James Baldwin in Paris

For this project I made an annotated map of James Baldwin in Paris 
(I couldn't figure out how to save it as a .kml file, so I just shared the link- I have to work on that step)

James Baldwin, Paris, 1962

In 1948, James Baldwin left New York for Paris with $40 in his pocket. He was 24 years old, black and gay, and wanted to distance himself from the prejudice he had experienced in America. He was virtually unpublished when he left, but Baldwin thrived in Paris, going on to write Go Tell it on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, The Amen Corner and Giovanni's Room all by 1956.  He lived the rest of his life in France, while remaining active in the Civil Rights movements in the United States.

This is a map I made of some his documented time/places in Paris, based on the blog Entree to Black Paris, wikipedia, and an article from the NY Times.

I watched some of the tutorials but they were showing how to use google maps to do a "My Map" layer. (not Google Earth .kml files) I don't know how different they are- I see that in Google earth you can do more of an animated tour. With Google maps though you could still add text, pictures, links through the spreadsheet form. It was a relatively easy interface, once you figure out how to do the first annotation. This sample project relates exactly to my seminar project, so it was useful to see/feel how it worked, and I'm going to keep at it. Based on my experience of it today, I think it can be done fairly easily by students- you just have to have the idea developed and materials/resources somewhat planned out ahead of time.

I could definitely see the value of this in the classroom (and within the new Core Competencies) as it can be used in conjunction with (and evaluated as) a more traditional written assignment, like a (auto)biographical essay, or for communication studies with a narrated tour.  Or, for an art history course, like our Art in New York class, this would beautifully complement the existing course assignments.  Before I started this map, I made a word doc gathering the history, writing out the sites/addresses and relevant text- so it absolutely has components that are more grounded in traditional assignments- like a thesis statement, researching, citing, etc.