Abstract

 

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the user to visualize and display geographic data. This web project details my implementation of Esri Survey 1-2-3 and Esri ARC GIS (a proprietary GIS system offered through the Esri Company) in a FYC (first-year composition classroom). The class used GIS to build smart maps and web applications for visualizing and analyzing data. The project offered a challenge to students to collect and analyze geographic data in order to tell stories and formulate arguments linking space, place, time, and rhetoric. Visualizing this collected data allows the researcher to consider the rhetorical implications of space and place. I argue that by implementing this methodology, my students come to know rhetorics as a grammar for our relationality in space and place at a given time.

 

Inside this webtext, you will find an example of FYC GIS praxis that includes theory, method, student data collection tools, smart maps, Story Map applications, and student feedback. In terms of getting around, use the navigation tabs at the top and bottom of each page to move from one section to the next, or return to the "Map" to follow another route through the webtext. It is my hope that this GIS praxis serves as a guide for classrooms seeking to examine how social spaces are produced and that this webtext offers an example of how students might use tools to both question and attend to the spaces and places in which they inhabit.