes a configuration file, which contains the parameters neces-
sary for the operation (Figure 7). This file ensures that the places that are needed
for the access to and management of the data and maps are flexibly specified.
This guarantees the smooth running of the system even if the operation system is
completely reconfigured. In this case, the accessibility and addresses of the mod-
ified places have to be rewritten in the config file only. There is another parame-
ter file, which gives the names of the data columns to be displayed online. This is
necessary because not every user is interested in every data column. This para-
meter file allows us to specify which data columns should be visible for the on-
line query.

Figure 7. The contents of the configuration file of EDIT

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 292
Joint ICA Symposium
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions

When uploading data, complicated queries may be necessary. This is offered

by a series of SQL commands, which allows the user to make a combination of
SQL commands at wish (Figure 8).

Figure 8. In the series of SQL commands you can give optional commands
such as find all those raster maps that have the word Budapest or
1 : 100 000 in the title

Figure 9. The screen image of EDITKE shows the attribute data of the first
twenty maps in the egyéb (other) group of maps arranged according
to the field map_id. The SQL commands are not visible here, because
the user did not have the necessary authentification.

The data uploading application offers a function that allows us to copy the
selected map into a specific place. (Its role is very much similar to that of the
Download function of the online query.) The user can copy the map into any
place from here. One of the major aims of EDIT system is to provide the re-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 293
Joint ICA Symposium
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

searchers and students with free access to any map stored in the system. This
place, among others, is included in the configuration file of the system.
The web and the database technology together led to the building of an on-
line search and query system, EDITKE (KE stands for the Hungarian word ke-
res). The program in ASP.NET is an application of the server, which displays the
data of the maps that satisfy the given conditions (Figure 9) and the selected map
(Figure 10).

Figure 10. Viewing the selected map. The downloading function is active for
the user with authentification, who can now download the map on
a local client computer.

6. Conclusions

The latest EDIT system is version 3.0, and it has been more or less continuously
developed. More and more research institutes and universities outside Budapest
use it. Several interested students of informatics and cartography choose the prob-
lem of developing large map databases as their research topic.
This is an extremely rich topic, although the problems seem to be simple.
Namely, we have the digital maps completed with descriptive data. Organizing
them into a relation database is not a difficult task. The size of the raster maps
can be very large (between 25 MBytes and 500 MBytes), while the vector maps
have very varied structures. The size of a hyperspectral image can be extremely
large (even 4–4.5 GBytes). As a result, the total size of the images for a certain
area may exceed 1 TByte (1000 GByte). Handling such a large amount of data is
not easy at all, not to mention displaying them. Displaying the images of several

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 294
Joint ICA Symposium
Developing Map Databases: Problems and Solutions

megabyte size on the Internet is particularly problematic, and moving these

images on the web is really difficult. It is necessary to develop special programs
(services) on the server side that generate such images the size of which do not
exceed the size offered by the resolution capacity of the given video card. This is
the way to eliminate the barriers caused by the differences in the bandwidth.
The development must consider some other aspects that are not included in
the present 3.0 version. One of these aspects is the transfer to or at least the study
of transferring to object-oriented database management (e.g. the use of Mongo-
DB) in the map server. Another aspect is the tracking of changes in time. The
relation database managers always face the difficulty of tracking the changes in
time, particularly if complicated graphic data (such as maps) change.
The present EDIT system runs in Windows server environment (Windows
server 2008, Internet Information Service, VisualStudio, ASP.NET), but it would
be interesting to test it in Linux environment (Linux, Apache, Postgresql, Java).
The increasing popularity of open source systems cannot be stopped: therefore,
limiting the system to Windows environment would not follow the trend.
These are important questions, because the EDIT map collection is an ex-
perimental system, the terrain of informatical and cartographic experimenting,
where all kinds of new technologies, algorithms and ideas can be tested.

The project is supported by the European Union and co-financed by the Euro-
pean Social Fund (grant agreement no. TÁMOP 4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010-0003).

References

[1] I. Elek: Nagyméretű térképi adatbázisok fejlesztési és működési tapasztalatai.,

GEOGRÁFIA–2010–PÉCS: V. Magyar Földrajzi Konferencia. Pécs, Magyaror-
szág, 2010.
[2] Zs. Máriás, B. Dezső, R. Giachetta, I. Elek: Cartographic Symbol Detection
Using Local Segmentation and Other Methods. In: Bhanu Prasad (Ed.) In-
ternational Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition (AIPR-
10). Orlando, USA, 2010. 07. 12–2010. 07. 14. Orlando: Paper 196.
[3] R. Giachetta, I. Elek: Developing an Advanced Document Based Map Server.
8th International Conference on Applied Informatics. Eger, Magyarország, 2010.
[4] I. Elek, R. Giachetta, Zs. Máriás: Egyetemi digitális térképtár fejlesztése az
ELTE-n. In: Kákonyi Gábor (szerk.) Fény-Tér-Kép konferencia. Dobogókő, Ma-
gyarország, 2009. 11. 12–2009. 11. 13.
[5] I. Elek, B. Kovács, K. Verebiné Fehér: Digitális térképtár az ELTE-n. Magyar
Földtudományi Szakemberek VII. Világtalálkozója, Magyarhoni Földtani Társu-
lat, p. 80., 2004.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 295
Joint ICA Symposium
István Elek, Gábor Gercsák

[6] P. Rigaux, M. Scholl, A. Voisard: Spatial Databases with Application to GIS.

Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2002.
Relating websites:
[7] Map server of Berkeley University :
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/topo.html
[8] Web pages with cartographic content at the homepage of Department of Car-
tography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University:
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/index.html
[9] Web pages with special cartographic content at the homepage of Depart-
ment of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Eötvös Loránd University:
http://lazarus.elte.hu/gb/linkek.htm
[10] Web page of NASA: www.nasa.gov
[11] David Rumsey’s web page http://www.davidrumsey.com/
[12] Web pages with special cartographic content at the homepage of Stanford
University:
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/branner/collections/sovietmil.html
[13] Web page of Terraserver: http://www.terraserver.com/
[14] Hiking routes: http://turistautak.hu

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 296
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Diversity in Cartography

USING RASTER TECHNIQUES IN

THE LACUNARITY ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL
DISTRIBUTIONS

Rufino Pérez Gómez

Technical University of Madrid (Spain)
[email protected]

Abstract: The main objective of this work is to carry out some mathematical analysis,
with the help of GIS concepts and tools, in order to investigate the applicability of fractal
modelling to express the complexity of the soil surface system in Europe. In the last
decade, soil scientists have developed the field of pedodiversity – the study and measure-
ment of soil diversity – in a similar way that biologists and ecologists approach to bio-
diversity. Because the complexity and difficulties of the subject matter under study, this
work represents a joint effort of a multidisciplinary team: soil scientists, cartographers
and mathematicians.
The GIS analysis conducted in this project considered two main aspects: fractal
analysis and lacunarity analysis. In the first case, some fractal analysis concepts were ap-
plied to the 133 second level soil classes of the World Reference Base (WRB) as extracted
from the European Soil Database (V2.0). In order to evaluate the fractal behaviour of the
spatial distribution of soils the box-counting method was applied considering three
orders of magnitude (20, 200 and 2000 km). For this purpose, different GIS procedures
were undertaken: database re-structuring, attribute queries, vector to raster conversions,
parameter calibration and statistical analysis of the soils raster layers. We have also
conducted other GIS procedures in order to perform multi-scale analysis using lacunarity
indices. This is made, as a supplementary measure of the fractal analysis, to evaluate the
heterogeneity of the different soils in Europe as spatial structures.
In 1983 Mandelbrot introduced the concept of lacunarity to differentiate spatial pat-
terns that may have the same fractal dimension but with different texture appearances.
Lacunarity is an analytical multi-scale measure of the heterogeneity of a spatial texture
and is related to the distribution of gap sizes in a geometric object. At a given scale, lacu-
narity represents how similar are parts from different regions of a geometric object to
each other.
Rufino Pérez Gómez

Our findings suggest that lacunarity, as a supplementary measure of the fractal

analysis, might be highly valuable to evaluate the heterogeneity of the different soils in
Europe as spatial structures. The results also suggest that lacunarity analysis is a promi-
sing tool for spatial heterogeneity measurement within a GIS environment in many ap-
plication fields

Introduction

Many measures have been devised and applied in quantitative geography in or-
der to conduct spatial analysis. On the other hand, many natural objects such as
rivers, mountains and coastlines, are so complex and irregular that models of
classical geometry are insufficient to describe them efficiently. It was due to the
work of Mandelbrot (1983), fractal geometry, what opened new ways to model
and describe natural phenomena.
Spatial heterogeneity is a relevant concept while studying geographical distri-
butions because it does exit in both natural and man-made phenomena. Mandel-
brot (1983) introduced the concept of lacunarity to differentiate spatial patterns
that may have the same fractal dimension but with different texture appearances.
Lacunarity is an analytical multi-scale measure of the heterogeneity of a spatial
texture that has often been used by researchers in the last years in many fields. In
the literature search many applications of the lacunarity concept can be found
related to landscape ecology, earth sciences, remote sensing, computer vision,
urban and environmental studies, geological and geophysical analysis, etc., see
Dong (2000, 2009) for a detailed list and brief description of the use of lacunarity
as analysis measure. Some authors try to relate the different patterns, when stud-
ying spatial heterogeneity, with the forming factors of a particular geographical
distribution. As an example, Escolano Utrilla (2007) tries to relate the lacunarity
analysis of the socio-spatial segregation in urban areas with some social, econom-
ical, cultural and spatial elements as influent factors.
On the other hand, GIS concepts and tools are very well suited to process 1D,
2D and 3D datasets in order to implement complex spatial pattern processes. In
this paper, the main objective is to describe some GIS raster processes used in the
implementation of lacunarity analysis while trying to evaluate the spatial heter-
ogeneity of soil maps in Europe as geographical distributions. But before going
into detail in this study, some context information and previous work is briefly
provided.

Previous work: The spatial distribution of soils across europe

The initial work intended to carry out some mathematical analysis, with the help
of GIS concepts and tools, in order to investigate the applicability of fractal mo-
deling to express the complexity of the soil surface system in Europe. In the last
years, soil scientists have developed the field of pedodiversity – the study and
measurement of soil diversity- in a similar way that biologists and ecologists ap-
proach to biodiversity. This work was designed as a joint effort of a multi-disci-
plinary team of soil scientists, cartographers and mathematicians.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 298
Joint ICA Symposium
Using Raster Techniques in the Lacunarity Analysis of Spatial Distributions

In order to investigate the fractal behavior of the spatial distribution patterns

of the most abundant pedotaxa in Europe (45 soil types that cover 92% of Eu-
rope), the European Soil Database (V2.0) (EU-European Soil Bureau, 2004) was
used. This largely consists of a digitalized map of the whole of the European con-
tinent at 1 : 1 000 000 scale We use the soil classification of the World Reference
Base (WRB) version of 1998 (FAO, 1999) at the second level. Figure 1 shows
these soil maps in a GIS environment.

Figure 1. The 45 most abundant pedotaxa (92% of the surface of Europe)

After organizing and re-structuring the different soil maps within a GIS envi-
ronment, these were further rasterized (vector–raster conversion). In this way, 45
‘‘data layers’’ were obtained, one for each pedotaxa, as starting point for the
analysis. Afterwards, the box-counting method, that is the most often mentioned
in the literature review, was used to estimate the fractal dimension.

Figure 2. Spatial distribution of the soil type CMeu (Eutric Cambisol)

The vector polygons of each soil type were rasterized at different resolutions
including three orders of magnitude (20, 200 and 2000 km) with some values in
between as control points. Afterwards, it was counted the number of cells were
that particular soil type was present in any of the raster datasets with different re-
solution. In the next step, these values were arranged in graphic plot were the x-
axis represent the logarithm of the cell or grid size and the y-axis shows the
logarithm of the numbers of cells occupied by the corresponding pedotaxa. The
final step in this stage is to estimate the fractal box-counting dimension from the
slope of the linear regression line adjusted in the previously defined dataset. The
figure 3 shows the results of applying this method to the Eutric Cambisol soil
type.

Figure 3. Box counting method applied to the soil type CMeu (Eutric Cambisol)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 300
Joint ICA Symposium
Using Raster Techniques in the Lacunarity Analysis of Spatial Distributions

It’s known that power laws are a fingerprint of fractal geometry as expressed
by Mandelbrot (1983). Just in this study, our analysis showed a remarkable pre-
sence of power laws in the distribution of pedotaxa across Europe. Therefore, the
pedotaxa fractal dimension may well play an important role when analyzing soil
systems in Europe. See Ibañez et al. (2009) for a more extensive and detailed ex-
planation of the concepts and processes that have been briefly mentioned here.

Lacunarity analisis of soil types.

After applying the box counting method to the different pedotaxa in Europe, a
supplementary lacunarity analysis was applied to gain more information about
the mathematical behaviour of soils as spatial distributions. Lacunarity is an
analytical multi-scale measure of the heterogeneity of a spatial texture. It was in-
troduced by Mandelbrot (1983) in order to differentiate spatial patterns that may
have the same fractal dimension but with different texture appearances. The la-
cunarity concept is related to the distribution of gap sizes in a geometric object.
Basically, if the gaps are of similar size and have a more or less regular distri-
bution, the lacunarity values are low, on the contrary, gaps with significant dif-
ferences in size and presenting irregular distribution produce high lacunarity val-
ues. At a given scale, lacunarity represents how similar are parts from different
regions of a geometric object to each other.
The most widely used algorithm for lacunarity estimation was initially pro-
posed by Allain and Cloitre (1991), and later disseminated through the works of
Plotnick et al. (1993,1996). They apply the “moving windows” concept and is
rather straight forward to implement in a GIS environment. Basically, the meth-
od consist in computing the number of cells, within the moving window, where
the geographical feature is presence (1 = presence, 0 = absence). This value is
called mass (S) of the window. Moving the window from left to right and from
top to bottom a raster layer with “mass values” is obtained.
For any soil type of our study, the lacunarity value is computed with the
method and formula as published by Plotnick et al. (1993, 1996):

Λ(r) = 1 + [Sd2 (S) / E2(S)]

where Sd(S) is the Standard deviation and E(S) is the mean value of the mass val-
ues.

The process is repeated with different window size in order to get the distinct
points of the lacunarity curve. In order to avoid inconsistencies in the results, a
mask may be required to skip the areas without data. In our case, we will mask
out the waster-sea zones to focus our analysis in the areas above see level. This
will require some pre-processing of the initially rasterized layers before applying
the appropriate mathematical algorithm.

Figure 4. Neighborhood statistics as part of the moving window concept

in lacunarity estimation.

To implement the previously described formula and algorithm, the Spatial

Analyst extension of ArcGIS was used. Firstly, any raster dataset was pre-pro-
cessed to mask out the water areas and exclude them from our analysis. Next,
some neighborhood statistics methods were applied to compute the “mass value-
S” at any particular location of the moving window. This represents the number
of cells, within the moving window, where the geographical feature is presence
(1 = presence, 0 = absence). By going through the original raster, from left to
right and from top to bottom, a new raster with mass values are obtained. This
new cell values represent a statistical dataset that, in turn, will allow to estimate
the lacunarity values by the above described formula.
The process described in the previous paragraph is jus to get one point in a
lacunarity curve. In order to draw the curve itself we need more points. This is
obtained by repeating the methodology with different window size (2, 4, 8, 16,
32, 64, 128, 256). At the same time, an attempt of “multiscale analysis” was tried
by rasterizing the original soil polygons with different cell resolutions: 10, 20 and
40 km as different starting point of the described methodology.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 302
Joint ICA Symposium
Using Raster Techniques in the Lacunarity Analysis of Spatial Distributions

2,5

Ln 2
(la 10km
gu
na 1,5 20km
ri
da
1 40km

0,5

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Ln(r)

Figure 5. Lacunarity curves obtained for the ARha soil type (Haplic Arenosol)

Figure 5 illustrates the describe processes applied to the Haplic Arenosol soil
type. As expected, there is a significant decrease of lacunarity values with the in-
crease of the window size and with the cell resolution of the input layer.

5
ABUM
4,5
ARHA
4 AGUA
CHLV
LN(lac) 3,5
CMEU
3 FLEU
GLDY
2,5 GLEU

2 HSGE
LVHA
1,5 PHHA
PZCB
1

0,5

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 6. Comparison of Lacunarity Curves of different soil types

The interpretation of the lacunarity concept and formula leads us to see that
as a sequence of progressively changing patterns. In one extreme is when the
data representing the phenomenon occupies the space with a “random pattern”
producing low lacunarity values. As the geographical distribution evolves to-
wards a more clustered pattern, we will find areas with greater density of data
points in some areas and larger gaps in others what will result in extremes values
(high and low values) when applying the moving window. The more clustered is
the pattern, more extremes will be the “mass” values and more often will appear
in the output raster dataset. This will increase the standard deviation of the sta-

tistical dataset and, in turn, the final lacunarity values. To have this concept clear
might help to understand and interpret the lacunarity curves.
Figure 6 represents the lacunarity curves of different soil types. The set of
curves show significant differences in lacunarity values, shapes and ranges. Cur-
rently, there is an ongoing research and in depth analysis, with the help of soil
scientists and mathematicians, to try to relate these heterogeneity estimation with
the forming factors of the different soil types geographical distributions.

Results and conclusions

In relation to the previous fractal analysis, our results show a remarkable pres-
ence of power laws in the distribution of pedotaxa across Europe. These find-
ings strongly suggest the fractal nature of pedotaxa distribution across Europe. In
turn, this fractal structure may be associated with physical models that would
give an insight into the processes acting at those particular spatial scales and
which produce the complex patterns of soil surface systems as it was previously
appointed by some soil scientists (Ibañez et al., 2009).
On the other hand, the lacunarity, as a supplementary measure of the fractal
analysis, might be highly valuable to evaluate the heterogeneity of the different
soils in Europe as spatial structures. Finally, our results also suggest that lacuna-
rity analysis is a promising tool for spatial heterogeneity measurement in a GIS
environment in many other application fields.

Future work

To complete the previously described work, the following tasks have been identi-
fied and listed here:

• To finish the fractal analysis to all the 133 soil types present in Europe,
• To apply the lacunarity analysis to the previous soil types,
• To analize the results together with soil scientists and mathematicians.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to our students Elsa Mª Benayas and
Eduardo Nieto for his hard work during his final study project where they co-
operated and contributed to get the results of this work. His work and commit-
ment is very much appreciated.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 304
Joint ICA Symposium
Using Raster Techniques in the Lacunarity Analysis of Spatial Distributions

References

Allain, C., Cloitre, M.: 1991, Characterizing the lacunarity of random and deter-
mined fractal set. Physics Review A 44, 3552–3558.
Escolano Utrilla, S.: 2007, La medida de la segregación residencial urbana: aná-
lisis multiescala mediante índices de lagunaridad. Geofocus (artículos), Nr. 7,
p. 216–234. ISSN: 1578-5157.
Dong, P.: 2000, Test of a new lacunarity estimation method for image texture
analysis. International Journal of Remote Sensing 21, 3369–3373.
Dong, P., Leblon, B.: 2004, Rock unit discrimination on Landsat TM, SIR-C and
Radarsat images using spectral and textural information. International Journal of
Remote Sensing 25, 3745–3768.
Dong, P.: 2009, Lacunarity analysis of raster datasets and 1D, 2D and 3D point
patterns. Computer & Geosciences 35, 2100–2110.
Ibáñez, J. J. et al.: 2009, The spatial distribution of soils across Europe: A fractal
approach. Ecological Complexity 6, 294–301
Ibáñez, J. J., Pérez, R.: 2009, Cartographic and GIS Processes supporting the
characterization of the spatial distribution of soils in Europe. Internacional Con-
gress of Soil Geography: New Horizons Huatulco Santa Cruz (Mexico), Novem-
ber 2009.
Mandelbrot, B.B.: 1983, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Freeman, San Francis-
co, CA.
Plotnick, R. E., Gardner, R. H., O’Neill, R. V.: 1993, Lacunarity indices as meas-
ures of landscape texture. Landscape Ecology 8, 201–211.
Plotnick, R. E., Gardner, R. H., Hargrove, W. W., Prestegaard, K., Perlmutter, M.:
1996, Lacunarity analysis: a general technique for the analysis of spatial patterns.
Physical Review E 53, 5461–5468.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 305
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Diversity in Cartography

ONTOLOGIES IN CARTOGRAPHY:
POWER OF REASONING

Otakar Čerba
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen (Czech Republic)
[email protected]

Abstract: Who is the current user of maps? It is not possible to give an unambiguous an-
swer. But the important group of users could be defined as “people being able to create and
distribute their own maps via web technologies, but they have not any cartographic edu-
cation and knowledge”. Such users (or map makers) can create for instance choropleth
maps or cartograms, but they do not know anything about these cartographic methods.
They do not see restriction of methods, their advantages, signification or limits of usage.
The opportunity of cartographers consist in a cooperation on development of a solu-
tion supporting automatic providing of cartographic information and knowledge. Such
agents are known as expert systems. On our poster we do not want to describe a complete
expert system but only ontology as its fundamental part focused on a sharing of semantic
information and knowledge. Ontologies and “reasoning” process should be the very impor-
tant part of common cartographic expert system. Reasoning based on explicit information
and knowledge written in ontology can recommend appropriate cartographic method
based on detail description of source spatial data sets and purposes of map. This paper
presents just a proposal (or prototype) of proposed cartographic ontology as well as steps of
following development.

Introduction

In the paper with a little bit strange title “Cartografia Catholica” (Čada and Čer-
ba, 2009), which was published two years ago, we (as the authors) emphasized
the importance to connect the cartography as the science and practical activity
and the Latin word “catholica”. This word is translated as not only “catholic” but
also it means “general” or “universal”. According to the above-mentioned paper
Otakar Čerba

(Čada and Čerba, 2009) the term “catholic” should express the main future
movement of cartography. Cartographers should come back to essentials of their
activities. This approach is among other things represented by a saturation of
user needs as much as possible. User needs and requirements are main accele-
rators to develop new or improved cartographic products and methods. Carto-
graphy should be ingrown but it should be focused mainly on users of the map
and other cartographic products to provide the maximum quantity and quality
of useful information as much as quickly.
But this paper does not discuss the above-mentioned future movement of
cartography. It tries to introduce ontologies and the reasoning (both terms are
described in following parts of this paper) as a tool enabling a focus on the users.
Because ontologies enable to describe, share, combine and understand (spatial)
data and information as well as knowledge.
This document is composed of four main parts (except introduction) – mo-
tivation to applying ontologies in cartography, description and explanation of
important ontological terms, introduction of the created prototype of ontology
and results of reasoning process, and conclusion including future steps.

Background and objectives

What do current users of maps and other cartographic products really need? It is
hard to say, because it is necessary to have some detail information on user. The
tools and processes described in this paper (ontologies & reasoning) be stead to a
group of users, who are focused on creating and constructing their own maps
without high-level cartographic knowledge and education – so called map
makers. Such users are able to use many different software products (e.g. Geog-
raphic Information Systems, Web 2.0 technologies, Map portals or web services).
They also have an access to large spatial data sets, including products of volun-
tary and community activities (e.g. OpenStreetMap). The data capturing and vi-
sualisation could be provided by easily available hardware equipments (e.g. com-
puters, smart phones, GPS or PDAs). We can say that the need and possibility of
creating maps whenever and wherever represents the important characteristics of
these users.
Users with potentialities depicted in previous scheme need one help from
cartographers. As was described in the previous paragraph and in the Intro-duc-
tion – users have data and technologies. But the knowledge is missing. They are
not able to select appropriate cartographic technique (or method) – for example
users can create choropleth maps or cartograms, but they do not know anything
about these cartographic interpretation methods. They do not see restriction of
methods, their advantages, signification or limits of usage. Contemporary soft-
ware and hardware products do not provide any or only limited information.
The output maps are influenced mainly by skills of software and not by carto-
graphy and its rules and principles. And such maps can result a wrong decision
on the user side.
Cartographers should be able to advise them simply, rightly, quickly, when-
ever and wherever. Of course it is impossible in the real life. The opportunity of
cartographers consist in a cooperation on development of some solution sup-

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 307
Joint ICA Symposium
Ontologies in Cartography: Power of Reasoning

porting automatic providing of cartographic information and knowledge. Such

agents are known as expert systems. In this paper we do not want to describe a
complete expert system but its fundamental part focused on a sharing of seman-
tic information and knowledge. This component is composed of different types
of tools designed for data description (detail information in Čerba, 2009) and the
most abstract level of data description (through not exact information and know-
ledge) is provided by ontologies (detail information on ontologies are in the next
part). It is possible to give account of principal of cartographic ontology as the
sentence (Figure 1) – “Describe your data and conception of cartographic visuali-
sation (map) and the system allows for suitable cartographic tools (e.g. carto-
graphic interpretation method, colour scheme or scale)”.

Figure 1. Cartographic ontology as a part of expert system

Approach and methods

The fundamental term of this paper “ontology” is very popular and very often
used (so-called buzzword) in the world of information technologies (IT). The
word “ontology” is very old – it was used by ancient Greek philosophers (e.g.
Socrates or Aristotle). According to the (Hay, 2006) this word is about 2500 years
old. Ontology in philosophy means “Theory of existence” (Mizoguchi & Ikeda,
1998).
One of the first definition of ontologies in the information technologies was
formulated by T. Gruber – “An ontology is an explicit specification of a conce-
tualization.” (Gruber, 1993). More than ten years later he described the ontolo-
gies in the following way (Gruber, 2009): In the context of computer and infor-
mation sciences, an ontology defines a set of representational primitives with
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 308
Joint ICA Symposium
Otakar Čerba

which to model a domain of knowledge or discourse. The representational pri-

mitives are typically classes (or sets), attributes (or properties), and relationships
(or relations among class members). The definitions of the representational pri-
mitives include information about their meaning and constraints on their logi-
cally consistent application. In the context of database systems, ontology can be
viewed as a level of abstraction of data models, analogous to hierarchical and
relational models, but intended for modelling knowledge about individuals, their
attributes, and their relationships to other individuals. Due to their independence
from lower level data models, ontologies are used for integrating heterogeneous
databases, enabling interoperability among disparate systems, and specifying in-
terfaces to independent, knowledge-based services.
W. Borst (Borst, 1997) extent the original Gruber’s definition: “An ontology is
a formal specification of a shared conceptualization”. R. Poli (Poli, 2002) recom-
mended to use and distinction between two words connected with ontologies –
formal (application of formal terms) and formalized (formal way of coding).
Ontologies, which are defined as the formal specification of a vocabulary of
concepts and axioms relating them, are seen playing a key role in describing the
“semantics” of the data (Dou et al., 2004). The domain ontologies (sometimes
called sharing vocabularies) represents the most often used type of ontologies
used to describing semantics of data.
Domain and task ontologies capture knowledge at a level of abstraction free
from implementation concerns – that is, they reflect the true nature of a domain
or task. Domain ontologies are intended to provide a source of predefined con-
cepts that provide descriptions about specific domain knowledge. They are in-
tended to be reused by others wishing to build their own domain or task onto-
logies with the aim of merging different knowledge descriptions about similar
domains or data. (Dolbear et al., 2005)
There are some examples of domain ontologies defined for geoinformation
sciences including cartography: CartoOWL (Karam et al., 2010), ontology devel-
oped in the project CartoExpert (Peňáz, 2010) or ontology Land-Use/Land-Cov-
er Ontologies created in the project HarmonISA (Hall, 2006).

Results

Ontology described in this paper represents a opportunity of an application of

ontologies in cartography. The majority of current “cartographic” ontologies
such as CartoOWL (Karam et al., 2010) or CartoExpert (Peňáz, 2010) is focused
on definition of terminology and its structure. For purposes mention in previous
sub-chapters it is necessary to extend such ontologies and to add a reasoning
process. Just the reasoning is able to generate new information based on original
asserted model. In this case the result of reasoning is the cartographic methods
assignment to a described spatial data sets.
The development of ontology is composed of six steps (based on Číhalová et
al., 2010, Fernandez et al., 1997, Pundt, 2007 and Rector et al., 2007):

• Capturing, identification and defining of fundamental concepts (classes)

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 309
Joint ICA Symposium
Ontologies in Cartography: Power of Reasoning

• Building of hierarchy of concepts – we use such terms in accordance with

following publications – (Slocum et al., 2009), (Dent et al., 2009), and
(Robinson et al., 1995).
• Capturing, identification and defining of attributes, including their hier-
archy
• Interconnection of concepts and attributes – description of concepts with
use of attributes (so-called classificators or modificators)
• Transformation of all rules to ontology (formalization of ontology) –
application of ontology editor (e.g. Protégé) and ontological data format
(e.g. Web Ontology Language – OWL).
• Reasoning – this process derive a new multihierarchical ontology based
on original hirarchy of concepts and classificators.

Prototype of ontology describing cartographic terms and rules contains three

groups of concepts:

• Description of data sets which will be visualized. Except items called

“Data” there are also elements “Map”, which represent data sets incor-
porated into map.
• Cartographic tools – at the present time only some types of cartographic
interpretation methods (e.g. choropleth maps) and data classification are
applied.
• Parameters – this part of ontology so-called modificators makes for de-
scription and classification of rest of ontology. The object attributes are
constructed based on parameters.

As mentioned earlier the main benefit of proposed ontology it the application

of reasoner. The software connected with used ontology editor Protégé is able
not only to check the consistency of ontology but also the reasoner can analyse
the structure of ontology and derive new information based on logical rules and
original ontology. Described ontology with use of reasoning is capable of finding
appropriate cartographic methods and assign them to data sets and maps de-
pending on description of all parts of ontology. Such result can be expressed with
above-mentioned sentence – “Describe your data and conception of cartographic
visualisation (map) and the system allows for suitable cartographic tools (e.g.
cartographic interpretation method or scale)”.

Conclusion and future plans

This paper presents only a short fragment of proposed ontology. To be fully and
efficiently operational the ontology needs to add following components:

• Complete system of description of spatial data (to find or to establish a

closed set of spatial data attributes)
• Complete system of description of maps, their components, include the
methods of construction

• Interconnection of different existing terminology systems

• Re-use of existing ontologies
• Multilinguality – implementation of various languages
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) or implementation of ontology to some
expert system
• Interconnection with other types of spatial data description

In accordance with the above-mentioned article (Čada and Čerba, 2009) the
openness, clarity, accessibility, interaction with other scientific disciplines, and
the absorption of new technologies will signify not only a greater use of carto-
graphy in new and non-traditional areas, but also a prominent position in the
market for geoinformation. In this context, the marketability of cartographic
products, but inevitably also their quality will increase. Because informed and
experienced users supplied a wide range of cartographic products will prefer the
quality at the expense of easy access. Just ontologies as a new technologies go to-
wards the openness, clarity, accessibility, interaction with other scientific disci-
plines.

References

Borst, W. N.: 1997, Construction of Engineering Ontologies for Knowledge

Sharing and Reuse. University of Twente.
URL: http://doc.utwente.nl/17864/1/t0000004.pdf
Čada, V., Čerba, O.: 2009, Cartografia Catholica. In 18. kartograficka konference,
Olomouc (Czech Republic).
Čerba, O.: 2009, GMES Needs Described Spatial Data. In INSPIRE, GMES and
GEOSS Activities, Methods and Tools towards a Single Information Space in Eu-
rope for the Environment. Charvat, K., Alberts, M., Horakova, S. (eds.). Wire-
lessinfo, Tehnologiju attistibas forums, Riga (Latvia). 978-9934-8105-0-3.
Číhalová, M. et al.: 2009, Methodology of Ontology Building. In Advances in Ge-
oinformation Technologies. Horak, J., Halounova, L., Kusendova, D., Rapant, P.,
Vozenilek, V. (eds.). VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava (Czech
Republic). 178 s.
Dent, B. D. et al.: 2009, Cartography: thematic map design. 6. vyd. New York:
McGraw–Hill Higher Education, 2009. 336 s. ISBN 978-0-07-294382-5.
Dolbear, C. et al.: 2005, Semantic interoperability between topographic data and
a flood defence ontology. Technical Report. Ordnance Survey. URL:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/partnerships/research/publications/docs/2005/
Semantic%20Interoperability_CDolbear_sem.pdf
Dou, D. et al.: 2004, Ontology Translation on the Semantic Web. In S. Spacca-
pietra et al. (Eds.): Journal on Data Semantics II, LNCS 3360, str. 35-57, 2004.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
URL: http://www.cs.yale.edu/~dvm/daml/ontomerge_odbase.pdf

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 311
Joint ICA Symposium
Ontologies in Cartography: Power of Reasoning

Fernandez, M. et al.: 1997, METHONTOLOGY: FromOntological Art Towards

Ontological Engineering . In AAAI Technical Report SS-97-06.
Gruber, T.: 1993. A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications. In
Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2): 199–220.
Gruber, T.: 2009, Ontology. In the Encyclopedia of Database Systems, Ling Liu
and M. Tamer Ozsu (Eds.), Springer-Verlag, 2009.
URL: http://tomgruber.org/writing/ontology-definition-2007.htm
Hall, M.: 2006, Automatisierte Semantische Harmonisierung von Landnutzungs-
daten. In AGIT, Salzburg (Austria).
URL: http://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/M.M.Hall/files/papers/Hall2006.pdf
Hay, D. C.: 2006, Data Modelling, RDF & OWL – Part One: An Introduction To
Ontologies. In The Data Administration Newsletter – TDAN.com.
URL: http://www.tdan.com/print/5025
Mizoguchi, R., Ikeda, M.: 1998, Towards Ontology Engineering. Technical Re-
port AI-TR-96-1, I.S.I.R., Osaka Univ. URL:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.78.7101&rep=rep1&ty
pe=pdf
Karam, R. et al.: 2010, Cartographic Integration on Mobile Devices from Several
Providers’ LBS by Means of Map Symbol Ontology. In WebMGS 2010, Como
(Italy).
Penaz, T.: 2010, Konstrukce ontologickeho modelu pro aplikacni vyuziti znalosti
z domeny tematicke kartografie. In XXII. Sjezd Ceske geograficke spolecnosti,
Ostrava (Czech Republic).
Poli, R.: 2002, Ontological methodology. In International Journal Human-Com-
puter Studies, 56, s. 639–664. Elsevier Science Ltd.
Pundt, H.: 2007, From Idea toward Ontology. In 10th AGILE International Con-
ference on Geographic Information Science, Aalborg University (Denmark).
Rector A. et al.: 2007, Foundations of the Semantic Web: Ontology Engineering,
Lecture 2 Building Ontologies & Knowledge Elicitation.
URL: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~rector/modules/CS646/Lecture-Handouts/Lect-
2-Ontology-building-2007.pdf
Robinson, A. H. et al.: 1995, Elements of Cartography. 6. vyd. John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. 674 s. ISBN: 0-471-55579-7.
Slocum, T. A. et al.: 2009, Thematic cartography and geovisualization. 3. vyd. Up-
per Saddle River: LinkPearson/Prentice Hall, 2009. 561 s. ISBN 978-0-13-229834-6.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 312
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

SURVEY ON CHERNOFF FACES IN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA:

FUTHER RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTS

José Jesús Reyes Nuñez1, Eszter Simonné Dombóvári2

1 Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary)
[email protected]
2 Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
[email protected]

Abstract: The poster presents the results of the theoretical research and the survey on
using and understanding of the Chernoff faces method by pupils in an international
comparison of Hungary, Argentina and Austria. This method for data visualisation was
originally created for the graphic representation of statistical data published by Hermann
Chernoff in 1973. The research on the map use of this method began later, starting from
the 90’s. However, its use in cartography was rare and did not concern school cartogra-
phy. From this point of view, two Hungarian-Argentinean projects in 2004–2005 and in
2008–2009 can be considered as pioneer projects for testing the general comprehensi-
bility and the learn effect of the Chernoff principle in the field of thematic cartography
for pupils. The results emphasized the need for further research and experiments in
different countries. The Hungarian–Austrian bilateral scientific co-operation concen-
trates on further research and surveys concerning the use of Chernoff faces in school
maps (http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at/chernoff/). The aim is the extension of the theore-
tical research, studying the possible uses of Chernoff faces in school cartography for
pupils of grades 3–4 (9–11 years old), seeking for new solutions and enable future re-
search to create more efficient thematic maps for children. On the other hand the pur-
pose is to extend the Hungarian-Argentinean project by organizing a survey in Austria
and to compare this data with the previous results. The questionnaire is designed for pu-
pils of grades 7 and 8 (13–15 years old) in Austrian Secondary Schools with some experi-
ence of using maps and school atlases. The final proposals about the use of this method
in school publications will be elaborated, based on the results of the test.
The current research is developed in the framework of the Agreements on Scientific
and Technological Cooperation, financed by the project AT-3/2009 and HU 07/2010 of
the National Office for Research and Technology of Hungary and Federal Ministry of
Science and Research, Austria, and counting with the financial support of the European
Union and the European Social Fund under the grant agreement no. TÁMOP 4.2.1./B-
09/1/KMR-2010-0003.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 313
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

THE WORLD IN THEIR MINDS — A MULTI-SCALE APPROACH

OF CHILDREN’S REPRESENTATIONS OF GEOGRAPHICAL
SPACE

Veerle Vandelacluze
Lecturer in Primary Geography, Open Higher Education
Excellence Centre for Distance Education
Catholic University College of South-West Flanders, KATHO
Pre-primary and primary school teacher training, Campus Tielt, PHO (Belgium)

Abstract: During the last decades a number of studies have explored primary school
children’s spatial representations at one particular scale e.g. earth’s land masses or the fa-
miliar home–school area. Little is known however on children’s mental constructs of the
geographical space as a whole. The omnipresence of digital mapping tools in everyday
life has made such an understanding increasingly important. Elaborating effective teach-
ing strategies for the introduction of visualization tools like Google Earth or GPS into the
primary school classroom, requires a basic understanding of children’s mental maps at
different scales.
In this study 94 Flemish children aged 9–12 represented their world at three scale
levels. They drew their route from home to school (test 1), composed a map of the world
given the outline of the continents (test 2) and marked out how sun, moon and earth
revolve around one another via arrows and a forced choice question (test 3). Despite
great individual differences the results of this sample demonstrate that a majority of the
children (even among 12-year-olds) show an incomplete and defragmented geographical
world view. Only between test 2 and 3 a significant correlation was found (r = 0,42;
p< 0,01). This supports previous psychological research pointing out at least a partial dis-
sociation between large-scale spatial abilities, needed for way-finding in the local neigh-
borhood (test 1), and small-scale spatial abilities, applicable when internalizing a large ge-
ographical space through symbolic representations such as maps and models (test 2 & 3).
Consequences of this findings for map education, in general, and the use of digital
mapping tools in the primary school classroom, more specifically, are discussed.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 314
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

A CARTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY WITH STUDENTS FROM

A SMALL FISHERMAN TOWN SCHOOL IN MARANHÃO
STATE, BRAZIL

Regina Araujo de Almeida1, Alexandre Vítor de Lima Fonsêca2

1 Universidade de São Paulo, USP (Brazil)
[email protected]
2 Universidade Federal do Maranhão (Brazil)
UFMA, [email protected]

The paper presents and discusses a journey through the ocean coast of S. José de
Ribamar in Maranhão State, Brazil (Figure 1), as a cartographic experience done
with students in a fisherman town school.

Figure 1. Study area location: S. José de Ribamar in Maranhão State, Brazil

(org. by A. Fonsêca)
Regina Araujo de Almeida, Alexandre Vítor de Lima Fonsêca

The activity called Coastal Geographic Journey is part of the methodological

proposal directed to schools which have a large number of kids with parents en-
gaged in fishing as a way to earn their living. They are considered indigenous
population and their tradicional knowledge includes several concepts related to
distance, orientation and natural processes such as ocean tides, winds and navi-
gation.
The research is part of a doctoral thesis which has as main goals: 1. To gather
the geographical knowledge of students coming from fishermen families and to
analyse the possibilities to include these themes in primary and high school, as
cartographic activities inside and outside the classroom; 2. To discuss the geog-
raphy curriculum used at the local schools and its relation to concepts such as
orientation, location, space perception and representation; 3. To propose a meth-
odology which takes into consideration their traditional knowledge and daily life,
in geography and cartography teaching.
In order to aply this proposal, an activity were developed and tested with one
class of 6th grade students from the Municipal Ribamar School (Figure 2), in
October, 2010. A journey through the coast were planned, involving teachers and
students, also with the participation of parents which were invited to take part in
some events.
It was an opportunity to introduce school cartography, using an innovative
approach to teach and learn geography. Several meetings took place at the school,
for preparation of the field trip activity. A map were produced to be used during
the journey (Figure 3 and 4). Each group of 5 to 6 students did the journey accom-
pained by the researcher and their teacher, carrying the map, blank paper and a
camera. Several trips of 3 hours each were made to complete the one chosen class
of 6th grade kids.

Figure 2. Municipal School in S. José de Ribamar and the 6th grade class
(photos by A. Fonsêca)

Students were asked to take notes, to make drawings of scenes or anything

that called their attention, also to take photographs as they pleased, mainly to
record facts, objects, people, places during the 4 hours walking, with many views,
different scenarios and lots of explanations were given. Students were very parti-
cipative during the whole time and they did the drawings and took photographs
along the way.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 316
Joint ICA Symposium
A Cartographic Journey with Students from a Small Fisherman Town School in Maranhão
State, Brazil

Natural facts such as ocean tides, fishing as economic local activity, environ-
ment issues and problems such as the amount of litter going to the coastal areas
and waters, received the attention of the group. They all received white caps with
the journey’s name printed on them (Jornada Geográfica Litorânea) which gave
them a feeling of some important field work to be done. Maps had a relevant role
before, during and after the journey.

Figure 3. Field trip location, distance and stop points, at the planning stage
(org. by A.Fonsêca)

Figure 4. Geographical Journey Map used in the field trip through the coast of
Ribamar (org. by A. Fonsêca)

At the end, it was organized a big event at school when each group of stu-
dents presented their work, drawings, photos and comment. Parents were invited
and they participated during the event, listening to their kids and also making
comments which were recorded.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 317
Joint ICA Symposium
Regina Araujo de Almeida, Alexandre Vítor de Lima Fonsêca

Five months later in March 2011, after the beginning of the new school year,
we visited the students of the selected class to gather their impression and mem-
ories from the experience. The results were very positive, in terms of what they
learned and how much they enjoyed the activity. Above all, a different way of
studying geography and cartography brought a kind of interest which they do
not have in normal classroom routines. The experience proved that there are
good reasons and ways to include tradicional knowledge in the geography curri-
culum. Field work and cartography can both play an important role in achieving
this goal, enhancing the motivation of students to learn and helping to keep tra-
ditions and local identity alive in the community.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 318
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

A CASE STUDY ON SCHOOL CARTOGRAPHY AND

AMAZONIAN RIVERINE COMMUNITIES

Regina Araujo de Almeida1, José Camilo Ramos de Souza2

1 Universidade de São Paulo, USP (Brazil)
[email protected]
2 Universidade do Estado do Amazonas, UEA (Brazil)
[email protected]

This paper brings the initial results of a research being developed by the authors,
in Parintins area, at the Amazonas State, in the north region of Brazil (Figure 1).
The study main goal is to explore the role of maps at traditional communities
living at the Amazon River margins, including low lands exposed to severe floods
and higher lands, above the flood level, in most times.

Figure 1. Study Area Overview: Parintins and Maués in the Amazonas State
(Org. by Willer Pinto, september/2010)
Regina Araujo de Almeida, José Camilo Ramos de Souza

Communities in both areas depend entirely from the forest and the river
systems, their cultural identity is totally connected with this way of living.
Schools have to adapt their hours and vacations in order to survive the flooding
periods when there are no classes. These are considered rural schools and their
reality vary in a great deal. First, the number of students are quite different, so
their age groups. In some cases there is only one teacher for all disciplines and
students of all ages study together in one room. Other times, geography is con-
centrated in a 2 months module with classes given only at this period in a year.
These conditions influence the teaching of cartography and they put limits in
when and what can be learned.
Figure 2 shows examples of this environment which define the way people
live, work and learn geography and cartography. The two schools (Tiradentes
and Tukasa Uetsuka), are located in the municipality of Parintins, in the Ama-
zonas State, Brazil, reached only by boat.

Figure 2. Study Area Municipal Schools in two periods: floods in May/2010 and
the dry season in August/2010 (photo by J. Camilo R. de Souza)

Cartography can help to understand these riverine communities, the schools

and the people. Their maps depict their reality, their space perception and the
way they live and see the environment. For most people, it is not easy to imagine
a school which has a different year calendar because of river system and cycles,
classes suspended for months waiting for the water to clear classrooms (Fig. 3).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 320
Joint ICA Symposium
A Case Study on School Cartography and Amazonian Riverine Communities

Figure 3. Amazonian river waters inside classroom

These communities, considered traditional groups living mainly on fishing,

hunting and agriculture, have a deep sense of identity connected with the cycles
which control nature, their sense of place and knowledge of the environment is
profound and this is why geography and cartography must have a relevant role at
school. The curriculum should also include their reality and their knowledge.
The research will evaluate how maps are being introduced and their partici-
pation at the geography teaching. The first results show that teachers are not pre-
pared to work with maps, and neither students are ready to involve themselves in
mapping activities. Cognitive maps and graphic representations of geographical
space, in all its forms and content, including cultural issues, usually are not inside
classrooms. Teachers could start to deal with the cartographic and geographic in-
formation in the students imagination and inside their minds. In a matter of fact,
their reality must be the initial step, the local scale as a way to reach the global
space, to acquire knowledge of our world.
Practical Activities and teaching materials related to the curriculum content
for geography and cartography were developed and proposed to be used in class-
rooms. Some experiences and tests are already been analyzed with significant re-
sults found, at the present stage. The maps and graphic representations made by
students and teachers from rural schools at these communities express their
space organization, as social constructs of a reality based on their relationships
with the rivers, going up and down, to school, to work or to fish. These places
have no roads, sometimes only small pathways inside the forest can also be used,
but their transportation means are boats, they are the municipal school buses
which take children to classes. It is not difficult to imagine that geography and
cartography can not be the same as the one taught at urban schools in cities.
School cartography means asking kids to draw their daily life, their culture,
their traditions. Mapping has to be connected with the fishing activities, with
walking through the forest to collect food and what they need to survive. These
facts were perceived, learned through their social life, at school, at home and the
community they spend their life. Mental maps, drawings in a piece of paper, can
highlight the relevance of a not conventional cartography. Mapping in this per-
spective can reveal the traditional knowledge, giving it a new value, unfolding and
bringing to light hidden geographies, their culture, keeping history, past experi-
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 321
Joint ICA Symposium
Regina Araujo de Almeida, José Camilo Ramos de Souza

ences and achievements alive inside maps. Learning cartography and making
maps can be means to get information they need for now and for the future.
The preliminary research findings confirm the relevance of maps and draw-
ings in the lives of these people, in geography teaching as well. In this way, geog-
raphic knowledge have new meanings, answering old questions such as what,
how and why they learn, bringing together feelings, perceptions of reality, even
memories with the physical material world. Places which are in their imagination
and places where they work and study everyday both become part of cartogra-
phic representations. Water pathways transporting lives and traditions are more
than lines in a map, in this context, they can be bridges to empower people living
at Amazonian areas, their students and schools. A different view of maps and
mapping is highlighted in this proposal for a school cartography at the Amazon
region and its riverine communities.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 322
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

TEACHING GEOMATICS WITH WEB 2.0

Václav Čada1, Radek Fiala2, Karel Janečka3, Karel Jedlička4, Jan Ježek5,
Martina Vichrová6
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen (Czech Republic)
1 [email protected]
2 [email protected]
3 [email protected]
4 [email protected]
5 [email protected]
6 [email protected]

Abstract: Spatial services and applications are one of main part of Web 2.0. Due to this fact
a lot of things has changed and lot of methods that were essential in the past are not used
today. Following this fact we have started a project focused on building and upgrading of
learning materials for specific parts of Geomatics that is focused on modern technologies
and approaches. These materials are also as such build and teached on web 2.0 technolo-
gies.
In the scope of our project we are working on bringing multimedia and interactive up-
grade to learning material and presentations to catch new approaches as much as possible.
This materials are then distributed and discussed through Internet platforms like blog posts
and social networks. Student can then easily access it and discus related issues. This ap-
proach is also very important for distance education that is becoming very popular in EU.
The aim of this poster is to show and describe samples of the best outcomes of this
project. In general main topics of materials are focused on Geographic information techno-
logies and Cartography. New applications and web based examples will be demonstrated.
Some of the learning tools and examples focused on mobile devices and smart phones will
be also mentioned.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 323
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

CARTOGRAPHIC MAPPING OF THE ICY SATURNIAN

SATELLITES BASED ON CASSINI ISS DATA

E. Kersten1, Th. Roatsch1, M. Wählisch1, A. Hoffmeister1, P. C. Thomas2

1 Institute of Planetary Research, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin
(Germany)
2 Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Cornell University, Ithaca (USA)
[email protected]

Abstract: The sizes and shapes of seven icy Saturnian satellites have been measured from
Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) data, employing limb coordinates and stereo-
grammetric control points. Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea are well described
by triaxial ellipsoids; Iapetus is best represented by an oblate spheroid. The ISS acquired
many high-resolution images (< 800 m/pixel) during close flybys of the medium-sized
satellites (Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus, and Phoebe). We combined
these images with lower-resolution coverage and a few images taken by Voyager cameras
to produce high-resolution mosaics of these icy satellites. The global mosaics are the
baseline for high-resolution atlases. The atlases consist of 15 tiles each for Enceladus,
Dione, and Tethys, whereas the Iapetus, Mimas, and Phoebe atlases consist of 3, 3, and 1
tile, respectively. The nomenclature used in these atlases was suggested by the Cassini-ISS
team and approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The whole atlases
are available to the public through the Imaging Team’s website (http://ciclops.org/maps/)
and from the Planetary Data System (PDS, http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/).

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 324
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

STUDYING THE HISTORY OF THE BATTLESHIP

«GEORGIOS AVEROF»: A PROJECTION IN SPACE AND TIME

Efstathios Arapostathis1, Eleni Gkadolou2, Emmanuel Stefanakis3

Georgios Kritikos4
Department of Geography Harokopio University (Greece)
1 [email protected]
2 [email protected]
3 [email protected]
4 [email protected]

Abstract: This paper presents a web mapping application for the history of the battleship
«Georgios Averof», the world’s only surviving heavily armored cruiser of the early 20th
century. The battleship was a legendary warship of the Greek fleet during the first half of
the 20th century with an active role in three wars (Balkans, World War I and II); cur-
rently it is a museum. Our scope was to virtually deliver the battleship’s history in an elo-
quent and attractive way for students and visitors. The end-user through an interactive
web interface navigates through the main historical periods of the ship’s life, retrieves re-
lated information by forming queries as well as edits or updates the content (if author-
ized). The content can be visualized on top of Google Maps and it comprises a rich his-
torical collection in various multimedia forms (photographs, images, maps, charts, vi-
deos, sound recordings, etc.) mostly retrieved by the museum’s archives and stored in a
database server supported by Postgres/PostGIS DBMS. A map server (UMN MapServer)
delivers the content appropriately and the web interface, developed in Geomoose Java-
script Framework, generates the interactive interface offered to the end-user.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 325
Joint ICA Symposium
Maps for the Future:
Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Poster

AN EXHIBITION OF CHILDREN’S DRAWING OF THE RED

SLUDGE DISASTER: CARTOGRAPHY, ART AND A SHOCKING
EXPERIENCE

Henrik Hargitai1, Pál Gábor Vizi2

1 Department of Physical Geography, ELTE TTK (Hungary)
[email protected]
2 KFKI RMKI (Hungary)

Abstract: On October 4, 2010, in Hungary's worst ecological disaster, a spill of toxic red
sludge from an aluminum plant in western Hungary flooded three nearby localities. The
children expressed their feelings related to the tragedy in many ways, including psycho-
somatic disorders. A way for relief, a method also used in psychotherapy, was to let the
children draw images of the tragedy thus process the shock mentally. There have been
several cases in the past when children affected by traumatic events, mainly war situa-
tions, were encouraged to draw their stories, mainly in order to be exhibited and to draw
attention to the effect of war, conflict and violence on children, but from the perspective
of the children. Encouraging children to draw is considered to be one of the methods of
obtaining the children's perspectives on issues that are important and relevant for them
which importance is emphasized by much recent research. In this poster we present a se-
lection of the drawings.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 326
Joint ICA Symposium
BIOGRAPHY OF AUTHORS
List of Authors

Gáspár ALBERT
Researcher/Scientific contributor
Geological Institute of Hungary
14, Stefánia rd., 1143 Budapest
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 1 2510999/134
[email protected]

Dr. Gáspár Albert is a geologist and cartographer at the Geological Institute of Hungary.
He is also a lecturer of the Doctorate School of Earth Sciences at the Eötvös Loránd Uni-
versity Budapest. He specialized on the methodologies of the 3D geological modeling and
the GIS background of geological models. In his research he recently concentrates on the
visualization of the 3D models, especially on those, which disseminate the geological in-
formation on the internet. Besides the office work he participates in classical field opera-
tions as well. He is member of the International Cartographic Association Commission on
Geospatial Analysis and Modeling.

Efstathios ARAPOSTATHIS
PhD Student
Department of Geography, Harokopio University
70, El. Venizelou Ave, 17671 Kallithea, Athens
GREECE
Tel: +302109549162
[email protected]

Efstathios Arapostathis is a PhD student at Harokopio University of Athens. He holds

a degree in Geography from the University of the Aegean and a Master of Science in
Applied Geography and Area Management from Harokopio University of Athens. His
main research interests include Web Mapping, Spatial Databases and Volunteered
Geographic Information.

Regina ARAUJO DE ALMEIDA

Universidade de São Paulo, USP
Faculdade de Filosofia Letras e Ciências Humanas,
Departamento de Geografia
Av. Prof. Lineu Prestes, 338 Cidade Universitária
05508-900 São Paulo, SP
BRAZIL
Tel: (11) 30913737
Fax: (11) 30913159
[email protected]
http://www. geografia. fflch. usp. br

Temenoujka BANDROVA
Department of Photogrammetry and Cartography
University of Architecture,
Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG)
1, Chr. Smirnenski Blvd. 1046, Sofia,
BULGARIA
Tel: +359 887 83 27 02
[email protected]

She is president of Bulgarian Cartographic Association; a co-chair of the Commission of

Cartography and Children (CCC) – International Cartographic Association (ICA), a
member of the Association for Geospatial Information in South-East Europe (AGISEE),
of Editor’s group of International Journal Digital Earth, Croatian journal “Cartography
and Geoinformatics. She is head of laboratory on cartography, UACEG. Her profession-
al interests are in the fields of 3D cartographic modeling, mapping for children, carto-
graphic symbol systems and map projections. She is an author of more than 20 school
atlases and more then 70 wall maps in geography, approved by Ministry of Education
for Bulgarian schools. She received a travel award for her paper in 19th Cartographic
Conference by ICA, Canada, 1999. She is a project manager in DataMap Ltd. where her
school atlases and maps are published.

Levon BOLIGIAN
Invited Professor
Institute of Advanced Studies and Postgraduate Courses
(ESAP)
Universidade Vale do Ivaí (Univale) – Paraná
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 43 3357 2695
[email protected]

Levon Boligian is a Doctor of Geography at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP),

Campus of Rio Claro, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. He is a professor of Meth-
odology in Geography and School Cartography Teaching, at the Institute of Advanced
Studies and Postgraduate Courses (ESAP), part of Universidade Vale do Ivaí, situated in
the State of Paraná. He is also a teacher of Primary and Secondary Education and has
great experience as an assessor of private schools. He has been working for many years
with production, edition and authorship of teaching materials for Primary Education.

Václav ČADA
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Rex G. CAMMACK
Associate Professor
Department of Geography and Geology,
University of Nebraska Omaha
6001 Dodge St. Omaha, NE 68182
USA
Tel: +402 554 2282
Fax: +402 554 3518
[email protected]

Rex Cammack is an associate Professor of Geography at the University of Nebraska Oma-

ha, Nebraska USA. His research interests are in the area of cartography and Geographic In-
formation Science. His research emphasis is in the use of Internet services for communica-
tion and the role of Location Based Services and spatial understanding/awareness.

William CARTWRIGHT
President
International Cartographic Association
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
[email protected]

William Cartwright is President of the International Cartographic Association. He is Pro-

fessor of Cartography and Geographical Visualization in the School of Mathematical and
Geospatial Sciences at RMIT University, Australia. He joined the University after spend-
ing a number of years in both the government and private sectors of the mapping in-
dustry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the British Carto-
graphic Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Mapping Sciences Institute Australia and an
Honorary Fellow of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute. He holds a Doctor of
Philosophy from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Education from RMIT
University. He has six other university qualifications, in the fields of cartography, applied
science, education, media studies, information and communication technology and graph-
ic design. He is the author of over 300 academic papers. His major research interest is the
application of integrated media to cartography and the exploration of different metapho-
rical approaches to the depiction of geographical information.

Maria Isabel CASTREGHINI DE FREITAS

Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho,
Institute of Geosciences and Exact Science from Rio Claro
Department of Territorial Planning and GIS
Av. 24-A, 1515 (CEAPLA – UNESP)
13506-900 – Rio Claro, SP – Caixa-Postal: 178
BRAZIL
Tel: (19) 35269335
Fax: (19) 53249622

She graduated in Cartographic Engineering from “Universidade Estadual Paulista”

(1983), Master of Geodetic Sciences in Universidade Federal do Parana (1989) and Ph.D.
in Transportation Engineering from the “Universidade de São Paulo” (1995). She is cur-
rently an doctor assistant professor in Universidade Estadual Paulista. She has experience
in Geosciences with an emphasis in Digital Cartography, Geographic Information Sys-
tem (GIS) and the Teaching of Cartography. He has developed research activities and
guidance in the following areas: mappingand GIS studies in applied geography, cartogra-
phy tactile and continuous training of teachers in the field of cartography.

Otakar ČERBA
University lecturer
Geomatics section, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of
Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
Univerzitní 22, 306 14 Plzeň
CZECH REPUBLIC
Tel: +420 604 475 579
[email protected]
http://www.kma.zcu.cz/Cerba

Ing. et Mgr. Otakar Čerba works in Geomatics section of Department of mathematics of

the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic. He concentrates above all on
questions of digital cartography (application of markup languages in digital cartography,
using spatial data modeling in digital cartography, including ontologies, and accessibility
of digital maps). He is a member of the Commission on Maps and the Internet of the In-
ternational Cartographic Association, member of board of Czech Association for Geoin-
formation and member of the group EU Competitiveness on the Web. Otakar Čerba is in-
volved in spatial data harmonization European projects, e.g. Humboldt, Plan4all, Habi-
tats or SDI-EDU.

Marli CIGAGNA WIEFELS

Professor
Institute of Geosciences,
Department of Geoenvironmental Analysis,
Universidade Federal Fluminense
Niterói, RJ
BRAZIL
Tel: (55-21) 2629.5948; 2629.5981
[email protected]
www.uff.br/analisegeoambiental/departamento

Marli Cigagna Wiefels is professor at the Institute of Geosciences from Universidade

Federal Fluminense (UFF), in the city of Niterói, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She
teaches basically thematic cartography, cartography for children, remote sensing and a-
stronomy. She holds her bachelor degree in Geography from UFF (1977) and her DEA
(1994) and Doctorate (2001) degrees in Geography from the Institut des Hautes Études
de l’Amérique Latine, Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. She leads and coor-
dinates this project of interactive media.

Jonas da COSTA SAMPAIO

Student
Institute of Computer Sciences;
Universidade Federal Fluminense
Niterói, RJ
BRAZIL
[email protected]
Homepage: www.ic.uff.br

Jonas da Costa Sampaio is involved since the beginning in the project of interactive me-
dia, bringing his enthusiasm for the theme and his knowledge in computer science and
programming techniques. Scholar of the extension project “Production and dissemina-
tion of didactic material for cartography and astronomy studies”.

Gábor CSILLAG
Senior Researcher
Geological Institute of Hungary (MÁFI)
1143 Budapest Stefánia út 14.
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 1 251 0999
[email protected]

Dr. Gábor Csillag is senior researcher at the Geological Institute of Hungary. He re-
ceived his MSc in geography from University Eötvös Loránd Budapest, his DESS in re-
mote sensing from University Pierre et Marie Curie Paris and PhD from University of
Pécs. His research interests are the geological mapping, the geomorphology and the na-
ture conservation of the geological and geomorphic sites. He is member of the board of
the ProGeo Hungary association.

Rosângela DOIN DE ALMEIDA

Post-graduated Program Researcher
Department of Territorial Planning and GIS,
Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)
Avenida 24-A, n. 1515, Rio Claro – SP – 13 506-900
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 3523 3707
[email protected]
http://rdoinblogspot.com
http://lattes.cnpq.br/3974567106733210

Rosângela Doin de Almeida is graduated in Geography at the University of São Paulo. Mas-
ter and PhD at the Faculty of Education, University of São Paulo. She is senior professor in
Teaching Practice of Geography at the University Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho
(UNESP). She is corresponding member of the National Commission on Cartography for
Children (CCC) of the International Cartographic Association. She published articles in na-
tional and foreign scientific journals and is co-authored of the books “O espaço geográfico:
ensino e representação", 1989, “Cartographic Activities”, 1995. She is the author of the book
“Do desenho ao mapa: iniciação cartográfica na escola”, 2002, organizer of the book “Carto-
grafia Escolar” (2007), both published by Editora Contexto (São Paulo). She coordinated the
publication of several municipal school atlases. She is a voluntary researcher of the Graduate
Program in Geography (UNESP) and is the leader of the research group “Geography and
Cartography School” of the National Research Council (CNPq). She is also advisor in Geog-
raphy and Cartography School, production of municipal school atlases and teacher training.

István ELEK
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE)
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/a
1117, Budapest
HUNGARY

Radek FIALA
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

László FODOR
Senior Researcher
Geological Institute of Hungary (MÁFI)
14, Stefánia rd., 1143 Budapest
HUNGARY
Tel: (36) 1 251 0999/137, (36) 30 390 3128
[email protected]

He received his PhD degree in 1991 from the University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. His
current research interests are: structural geology, neotectonics, geological mapping, sedi-
mentology and geomorphology. He is a Professor of the Eötvös Loránd University, Buda-
pest. He is a member of the Hungarian and American geological and geophisical associa-
tions, and the International Association of Sedimentologists.

Georg GARTNER
Professor
Institute of Geoinformation and Cartography,
Vienna University of Technology
Gusshausstrasse 30/E127-2, 1040 Vienna
AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 1 58801 12611
Fax: +43 1 5880112699
[email protected]
http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at

Georg Gartner is a Full Professor for Cartography at the Vienna University of Techno-
logy. He holds graduate qualifications in Geography and Cartography from the Uni-
versity of Vienna and received his PhD and his Habilitation from the Vienna University
of Technology. He was awarded a Fulbright grant to the University of Nebraska, Omaha
in 1997 and a research visiting fellowship to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Tech-
nology in 2000, to South China Normal University in 2006 and to the University of
Nottingham in 2009. He serves as Vice-President of the International Cartographic As-
sociation. He is Dean for Academic Affairs for Geodesy and Geoinformation at Vienna
University of Technology. He is responsible organizer of the International Symposia on
Location Based Services & TeleCartography and Editor of the Book Series “Lecture
Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography” by Springer and Editor of the Journal on
LBS by Taylor & Francis.

Gábor GERCSÁK
Associate Professor, PhD
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE)
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest, H-1117
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 1 372 2975
Fax: +36 1 372 2951
[email protected]
http://lazarus.elte.hu

Gábor Gercsák studied cartography, geography and languages in Budapest. His first job was
editing an international cartographic journal, Cartactual, at the Institute of Geodesy,
Cartography and Remote Sensing. He came to teach at the university in 1991. In part-time,
he worked for the Department of International Relations between 1992 and 1999, and
served as the executive secretary to the rector from 2000 to 2006. He is a member of the
Hungarian Committee on Geographical Names.

Cristiano GIMENEZ
BA in Geography
Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”
UNESP – Campus de Ourinhos
Avenue Vitalina Marcusso, 1500. Ourinhos – SP
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 19 82353734
[email protected]

Cristiano Gimenez, bachelor's degree at the Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mes-
quita Filho” – UNESP – Ourinhos. Since the first year of college is working on the Group
of Tactile Cartography integrated on the project “Development of Scholar Municipal Atlas
of Ourinhos–SP and training tutors teachers: Proposals for the study of the locality”. Cur-
rently is also working on scientific research about tactual quantitative thematic maps.

Eleni GKADOLOU
PhD Student
Department of Geography, Harokopio University
70, El. Venizelou Ave, 17671 Kallithea, Athens
GREECE
Tel: +0302109425628
[email protected]

Eleni Gadolou is a PhD student at Harokopio University of Athens. She holds a Dip-
loma of Engineering in Surveying from the Department of Rural & Surveying Engin-
eering of National Technical University of Athens and a Master of Science on Applied
Geography and Area Management from Harokopio University. Her research interests
include Web Cartography, Spatial Ontologies and Cartographic Heritage Management
Systems.

Barbara GOMES FLAIRE JORDÃO

BA in Geography
Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”
UNESP – Campus de Ourinhos
Avenue Vitalina Marcusso, 1500. Ourinhos – SP
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 11 9660 13 88
[email protected]

Barbara Gomes Flaire Jordão has major in Geography in the Universidade Estadual
Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho” – UNESP – Ourinhos. This is the last year bachelor's
degree at the institution. She has worked with include collectors of recyclable materials
in the city during the second year’s course, besides contributing in the area of environ-
mental education through music in the mainstream of Ourinhos. Currently part of the
Group of Tactile Cartography Unesp Ourinhos, production of materials and methods
that contribute to the system for inclusion in the country, and works as a secretary in
the Journal of Geography and Research.

Henrik HARGITAI
Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Sciences
Eötvös Loránd University
1117 Budapest, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/a
HUNGARY
[email protected]

He has specialized in planetary cartography, gaining in situ experience of Martian car-

tographic work at Mars Society's MDRS research station. He creates planetary maps
(both printed and virtual) and teaches planetary geomorphology. He is an editor of the
University Radio at ELTE University in Budapest and served as editor in chief of the
local temporary radio station at the location of the industrial disaster of Devecser–Ko-
lontár in October–December 2010, Hungary.

A. HOFFMEISTER
Institute of Planetary Research
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin
GERMANY

Haosheng HUANG
Research assistant
Institute of Geoinformation and Cartography,
Vienna University of Technology
Gusshausstrasse 30/E127-2, 1040 Vienna
AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 1 58801 12616
Fax: +43 1 58801 12699
[email protected]
http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at

Haosheng Huang is a research assistant and PhD student at Research Group Cartog-
raphy at Vienna University of Technology. He finished his master degree in Computer
Science in 2006 at South China Normal University. Now he is involved in the projects
ways2navigate and EmoMap. His research interests include Location Based Services,
spatial-temporal data modelling and analysis, data mining, Spatial cognition and Web-
GIS.

Karel JANEČKA
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Karel JEDLIČKA
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Jan JEŽEK
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Elke KERSTEN
Institute of Planetary Research
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin
GERMANY
[email protected]

Milan KONEČNÝ
ICA Past President
Professor, Head of Laboratory on Geoinformatics and
Cartography
Masaryk University, Faculty of Science,
Kotlarska 2, 611 37 Brno
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Prof. Konečnỳ was awarded Doctor of Geographical Sciences from Masaryk University in
1982. He served as Lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor of Masaryk University,
Czech Republic during 1982 – onwards. He is currently the Professor of Geodesy and Car-
tography of the same university, Professor of Geoinformatics and Regional Geography at
University of Konstantina Filozofa, Nitra, Slovakia, Guest Profesor of Vienna University,
Austria, Guest Professor in The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Honorary Profes-
sor of the Siberian State Academy of Geodesy Novosibirsk and Doctor Honoris Causa of
University of Architecture, Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia, Bulgaria. Prof. Konecny
takes the leadership in many international professional bodies, during 2003–7 was Presi-
dent of International Cartographic Association (ICA (contemporary past president), now
serves as chairman of ICA Working Group “Cartography on Early Warning and Crises
Management”, the Vice-President of International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and
Academician and President of European Joint Research Center of International Eurasian
Academy. He is also Director of Czech Focal Point for Geographical Information Group
(GISIG). He is the member of editorial board for top journals including the International
Journal on Digital Earth (IJDE), Geoinformatica and International Journal of Geoinfor-
matics. He is the council member of Czech Cartographic Association and member of In-
ternational Advisory Board of Center of Earth Observations and Digital Earth (CEODE),
CHAS, Beijing. He organized many high level international conferences at his country and
abroad (incl. China – EU high level seminar of EW and CM in Beijing in 2009). His re-
search interests include the role of geoinformatics and cartography in Early Warning and
Crises Management, dynamic geovisualization, creation of SDI in Europe (he is expert of
INSPIRE and GMES), design of Information and Knowledge-based Society. He is a co-au-
thor of first GIS book in Europe in 1985 and editor of EW and CM book in Springer
Verlag (in 2010) and two specialized issues on Geoinformatics and Cartography in Early
Warning and Crises Management in International Journal on Digital Earth (Taylor and
Francis, 2010).

Georgios KRITIKOS
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography, Harokopio University
70 El. Venizelou Str., Kallithea, Athens
GREECE
Tel: +302109549365
Fax: +302109514759
[email protected]

Georgios Kritikos is Assistant Professor at Harokopio University. He holds a BA in His-

tory from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, a MPhil in European
Studies at the Department of International Relations and History at Cambridge Univer-
sity and a PhD in the Department of History and Civilization, European University In-
stitute in Florence. His scientific interests include Nations and Nation-states in histori-
cal geography, Individual and collective identities in space, European space: borders, in-
stitutions and politics of Security.

Alexandre Vítor de LIMA FONSÊCA

Universidade Federal do Maranhão, UFMA
BRAZIL
[email protected]

Shimshon LIVNI
Senior Researcher
Kaye College of Education
POB 65 Beer Sheba 84100
ISRAEL
Tel: +972 8 6519056
Fax: +972 8 6519056
[email protected]

Dr. Shimshon Livni is a senior researcher in the Kay College of Education in Beer
Sheva, Israel. His research interest lies in the teaching concepts of Geography and Car-
tography for students in Elementary and High School as well as in University level. He
is an author of textbooks for teaching mapping skills in Grade 4–5 of the Elementary
School.

Marcello MARTINELLI
Associated Professor
Department of Geography, Pós-graduação Programa
Geografia Humana, Universidade de São Paulo
Av. Gen. Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, 960
05638-010, SÃO PAULO, SP
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 11 3739 5220
[email protected]

Marcello Martinelli retired Associate Professor of Cartography, but active at Post Grade
level in the Department of Geography, College of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sci-
ences, at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He holds a PhD in Human Geography and
has received the title of “Livre-docente” in Thematic Cartography. Currently, he con-
ducts methodological-oriented research and supervises post-graduate students pursuing
Master and PhD degrees in thematic, environmental, tourism cartography and school
geographic atlases. He is also author of geographic atlases and books on thematic carto-
graphy.

Ferjan ORMELING
Cartography section
Faculty of Geographical Sciences
Utrecht University
PO Box 80115, 3508TC
THE NETHERLANDS
Fax: +31 30 2540604
[email protected]

Ferjan Ormeling has taught cartography at Utrecht University since 1969. He was en-
gaged in producing a correspondence course in cartography in the 1970s, when he was
chairing the Education WG of the Netherlands Cartographic Society. Since then he was
promoted to chairing the ICA Commission on Education and Training 1987-1999, to-
gether with Dick Dahlberg and Roger Anson with whom he produced the 4-book manual
series Basic Cartography for Students and Technicians. With Menno-Jan Kraak he wrote
the manual Cartography, Visualization of Spatial Data, now in its third edition, which
has been widely translated. Currently he contributes to ICA cartography courses and or-
ganises toponymy courses for the UNGEGN worldwide.

Rufino PÉREZ GÓMEZ

Assistant Professor
Department of Surveying Engineering and Cartography
ETSI en Topografía, Geodesia y Cartografía (UPM)
Ctra Valencia Km 7. 28031 Madrid
SPAIN
Tel: +34 91 3367921
Fax: +34 913322560
[email protected]

Rufino Pérez Gómez is Assistant Professor of Computer Cartography at Technical Uni-

versity of Madrid (UPM). Currently, he is also responsible for the International Relations
activities of the ETSI en Topografia, Geodesia and Cartografia (UPM). He has a PhD in
Geodesy and Cartography of the Technical University of Madrid and a 2 year Master in
Cartography at the ITC (The Netherlands). Among his professional experience it is also
worth to mention a 4 year period at the National Geographic Institute (IGN). He is mem-
ber of the ICA Commission on Education and Training. Among his fields of interest are
Cartographic Education, Computer Cartography, GIS Applications and Webcartography.
He has presented more than 30 papers in International and National Conferences about
the related topics.

Michael P. PETERSON
Professor
Department of Geography/Geology
University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska
USA
Tel: 402-554-4805; Fax: 402-554-3518
[email protected]
http://maps.unomaha.edu

Michael P. Peterson is a Professor in the Department of Geography/Geology at the Uni-

versity of Nebraska at Omaha. He received his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Ri-
ver Falls (1976), his MA from Boston University (1978) and PhD from the State Univer-
sity of New York–Buffalo (1982). He was a Post-Doctoral Assistant at the University of
Zürich, Switzerland in 1981–82 and subsequently joined the faculty at the University of
Nebraska, Omaha in 1982 where he has taught courses in world regional geography, car-
tography, computer mapping, remote sensing and geographic information systems. He
has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle in 1985,
a Fulbright Fellow at the Free University Berlin, Germany (1990–91), Visiting Professor at
the University of Hawaii–Manoa (1995), Visiting Fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute
of Technology University in Australia (1998), Fulbright Fellow at the Technical Univer-
sity of Vienna in Austria (1999), and visiting Professor at the University of Applied Tech-
nology in Munich, Germany in 1999, 2000, 2001, visiting research fellow at Carleton Uni-
versity in Ottawa, Canada, in 2004, and visiting professor at the Technical University of
Vienna in 2011. He is past-President of the North American Cartographic Information
Society (NACIS) and former editor of Cartographic Perspectives. He has also served as
member of the Editorial Board of Cartographic Perspectives, The Professional Geograph-
er, and Cartography and Geographic Information Systems. He is currently chair of the
Maps and the Internet Commission of the International Cartographic Association.
____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 342
Joint ICA Symposium
Biography of Authors

José Camilo RAMOS DE SOUZA

Universidade do Estado do Amazonas, UEA
BRAZIL
[email protected]

Mariane RAVAGIO CATELLI

BA in Geography
Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de
Mesquita Filho” – UNESP – Campus de Ourinhos
Avenue Vitalina Marcusso, 1500. Ourinhos – SP
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 14 9752-7881
[email protected]

Mariane Ravagio Catelli, bachelor’s degree at the Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de
Mesquita Filho” – UNESP – Ourinhos. Since the first year of college is working on the
Group of Tactile Cartography integrated on the project “Development of Scholar Muni-
cipal Atlas of Ourinhos–SP and training tutors teachers: Proposals for the study of the lo-
cality”. Currently is also working with tactile touristic maps of Barra Bonita and Igaraçu
do Tietê–SP.

Carla Cristina REINALDO GIMENES DE SENA

PhD in Geography
Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de
Mesquita Filho” – UNESP – Campus de Ourinhos
Avenue Vitalina Marcusso, 1500. Ourinhos – SP
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 14 3302-5712
[email protected]

Graduated in Geography, MA and PhD in Geography in University of São Paulo (2009).

She is currently Assistant Professor PhD from UNESP- Ourinhos. She has experience in
Geography, with emphazis on Geography teaching and training of teachers, mainly in the
following themes: school and tactile cartography, geography education, special education
and inclusion.

José Jesús REYES NUÑEZ

Assistant Professor
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest 1117
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 1 372 2975
Fax: +36 1 372 2951
[email protected], [email protected]
[email protected]
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/dolgozo/jesus.htm

José Jesús Reyes Nuñez is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
His research interests lie in Cartography for Children (specifically the teaching of carto-
graphic concepts for children in Elementary and High Schools), Computer Cartography
(including GIS and the use of Web to teach cartographic concepts for children) and
Cartography of Mesoamerican Cultures. He is responsible for the organization of the
“Barbara Petchenik” map competition in Hungary from 1999. At present, he is Co-Chair
of the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children.

Tiago SALGE ARAÚJO

Student of Science Master
Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação
Universidade do Porto
Rua do Dr. Manuel Pereira da Silva, 4200-392 Porto
PORTUGAL
Tel: +351 226 079 700 / +351 226 079 72
[email protected]

Tiago Salge is graduated in Geography at the “Universidade Estadual Paulista”, Rio Cla-
ro-São Paulo/Brazil. Besides teaching, researches and studies about Deafness (especially
the questions of time and space). Currently doing a Master in Science of Education at the
“Universidade do Porto”, Porto/Portugal. Now, he is a member of the group of research-
ers on the project PROFACITY – Profane Citizenship in Europe: testing Democratic
ownership inhybrid Situations – Portugal has been dedicated to the issues of the deaf.
Coordinators: Drª. Orquídea Coelho and Dr. Henrique Vaz (Universidade do Porto).

Waldirene RIBEIRO DO CARMO

Universidade de São Paulo,
São Paulo
BRAZIL
[email protected]

Th. ROATSCH
Institute of Planetary Research
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin
GERMANY

Manuela SCHMIDT
Research assistant
Institute of Geoinformation and Cartography,
University of Technology, Vienna
Gusshausstrasse 30/E127-2, 1040 Vienna
AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 1 58801 12613
Fax: +43 1 5880112699
[email protected]
http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at

Manuela Schmidt studied Cartography at the University of Applied Sciences, München.

She now works as a research assistant and PhD student at the Research Group Carto-
graphy at Vienna University of Technology. She is involved in the projects FEMroute,
ways2navigate and EmoMap. Her research interests include usability, user interface de-
sign, Web Mapping 2.0 and Volunteered Geographic Information.

Eszter SIMONNÉ DOMBÓVÁRI

Research and Teaching Assistant
Institute for Geoinformation and Cartography,
Vienna University of Technology
Erzherzog-Johann-Platz 1/127-2, Vienna, A-1040
AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 1 58801 12614
Fax: +43 1 58801 912614
[email protected]
http://cartography.tuwien.ac.at

Eszter Simonné Dombóvári is Research and Teaching Assistant at the Vienna University
of Technology and PhD student at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her PhD
research deals with the development of interactive web applications in the education of
cartographical knowledge (for 4th, 6th and 8th grade High Schools pupils). Her research
interests lie in Web Mapping, Programming, Interactivity and Multimedia in Cartogra-
phy. She is the coordinator of the “Barbara Petchenik” map competition in Austria. She
has been teacher for children’s workshops in geography and cartography at the “Kinder-
uni Wien” in Vienna since 2008.

Emmanuel STEFANAKIS
Associate Professor
Department of Geography, Harokopio University
70 El. Venizelou Str., Kallithea, Athens
GREECE
Tel: +302109549162
Fax: +302109514759
[email protected]
http://www.dbnet.ntua.gr/~stefanak/

Dr. Emmanuel Stefanakis is Associate Professor at Harokopio University. He holds a

Dipl. Eng. in Surveying Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens,
an MScE degree in Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering from the University of New
Brunswick, Canada and a PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the
National Technical University of Athens. His scientific interests include Spatial Data In-
frastructures, Web Mapping and Web Mapping Services Spatio-temporal Knowledge
Discovery and Data Mining and Education in Geomatics and Geomatics-Assisted Edu-
cation.

Paula Cristiane STRINA JULIASZ

Post-graduated Program Researcher
Department of Territorial Planning and GIS
Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)
Avenida 24-A, n. 1515, Rio Claro – SP – 13 506-900
BRAZIL
Tel: +55 3523 3707
[email protected]

Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz is graduated in Geography and has post graduate in Re-
search in cartography. She developed research in cartography teaching and tactile maps
for visually impaired. She has published articles in national and international scientific
events related to the topic. Currently conducts research at the master’s graduate program
in geography the state university in the area Geography and Cartography School and is a
member of the research group “Geography and Cartography School” of the National Re-
search Council ( CNPq).

Csaba SZABÓ
MSc student
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics,
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest, H-1117
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 30 660 2732
[email protected],
http://mercator.elte.hu/~bahama/index.html

Csaba Szabó is an MSc student at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. His research in-
terests lie in Computer Cartography (including GIS and Web cartography), Cartography
for Children (specifically for children in Elementary and High Schools), and scientific
(thematic) cartography (specifically related to geophysics and geology).

P. C. THOMAS
Center for Radiophysics and Space Research
Cornell University, Ithaca
USA

Veerle VANDELACLUZE
Lecturer in Primary Geography
Open Higher Education
Excellence Centre for Distance Education
Catholic University College of South-West Flanders,
KATHO
Pre-primary and primary school teacher training,
Campus, Tielt, PHO
Beernegemstraat 10, 8700 Tielt
BELGIUM
Tel: 00 32 51 42 79 00
www.kathotielt.be

Silvia Elena VENTORINI

Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
Federal University of São João del-Rei
UFSJ – Campus Tancredo Neves
Av. Visconde do Rio Preto, s/n Colônia do Bengo
São João Del Rei – Minas Gerais – CEP 36.300-000.
BRAZIL
Tel: 55 (32) 33733974
[email protected]

Assistant Professor Level I Department of Geography at UFSJ Degree in Geography

(2004), Masters in Geography (2005) and Doctorate through the Institute of Geoscience
and Exact Sciences, UNESP. Has experience in the area of Geoprocessing and SIG, Car-
tography e Special Education (with emphasis on the education of blind and vision im-
paired people). Still works in the area of Continuing Education for teachers.

Martina VICHROVÁ
University of West Bohemia, Pilsen
CZECH REPUBLIC
[email protected]

Pál Gábor VIZI

Electrical engineer, safety engineer
KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics of
HAS, Doctoral Program of Zrínyi Miklós University of
National Defense
Konkoly Thege Miklós út 29–33.
1121 Budapest
HUNGARY
[email protected]

M. WÄHLISCH
Institute of Planetary Research
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin
GERMANY

Rizka WINDIASTUTI
Geomatics Research Division
National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping of
Indonesia (BAKOSURTANAL)
Jl. Raya Jakarta – Bogor Km 46, Cibinong 16911
INDONESIA
Tel/Fax: +62 21 87906041
[email protected]

Rizka Windiastuti is Head of Program and Cooperation Section in Geomatics Research

Division of BAKOSURTANAL. She received her Bachelor Degree in Computer Science
from North Carolina State University, USA, in 1996, and her Master of Information Tech-
nology from University of Newcastle, Australia, in 2003. She is a researcher in spatial infor-
mation system and is very interested in database and interactive multimedia applications.
She has been involved in organizing map drawing competitions for children in Indonesia
since 2005 and was assigned to chair the organizing committee for national competitions in
2007 and 2009.

László ZENTAI
Professor
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics,
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest, H-1117
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 1 372 2975
Fax: +36 1 372 2951
[email protected]
http://lazarus.elte.hu

László Zentai is the Head of the Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics at Eöt-
vös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. He was the Vice-dean of the Faculty of Infor-
matics and the Vice-Rector of the university. Mr. Zentai actually is the Vice-chair-man of
the Commission on Education and Training, International Cartographic Associ-ation
and he is serving as the Chairman of the Hungarian National ICA Group. He is a Council
member of the International Orienteering Federation. His papers are dealing with com-
puter cartography, cartographic education, topographic mapping, orienteering maps, en-
vironmental protection and webcartography.

Georgi ZHELEZOV
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Acad. Georgi Bonchev str., block 3, Sofia, BG-1113
BULGARIA
Tel: +359 2 979 3304
Fax: +359 2 870 0204
[email protected]
http://geograph.bas.bg/

Georgi Zhelezov is Head of the Section of Physical Geography at Department of Geog-

raphy, National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography Sofia, Bulgaria. He has
a PhD of Cartography and Master of Landscape studies at the Sofia University. His PhD
research related to spatial modelling of wetland nature systems. He has participated in
projects like Bulgaria Geographical Atlas (2010), Transliteration of Geographical Terms
in World Atlas of Readers Digest (2010), Natural Geography of Dobrudzha and Ludo-
gorie (2007), Foundation and Development of Scientific Network for Investigation of the
Mountain Regions in Southeastern Europe (2009–2011). His papers are dealing with spa-
tial modelling, landscape ecology and education, wetland studies, environmental protec-
tion and ecosystem services. He has also presented his researches in Bulgaria, Italy, Mace-
donia, Romania, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and Austria.

____________________________________________________________________
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet 350
Joint ICA Symposium
International Cartographic Association, Orléans 2011
Maps for the Future: Children, Education and Internet
Joint ICA Symposium

Social Sciences Today. Grade 7, Learner's Book (PDFDrive)
100% (4)
Social Sciences Today. Grade 7, Learner's Book (PDFDrive)
225 pages
Level
100% (6)
Level
218 pages
180 Days Geo G2
0% (11)
180 Days Geo G2
10 pages
Download ebooks file 180 Days of Geography for Fifth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Kristin Kemp all chapters
100% (2)
Download ebooks file 180 Days of Geography for Fifth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Kristin Kemp all chapters
48 pages
Advances in Cartography and GIScience. Volume1
100% (3)
Advances in Cartography and GIScience. Volume1
551 pages
Building Geography Skills
100% (10)
Building Geography Skills
238 pages
Research Paper On Rizal
100% (2)
Research Paper On Rizal
20 pages
The Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography by Alexander J. Kent, Peter Vujakovic
100% (1)
The Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography by Alexander J. Kent, Peter Vujakovic
619 pages
Brunn, Dodge - 2017 - Mapping Across Academia
No ratings yet
Brunn, Dodge - 2017 - Mapping Across Academia
392 pages
Understanding Literacy Using Eye Movement Miscue Analysis in a Global World
From Everand
Understanding Literacy Using Eye Movement Miscue Analysis in a Global World
Ingram Spark
No ratings yet
Analysis of Underground Water Tank - SAP 2000
80% (5)
Analysis of Underground Water Tank - SAP 2000
58 pages
A Detailed Lesson Plan (Demo) 2
100% (10)
A Detailed Lesson Plan (Demo) 2
4 pages
31 Museums, Art Galleries and Temporary Exhibition Spaces: Geoffrey Matthews
100% (1)
31 Museums, Art Galleries and Temporary Exhibition Spaces: Geoffrey Matthews
6 pages
RISETTE_Indicators_of_Scientific_Literacy_in_Geographic_Education_SPRINGER
No ratings yet
RISETTE_Indicators_of_Scientific_Literacy_in_Geographic_Education_SPRINGER
28 pages
Geographical Reasoning
No ratings yet
Geographical Reasoning
372 pages
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González pdf download
100% (1)
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González pdf download
56 pages
Cartography And Children Patrick Wiegand Ebooks Corporation download
No ratings yet
Cartography And Children Patrick Wiegand Ebooks Corporation download
52 pages
Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand pdf download
100% (1)
Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand pdf download
72 pages
Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand instant download
100% (2)
Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand instant download
52 pages
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel Gonzálezdownload
100% (1)
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel Gonzálezdownload
47 pages
Instant Access to Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González ebook Full Chapters
100% (9)
Instant Access to Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González ebook Full Chapters
81 pages
Get Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González PDF ebook with Full Chapters Now
100% (2)
Get Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González PDF ebook with Full Chapters Now
82 pages
Thematic Cartography For The Society
No ratings yet
Thematic Cartography For The Society
356 pages
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González - The full ebook with all chapters is available for download now
100% (1)
Innovative Learning Geography in Europe New Challenges for the 21st Century 1st Edition Rafael De Miguel González - The full ebook with all chapters is available for download now
60 pages
EC-Geography-and-History-sample-pages
No ratings yet
EC-Geography-and-History-sample-pages
7 pages
Get Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand PDF ebook with Full Chapters Now
100% (5)
Get Learning and Teaching with Maps 1st Edition Patrick Wiegand PDF ebook with Full Chapters Now
81 pages
Using Collaborative Web-Based Maps To Promote Geography Teaching and Learning
No ratings yet
Using Collaborative Web-Based Maps To Promote Geography Teaching and Learning
13 pages
(Ebook) Learning and Teaching with Maps by Patrick Wiegand ISBN 9780415312097, 9780415312103, 0415312094, 0415312108pdf download
100% (5)
(Ebook) Learning and Teaching with Maps by Patrick Wiegand ISBN 9780415312097, 9780415312103, 0415312094, 0415312108pdf download
47 pages
Tema 4 - Ciencias Sociales Magisterio Uniovi
No ratings yet
Tema 4 - Ciencias Sociales Magisterio Uniovi
5 pages
BUKU Progress in Cartography
No ratings yet
BUKU Progress in Cartography
474 pages
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download pdf
100% (11)
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download pdf
45 pages
learning-and-teaching-with-maps
No ratings yet
learning-and-teaching-with-maps
195 pages
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download
100% (2)
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download
55 pages
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor pdf download
100% (1)
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor pdf download
52 pages
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download
No ratings yet
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor download
54 pages
Instant Access to (eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor ebook Full Chapters
100% (2)
Instant Access to (eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor ebook Full Chapters
52 pages
research-on-teaching-astronomy-in-the-planetarium-978-3-319-57202-4-3319572024-978-3-319-57200-0_compress
No ratings yet
research-on-teaching-astronomy-in-the-planetarium-978-3-319-57202-4-3319572024-978-3-319-57200-0_compress
135 pages
2022_VYGOTISKY_TRADUCAO_EBOOK
No ratings yet
2022_VYGOTISKY_TRADUCAO_EBOOK
335 pages
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor pdf download
100% (1)
(eBook PDF) Place and Time Teaching History, Geography and Social Sciences 2 By Tony Taylor pdf download
37 pages
Teaching Geography in and About Europe
No ratings yet
Teaching Geography in and About Europe
144 pages
1
No ratings yet
1
11 pages
180 Days of Geography for Kindergarten Practice, Assess, Diagnose (Jessica Hathaway)
No ratings yet
180 Days of Geography for Kindergarten Practice, Assess, Diagnose (Jessica Hathaway)
210 pages
Get Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education 1st Edition Petra Karvánková free all chapters
100% (1)
Get Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education 1st Edition Petra Karvánková free all chapters
65 pages
Learning And Teaching With Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez Inga Gryl Thomas Jekel Caroline Juneausion John Lyon Eric Sanchez Inga Gryl download
No ratings yet
Learning And Teaching With Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez Inga Gryl Thomas Jekel Caroline Juneausion John Lyon Eric Sanchez Inga Gryl download
86 pages
UK in Maps Activities
No ratings yet
UK in Maps Activities
80 pages
Eurocarto Online Proceedings
No ratings yet
Eurocarto Online Proceedings
368 pages
Dokumen - Pub 180 Days of Geography For Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1nbsped 9781425855079 9781425833046
100% (6)
Dokumen - Pub 180 Days of Geography For Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1nbsped 9781425855079 9781425833046
218 pages
32578
No ratings yet
32578
43 pages
Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Illustrated Eila Jeronen Editor download
No ratings yet
Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Illustrated Eila Jeronen Editor download
54 pages
Learning and Teaching with Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez instant download
100% (1)
Learning and Teaching with Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez instant download
51 pages
(Ebook) 180 Days of Geography for Third Grade: Practice, Assess, Diagnose by Saskia Biffle; Saskia Lacey ISBN 9781425855079, 1425855075 - Own the ebook now with all fully detailed chapters
100% (2)
(Ebook) 180 Days of Geography for Third Grade: Practice, Assess, Diagnose by Saskia Biffle; Saskia Lacey ISBN 9781425855079, 1425855075 - Own the ebook now with all fully detailed chapters
75 pages
Dokumen - Pub 180 Days of Geography For Fourth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1nbsped 9781425855086 9781425833053
100% (1)
Dokumen - Pub 180 Days of Geography For Fourth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1nbsped 9781425855086 9781425833053
218 pages
Learning and Teaching with Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez - Download the full set of chapters carefully compiled
100% (1)
Learning and Teaching with Geomedia 1st Edition Eric Sanchez - Download the full set of chapters carefully compiled
62 pages
Full Download (Ebook) The Power of Geographical Thinking by Clare Brooks, Graham Butt, Mary Fargher (eds.) ISBN 9783319499857, 9783319499864, 3319499858, 3319499866 PDF DOCX
100% (6)
Full Download (Ebook) The Power of Geographical Thinking by Clare Brooks, Graham Butt, Mary Fargher (eds.) ISBN 9783319499857, 9783319499864, 3319499858, 3319499866 PDF DOCX
55 pages
Participatory Mapping New Data New Cartography 1st Edition Jean-Christophe Plantin pdf download
100% (2)
Participatory Mapping New Data New Cartography 1st Edition Jean-Christophe Plantin pdf download
50 pages
(Ebook) Practical Handbook of Thematic Cartography Principles, Methods, and Applications by Christine Zanin; Nicolas Lambert ISBN 9780429291968, 9781000061703, 9781000061758, 9781000061802, 0429291965, 1000061701, 1000061752, 1000061809 download pdf
No ratings yet
(Ebook) Practical Handbook of Thematic Cartography Principles, Methods, and Applications by Christine Zanin; Nicolas Lambert ISBN 9780429291968, 9781000061703, 9781000061758, 9781000061802, 0429291965, 1000061701, 1000061752, 1000061809 download pdf
65 pages
Buy ebook (Ebook) Learning and Teaching with Geomedia by Eric Sanchez; Inga Gryl; Thomas Jekel; Caroline Juneau-Sion; John Lyon; Eric Sanchez; Inga Gryl ISBN 9781443869553, 1443869554 cheap price
100% (3)
Buy ebook (Ebook) Learning and Teaching with Geomedia by Eric Sanchez; Inga Gryl; Thomas Jekel; Caroline Juneau-Sion; John Lyon; Eric Sanchez; Inga Gryl ISBN 9781443869553, 1443869554 cheap price
81 pages
120774
No ratings yet
120774
43 pages
180 Days of Geography for Fifth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Kristin Kemp 2024 scribd download
100% (3)
180 Days of Geography for Fifth Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Kristin Kemp 2024 scribd download
50 pages
Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Eila Jeronen Editor pdf download
100% (1)
Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Eila Jeronen Editor pdf download
49 pages
180 Days of Geography for Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Saskia Biffle all chapter instant download
100% (1)
180 Days of Geography for Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Saskia Biffle all chapter instant download
40 pages
Where Can Buy Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Eila Jeronen Editor Ebook With Cheap Price
100% (1)
Where Can Buy Geography Education Promoting Sustainability Eila Jeronen Editor Ebook With Cheap Price
75 pages
Full Download 180 Days of Geography for Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Saskia Biffle PDF DOCX
100% (1)
Full Download 180 Days of Geography for Third Grade Practice Assess Diagnose 1st Edition Saskia Biffle PDF DOCX
50 pages
(Ebook) Practical Handbook of Thematic Cartography Principles, Methods, and Applications by Christine Zanin; Nicolas Lambert ISBN 9780429291968, 9781000061703, 9781000061758, 9781000061802, 0429291965, 1000061701, 1000061752, 1000061809 instant download
100% (7)
(Ebook) Practical Handbook of Thematic Cartography Principles, Methods, and Applications by Christine Zanin; Nicolas Lambert ISBN 9780429291968, 9781000061703, 9781000061758, 9781000061802, 0429291965, 1000061701, 1000061752, 1000061809 instant download
67 pages
Proposal Mehran Naghizadehrokni Non-Linear Analysis of Soil-Pile-Structure Interaction On Structures With Piled Raft Foundation
No ratings yet
Proposal Mehran Naghizadehrokni Non-Linear Analysis of Soil-Pile-Structure Interaction On Structures With Piled Raft Foundation
5 pages
A Review On Design of Pile Foundations in Bangkok: Geotechnical Engineering April 2015
No ratings yet
A Review On Design of Pile Foundations in Bangkok: Geotechnical Engineering April 2015
11 pages
Pile Foundation Design Using Ms Excel
No ratings yet
Pile Foundation Design Using Ms Excel
13 pages
SCIA Engineer Basics: Terminology, Layout, Settings, Basic Working Tools
No ratings yet
SCIA Engineer Basics: Terminology, Layout, Settings, Basic Working Tools
460 pages
BIM and Building Codes PDF
No ratings yet
BIM and Building Codes PDF
9 pages
Tutorial Link
No ratings yet
Tutorial Link
48 pages
DLL Week 6 Q3 NMS
No ratings yet
DLL Week 6 Q3 NMS
12 pages
Competence and KPI
No ratings yet
Competence and KPI
16 pages
E-Portfolio in FS 2
No ratings yet
E-Portfolio in FS 2
222 pages
BTech J2 WK3 first Term
No ratings yet
BTech J2 WK3 first Term
1 page
Download full African American Slavery and Disability Bodies Property and Power in the Antebellum South 1800 1860 1st Edition Dea H Boster ebook all chapters
100% (1)
Download full African American Slavery and Disability Bodies Property and Power in the Antebellum South 1800 1860 1st Edition Dea H Boster ebook all chapters
50 pages
Riley Reid, a Minor Under the Age of 21 Years, by His Mother, Ellen Hoffman, and Benjamin Kennedy, a Minor Under the Age of 21 Years, by His Mother, Virginia Kennedy, on Behalf of Themselves and All Others Similarly Situated v. The Board of Education of the City of New York, and Harvey B. Scribner, Individually and as Chancellor of the Board of Education, 453 F.2d 238, 2d Cir. (1971)
No ratings yet
Riley Reid, a Minor Under the Age of 21 Years, by His Mother, Ellen Hoffman, and Benjamin Kennedy, a Minor Under the Age of 21 Years, by His Mother, Virginia Kennedy, on Behalf of Themselves and All Others Similarly Situated v. The Board of Education of the City of New York, and Harvey B. Scribner, Individually and as Chancellor of the Board of Education, 453 F.2d 238, 2d Cir. (1971)
9 pages
Basics of Handwriting Training
No ratings yet
Basics of Handwriting Training
24 pages
Letter For Research Forum 2023
No ratings yet
Letter For Research Forum 2023
4 pages
Dunn Dissertation-Trompeta y Percusion PDF
No ratings yet
Dunn Dissertation-Trompeta y Percusion PDF
202 pages
LECTURE 6 - General Systems Theory, Approach and Applications in Education
No ratings yet
LECTURE 6 - General Systems Theory, Approach and Applications in Education
10 pages
Jan 2011 Editorial
No ratings yet
Jan 2011 Editorial
2 pages
TheSecretSocietiesofAllAgesandCountries 10016510
No ratings yet
TheSecretSocietiesofAllAgesandCountries 10016510
385 pages
Flores Et Al., (2022)
No ratings yet
Flores Et Al., (2022)
16 pages
Interview Questions For Teacher
No ratings yet
Interview Questions For Teacher
4 pages
Tratado de Alusi
No ratings yet
Tratado de Alusi
133 pages
Application Procedure: A Complete MEL Application Form
No ratings yet
Application Procedure: A Complete MEL Application Form
6 pages
BLAYA, PJ - Module 5 - Lesson 5
No ratings yet
BLAYA, PJ - Module 5 - Lesson 5
3 pages
Rationale/Overview: Southern Baptist College College of Education Bialong, Mlang, Cotabato
No ratings yet
Rationale/Overview: Southern Baptist College College of Education Bialong, Mlang, Cotabato
9 pages
Isizulu P3 June2021 Qp&memo
No ratings yet
Isizulu P3 June2021 Qp&memo
16 pages
Creative Writing Under Pressure: A Presentation by James Abela
No ratings yet
Creative Writing Under Pressure: A Presentation by James Abela
4 pages
TFN
No ratings yet
TFN
7 pages
AC Milan Set For Hong Kong Listing (Good Grammar)
No ratings yet
AC Milan Set For Hong Kong Listing (Good Grammar)
4 pages
ATINER's Conference Paper Series MED2013-0653: Athens Institute For Education and Research Atiner
No ratings yet
ATINER's Conference Paper Series MED2013-0653: Athens Institute For Education and Research Atiner
19 pages
9. Career and Management Development
No ratings yet
9. Career and Management Development
33 pages
Text As Data
No ratings yet
Text As Data
31 pages
Business Schools Share The Blame For Enron - S Ghoshal
No ratings yet
Business Schools Share The Blame For Enron - S Ghoshal
2 pages
A Guide To Regalia
No ratings yet
A Guide To Regalia
2 pages