Christopher Saladin and Shana Crosson, “Spatial Approaches to the Past: Story Maps in the History Classroom”

A common word I saw throughout the results of including the mapping activity with Story Maps in the classroom was “time”. Even if the word was not mentioned, the theme of “time” was extremely evident. In the article, there were multiple occurrences where it was said that with this activity, students put more time into their work. Three quotes that show this are:

  • “The search for spatial information and the process of representing this on a map also encouraged these students to spend more time with their sources.” (pg. 41)
  • “The digital nature of the platform encouraged them to dedicate more time to a new style of writing and to build projects with the potential for public communication.” (pg. 41)
  • “Rather than simply entering data, the mapping process required students to engage in the kind of deep digging into primary sources that characterizes the archival work of historians.” (pg. 47)

With these students actually interacting with the activity, instead of being handed something to read, they are learning more. They spend more time with the sources and gain the skill of analyzing them in a more detailed way. The students are not simply filling in the blanks and “entering data,” they are find specific locations and explain reasonings behind things. Historical research is what they were learning. Also, they improved in their style of writing and communication with the more time spent in the activity. At this point in their education journey, the students were used to the routine of writing essays and the repetitive nature of it. They could simply coast through them, sometimes in one night. This new activity required them to spend more time with their sources and evidence instead of more time on the paper aspect. With the detailed analysis and closer looks, the students were able to give a higher level paper because they simply learned more. This activity was refreshing for them in many ways.

In the article, it was mentioned that students found this activity to be way more time consuming than they first expected. While they might view that as annoying, they are going to learn more in the long run, gain skills of a historian, and simply become a better student.