LCL2 Map of Participants

[ meanwhile the new LCL2 map is running here ]

Hi all,
During LCL1, the map of participants was really appreciated, and I was thinking if we want to have also the LCL2 map. What do you think?

At that time I have created the map (google map) and I asked for people to freely add their pin If they wished. (see here)
With that kind of map, we have experienced some little drawbacks I'd like to share with you

1) sometimes people overwrote the map's title and description
2) there were a lot of anonymous Placemarks
3) there were several duplicates
4) people complained their pin were moved by someone
5) there were many "spam" pins not related to partecipants but only to places
6) Due to a large number of pins, the map was splitted in several pages and sometime people had difficulties to find them self

So, I had to manage some maintenance activities to keep the map as clean as possible.
This time I would suggest to share with LCL staff & moderator these maintenace activities if we are going to use the same method.

Have you any other ideas to create the map? Any suggestion?

I was also thinking that one possible solution to avoid the problems listed above could be to create a google form that people have to fill, if they wish to be showed inside the LCL2 map. Every entry into the form will create an entry into a spreadsheet. Only the LCL staff & moderators will be able to read the spreadsheet and edit the map, creating the pins based on the data stored inside the spreadsheet. When an pin is created on the map, the relative row in the spreadsheet will be flagged to avoid duplicates. These of course means some works for LCL2 staff & moderators

@CyberParra I think having an LCL2 map is a great idea. Thank you so much for sharing your experience from last year's course-- this is very useful.

For many of the reasons you indicated, the LCL team has been looking into some alternative mapping solutions. One that seems promising is ZeeMaps (and here is an example of it being used in a online course setting). It seems like ZeeMaps is easier to maintain and also has no upper limit on pins.

We are working to have a map up and available to participants before the course starts.

If you have any other insights, they would be greatly appreciated!

@katherine Good to know, thanks

@CyberParra what do you think of this?

Unlimited pins, administrator password required to edit or delete others' pins and flexibility on our part to edit the information fields that people fill-in when they add their pin.

I really liked the map. I wonder if there is a service we could use that would also let us narrow by categories so we could search for LCL2 community members in our area with shared interests. Might be too much, but I would probably use something like that. Thanks for making this a community discussion!

@james_broyles8 This is a great point you bring up and we've been thinking about this all afternoon. Ultimately a map that allowed us to filter by users based on a variety of criteria would be desirable (hopefully for next year ). In the meantime, there are a few things we can do, which I've noted below:

1) We can limit ZeeMaps to allow a few different colored pins and we could ask people to choose a color pin based on how they answer a certain question, which could be something about their background or the general theme of their project interest, etc. It's certainly not perfect but it might add another layer of easily-digestible when looking at the map.
2) We can customize the input fields that people add when they add their pin. There isn't a filtering mechanism but you'd have more info when exploring people nearby.
3) We plan to add a category shortly with topics based around locations which have multiple users. (Cambridge/Boston, Rome, London, etc). These forums can serve the function of trying to get to know those who are geographically proximate to you and setting up time to meet.

Again, these are far from perfect but I'd love to hear your feedback on this, as well as any other ideas you might have.

@Grif

Those are really neat and exciting ideas!

1) Using pin colors to identify interests/background/etc limits people to choosing a single broad category. As a pro, this could simplify things just to convey "these people in your area are mostly interested in this and that." As a con, it would limit networking to broad categories only. Keeping the number of colors down sounds logical, but there may be other uses that colored pins could serve purposes for when only using a small number of colors. Some examples where pin colors for our purposes might be handy: "Educator, student, parent, etc?" or "A.M. or P.M.?" Maybe not. I would agree that it would work better than nothing at all and would help make the map easier to look at for what you suggested like identifying main interests/backgrounds. If that were the case, I'd suggest making that just a supplemental function and also doing something like you suggest in 2.

2). I saw annotations and marker information bubbles, it seems like we could do a lot with that. Maybe it would save grunt work later if we come up with some kind of web-based form people could fill out that turns their submitted field data into Zee-friendly spreadsheetery? My reasoning is that there are multiple places to go to fully edit a given marker (annotation, marker information, etc) within ZeeMaps which may stymie a more full participation from everyone, but that reasoning may be faulty and working towards redundancy. I didn't see an ability to export map data, but if that's possible in ZeeMaps then we could take data including annotation and marker info and rig up our own searchable database for people cross-referencing things like interests and location and other filter needs.

3). This sounds awesome. Any kind of versatility in how one can sort and control channels of communication is A+ in my book, and location-based forums is an entirely fun + useful idea.

Wow, I can't get over how cool this place is. Lots of epic changes. This edit/post box with a live preview next to it is blowing my mind.

What would be really cool is if ZeeMaps supported temporary markers that showed up for events so we could look at an event overlay that only showed chronologically-relevant markers (events happening in next few weeks that have not ended yet, etc) but I don't see anything like that there.

Another thing that could be cool is if team logos for groups got incorporated into a marker overlay so you could see the different groups represented in your area. Might not make much sense if LCL tries to keep people in geocentric groups, though. Not all groups seemed to warm up to team names and logos for groups, so not sure if that'd be something worth focusing on or not. Since ZeeMaps appears to allow you to use image icons for pins instead of colors, there might be other ways to use this kind of idea.

I'll be happy to help however I can! Hit me up if menial taskery is needed

@Grif @james_broyles8

A lot of very good ideas

Anyway, we have also to take into account that we are expecting thousand of people from all over the world, with different digital competences. A map with lot of features and with a lot of data that can be inserted by users, is great, but at same time could be difficult to understand for many people. This means that we need at least a tutorial to explain how to add pin and how to add data. Otherwise we have to consider the idea to use a google form to collect data from users.

Using pictures instead of icons for the pins could be nice. But, what I noted in google map (last year) is that sometimes pictures uploaded by users, are quite big and they occupy a lot of space, overlapping the pins around them

@CyberParra

Great thoughts, friend.

First, I want to address what you said about difficulties posed by large amounts of users affecting map data. It may be beneficial to consider tagteaming both needs you touched upon. Perhaps a small team of us could make a video tutorial showing how to navigate. There are tutes available, but maybe we would benefit from actively creating a video tute and intro to the LCL ZeeMap. Since we likely won't be using all available functions and some functions may be encouraged to be carried out in specific ways for our purposes, a custom video summarizing this and showing how to do everything might be fun to put together and helpful for some. It might also be good practice on designing a learning exp I'm game on this idea myself and would suggest including a short video tutorial in addition to any other tutorial resources. Also, while I don't enjoy throwing redundancy at people I am also a fan of striving to cater to different learning styles and strategies. With a Google form, the data is more likely to be consistent from field to field and tutorials about how to manually edit one's marker on the ZeeMap would not be as immediately necessary, but some users may want to familiarize with ZeeMap instead of filling out the form. More importantly, many users may want to edit their marker info later on down the line so a custom tutorial may be worth considering no matter the solution. I like the idea of doing both, personally. A Google form to collect data into a Google spreadsheet and then import the spreadsheet into ZeeMap for a streamlined collection and some kind of tutorial showing how to do everything we'll be using. As I said before, this would also give us a potentially useful Google spreadsheet that we could use to achieve any functions ZeeMap cannot accommodate. That's my two cents on it, but I'm open to other ideas.

As far as the picture sizing issues are concerned, I just toyed around with it and it looks like they might handle images differently. I could be mistaken. It looks like images show up in bubble text if you upload or link them to your marker, but the pin actually stays whichever color it was assigned. For some reason, I thought the ZeeMaps FAQ meant that the image would be on the pin somehow. Unless that's a feature I've missed, it may be confined to information bubbles when people click on a marker. For what it's worth, I uploaded a pretty large image to my information bubble and it scaled it down to a preset size automatically. I also tried uploading a very small favicon and it scaled it up to the same automatic size. The color-coded pins idea is kinda growing on me, honestly.

Another idea I had is maybe we can add places and other markers that are related. I can edit/remove it as needed if it is a distraction and not using the LCL map as intended, but I toyed with adding my local makerspace to the map with a description of our organization, regular free public workshops, and a list of shared tools in our workspaces. Is this kind of map activity encouraged, or should I remove that marker? If it is encouraged, I wonder how we could improve functions for non-person markers.

Ahh, this is all super exciting. I needed LCL to come back, man oh man I've been missing this.

EDIT: I just noticed that I have difficulty editing some markers that I create if I do not have the link for the edit bubble the site gives you when you initially create the marker. Unless I did something wrong or there is some solution I am not aware of, this may prove troublesome if we do automatic syncing with a Google spreadsheet or otherwise import the data manually as the user submitting the info to have a marker created may not have access to an edit link.

Unless I am really just misunderstanding the site, I would suggest emphasizing to new LCL ZeeMap users that they should register a new ZeeMaps account and sign in before creating their marker and that they should also save the edit URL it gives them.

Only 7 on the map? Where are all the asian guys? Come on, lets fill the map...

These are all great comments and I really appreciate your sentiment. Question for you all: when you open the map does it auto-zoom to your location or is it stuck on Boston? I've been trying to get it to load on a global level but zeemaps is being fussy. The last thing I would want is for it to auto-zoom to Boston for everybody...very much not the vibe we are trying to send!

@Grif

in my case it auto-zoom to my location.
take into account that I have registered to ZeeMap I don't know if this could affect

@Grif It sizes to my location automatically, as well.

@Grif Autozooming to my place. But I saw that there is a Setting... in Zeemap that handle the autozoom. But I didn´t try to change it. Maybe I will change for all? Or just my map... ?

@CyberParra @James_B @skola2015 what about now?

@katherine
auto-zoom to my location still working

@katherine

It now auto-zooms way out and I can see everywhere on the map.

There is a link to a different map in this thread, but this is the map I am looking at now: https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=871132

Yesterday I saw the whole world, and all the entry-names. Today, no names... and not the whole world, but zoomed out. Asia, were are you guys?

I think the browser's cache maintains la last position. So, if you navigate the map to the north pole, for istance, and than you exit, next time you will see the north pole

Why don't you just ask people to write where they are from and either make the map automatically pin their location, or you do it, or someone at MIT does it, instead of us doing it. Last time, quite frankly, it was confusing and yes, it was very easy to over ride other people's pins accidentally. Just have a list somewhere that we can add our location to and one person manages the pinning.

@shari

There has been some discussion on different ways of getting info into the maps. One thing that ZeeMaps offers is a way to work in tandem with spreadsheets. This might be a learning experience and something that develops. As such, I am fairly certain that all feedback is welcome as they seem to encourage that all around the LCL experience.

I think you might find this map to be less confusing and a different experience altogether than the last experience. They have set different permissions for the map, you should only be able to edit your own locations.

I tried it today and it's confusing...I'm willing to cede that it's me though...

ETA: It actually ended up working so even though I thought I didnt do it correctly, I did.

@shari

There has also been discussion about resources such as tutorials for using what's available now. If you'd be willing and interested, I bet we could get a better idea of some things that might be tripping folks up with some more feedback. What's been mucking up clarity for you?

Back some replies ago we also discussed some kind of form. It sounds like you might prefer that option, maybe there's room to explore a hybrid approach where some people can use the map itself if they want to enter their info in using the ZeeMap system, and some could just add their info to a spreadsheet.

I guess an important question might be to ask if you are interested in learning the ZeeMap system. Would you use it for this class and other online maps you make and use? How do you currently use online maps?

Do you have any other concerns or ideas about maps for large numbers of folk such as in a big MOOC?

@Grif I think that it's a problem if someone remove another pin by mistake, it happened before. But I also know that a lot of regulations isn't very nice...
Another thing, overlapping pins from the same city, for instance, Sao Paulo, Brazil: only if you magnify it very much you'll see them. It masks a general view of the map. Maybe could appear the number of participants by country, or state when the number achieves certain quantity.
The third suggestion is about the use the "description" box that pops up when you pinning. I suggest it could be used to put the LCL2 @names. This could be a way to help participants know the people's avatar name easier. I found it to be a difficulty among many users. Thanks!