Geography 680 is an undergraduate course in the OSU Department of Geography that exposes students to issues and techniques surrounding computer based mapping and visualization; data structures, data transformations, and mapping of multidimensional data. Students also get hands-on experience of transforming and preparing spatial data for exploration, visualization, and interactive mapping.
In preparation for the Spring 2008 offering of this class professor Ola Ahlqvist and undergraduate student Ann Dennewitz worked together to research viable techniques to develop a virtual tour as part of class assignments. During the Spring-08 offering students then worked as a team to create a digital version of Professor Henry Hunker’s “Time and Change” tour of Columbus. The goal was that the places and events described in Hunker's narrative should come alive in an interactive mapping environment accessible through the web. Hunker’s text from 2000 served as the primary guide, but students were asked to add themes and resources as they saw fit for an interesting result. The final product was primarily targeted to department alumni, students, but hopefully also reaching a wider audience with interest in the Columbus area.
Students were first assigned a subset of the route from Hunker's text that they digitized onto a collaborative Google map so that a common digital skeleton was generated. Additional route information, placemarks, and narrative was subsequently entered onto this shared map.
When all basic information was entered each student created a separate file in the KML format that contained their segment of the tour and placed it on a web-server of their choice. Using a master KML with network links to each student's individual KML-file the remainder of the project could be conducted individually while maintaining access to the most up to date version of the entire tour. The master KML could also define common styles for the markers, lines and information balloons so that the entire tour would have a more streamlined design.
During the final weeks of the course students worked independently to develop added content such as 3D models of selected buildings, images, sound and video. In the end we had a very rich and interactive, online version of Henry Hunker's classic tour of Columbus. One of the students, Michael Kurey, worked over the summer to move all the material from its distributed locations onto the department's web server and provide the final design elements. Final touch-up and web design was made by Ola Ahlqvist and Phil Birnie.