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University of Puget Sound

German

The German Map Project

Date Awarded: Spring-Summer, 2000

URL: www.ups.edu/faculty/tinsley/Map/timemap/home.htm

Description of Project:

Objective:
To develop an annotated, on-line historical atlas of central Europe.

Theoretical Justification:
One of the most difficult concepts for American students of German to grasp is the fact that Germany did not exist as a political entity before 1871. Whereas for the French, the English, the Russians and, much more recently, for the Americans, geographical, political, and cultural unity are inextricably linked with identity; for the Germans, national unity brought nationalism and war, then economic chaos and failed democracy, and, finally, the nightmare of National Socialism, resulting in some forty years of occupation and division. This project will create eight digitized maps of "Germany" at key moments in its history from 1000 (the Holy Roman Empire under the Ottonians) to the present (Reunification). These maps will not only allow students to visualize the geographical and political changes "Germany" experienced, they also will allow the students to annotate the maps as part of their study of cultural and literary history.

Technical Specifications:
At the last NWLC conference in Williamette, Mark Otis and I demonstrated the technology that has made interaction with digitized maps possible. Students may now, within an cross-platform environment, use a mouse to scroll seamlessly across detailed color maps digitized from Droysens'Historical Atlas of Europe ( 1886). Using "Centennia" map-software (www.clockwk.com) and "Flash" animation, we shall also create a simplified interactive version of each detailed color map, in which students may manipulate political and geographical features for the purposes of memorization or project creation. In both the detailed and the simplified formats, our technology will permit the students themselves to annotate the maps, linking key cities and regions to websites, images, texts, audio recordings, and even brief video clips of re-enacted events. For example, students studying Goethe, Schiller, and Bettina von Arnim can create links from the cities of Weimar, Jena, and Berlin to pictures, letters, audio recordings of poetry readings, or brief video segments from films such asWerther .

Pedagogical Advantages:
The maps would be available on consortium servers. Each school can then access the annotations that previous courses have made. The cumulative nature of the project will foster collaboration among students at each institution, among colleagues and students at different institutions, and between student generations. These maps also can be annotated in different languages for use in German and humanities courses. The technology may be adapted to other languages.

Process:

Fall 1996-Fall 1999

• The U.P.S. photographer creates slide images of Droysens' maps
• The working model of cumulative web-based interaction developed in German 250 (History and Political Systems) in the spring of 1999. (See "The Rosa Luxemburg Project" at www.ups.edu/faculty/tinsley/ courses/germ250/rosa.htm)
• Mark Otis and Jason Neighbors "stitch together" Droysens electronically to permit mouse-activated "navigation".
• Otis and Tinsley present the map-prototype at Williamette.
• Otis and Neighbors develop the simplified mapping technique using Centennia and Flash animation

Spring 2000

• The digitized detailed colored maps are created for 1000, 14th century, 18th century, 1871, 1919, 1939, 1961, and 1990.
• Simplified maps are created for 1990, including " German-speaking countries," "German states," "Geographical Features," and "Germany's neighbors."

Summer 2000

• Testing of prototypes at U.P.S. Prototypes made available to Robert Tobin at Whitman and Christina Gentzkow at Lewis and Clark.

Academic Year 2000- 2001

• Tinsley's German 301 and German 250 classes initiate work with the Map Project.

Outcomes:

My experiments with ET may be viewed on my website. The Website itself is undergoing substantial renovation so that it looks as good in Internet Explorer as it does in Netscape. As indicated, the exercises will be enhanced by audio as soon as digitizing facilities are again made available, and I plan to attempt some work with video during the summer with an eye to incorporating it into the website for the fall of 2001.

In the spring of 2000 I received a unit release for work on the Mellon Map project, which I have subsequently demonstrated for my colleagues in the Consortium and also for the Dean. The idea is to link a series of maps of central Europe to web pages that students from the four institutions develop as a natural consequence of their coursework. An example is the Rosa Luxemburg Project, completed by my German 250 students and me during the spring of 1999. Erika Berroth will link the Munich Program homepage to the 2000 map, so that students can also access current links which enhance our study abroad programs, but the main aim is historical, to provide a map constantly updated with web pages and links furnishing information about historical and literary figures and events. I have agreed to monitor the placement of the links, but the accuracy and linguistic proficiency of the student-initiated sections will be controlled by the instructor at the source. Jason Neighbors will have a beta version of the Map Project on line by the end of October, and I shall then contact Bob Tobin (Whitman), Christina Gentskow (Williamette) , and Erika Berroth (Lewis and Clark) to begin the expansion of the links.