INTERACTIVE SCHOOL ATLAS: DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
L.M.B. Barros, M.M.S. Decanini
Post-Grad Programme, Cartography Departament, Presidente
Prudente, Brazil
manccini@gmail.com
School Atlases are often used in
Geographic domains of elementary and high schools to help the children in
geographic and spatial perception development, with regard to subject matter in
school. The advantage of School Atlas is to integrate several graph forms
(maps, text, charts, schemes, drawings, pictures etc), which allowed map-thinking
and spatial understanding. However, students and teachers find difficulty to
handle maps, possibly due to misunderstanding of cartography concepts and
consequently map reading. For that reason Thematic Cartography has been
improved with interactive and animated resources provided by digital
environment. The Multimedia Cartography is a powerful tool in the teaching of
Geography, as the interactivity and animation variables attract students and
teachers. Additionally it instigates them to explore the resources and provides
strategies to lead users to a correct interpretation of map contents. An
Interactive Eletronic School Atlas was designed and produced in order to guide
teachers in Cartography Education. This Atlas was developed in two stages:
Cartographic Design (user demand analyses, general composition design including
the geographic data modeling, graphic design and interface design) and
Production (geographic data base implementation and acquisition and Atlas
Interface). The Geographic data base modeling is based on Geo-OMT approach in
order to systemize the comprehension about the real world objects and
phenomena, so that those can be suitably represented in an information system.
The Atlas implementation was developed in Microsoft Visual Basic v.6.0 and ESRI
MapObjects v.2.1. The animation resource used was created with Macromedia Flash
Mx 2004 Educational version. Cartography multimedia resources, like animation,
interactivity and hyperlinks, can help to customize School Atlas to the
students’ interest and experience. Therefore this can increase the efficiency
of a School Atlas to Geography teaching.