A few of our favorite student projects
By: Megan Danielson
We love seeing Mapbox used in the classroom. It’s fascinating to see students applying their curiosity and passion to mapping projects for classes from geography to journalism and design.
Here are a few of our favorite projects from our work with students and educators:
Carnegie Mellon University: 3D building emissions
Patrick Campbell took a GIS class from CMU taught by Chris Goranson in the public policy school. Students sought to analyze options for a commitment by CMU to reduce its green house gas emissions as if it were a party to the Paris Agreement. Working off examples, he processed data to display each CMU building as a 3D extrusion with a height proportional to its CO2e emissions. We liked the creative use of 3D to visualize the impact of emissions.
This project explores the impact of equipping CMU students and other key stakeholders with accurate, up-to-date emissions data for all CMU buildings and installations. To represent each buildings’ energy use and emissions data geographically, I first obtained relevant data from CMU’s Facilities Management Services, including usage levels of electricity (kWh), natural gas (Therms), and steam (MLbs). I converted these quantities to their CO2 equivalent and then was joined to a shapefile of Allegheny County building footprints.
— Carnegie Mellon student Patrick Campbell
CUNY: The cost of disaster
A group of student journalists from the Craig Newmark School of Journalism were introduced to interactive web-mapping using Mapbox through a guest lecture delivered by one of our data visualization wizards, Lo Bénichou. Students used Mapbox tools for their final project to help visualize the geographic distribution and financial impacts of natural disasters that impacted the US in 2018. We thought this was a powerful way to create a narrative around disaster risk management.
One of our favorite things about MapBox is its documentation on the site. It has tons of examples for GL JS coding, so it makes it easier to code your own javascript for your project. We were all new to coding, so even with all the amazing documentation, integrating the javascript was definitely a challenge. But when we got stumped, there was always someone at MapBox (Lo!) who helped us troubleshoot it.
— CUNY School of Journalism student, Olivia Raimond
Fleming College
Shawn Morgan is the program coordinator for the GIS Applications Specialist program: a ten-month, post-graduate certificate program at Fleming College in Ontario. Shawn reached out to see if we could deliver a guest lecture to his Web Mapping class in the hope of inspiring his students to use new tools in their final projects.
Food Insecurity in Ontario
Students Jordan Sparrow and Nihal Garach used Mapbox to create a web mapping tool displaying local use on the non-profit organization Feed Ontario (formerly the Ontario Association of Food Banks). We love the interactivity of the interface that allows the user to compare geographic regions to gain a fuller understanding of food insecurity in Ontario.
Being relatively new to JavaScript when we began the project, we certainly experienced a learning curve in our programming skills. Many of our peers employed ArcGIS online, so we were pleased that we were able to more effectively customize our project by comparison, but it did require more programming on our part. This was worth it for our project, however, as the ability to fully customize offered clear advantages. We were in search of a project where we could really develop these skills and were certainly able to do so, so we were really pleased with having been introduced to Mapbox in this way.
— Fleming College Student Jordan Sparrow
Population Growth and GDP in Canada
Another group of students — Jason Skitch, James Burton and Lucas Beckering-Vinckers — created a 3D extrusion in order to demonstrate the impacts of Canada’s declining population on GDP. The tool allows users to visualize three different scenarios for Canada’s future and to simulate how those scenarios would play out over the course of a century. We love the use of 3D visualizations to examine the relationship between demographic and economic factors in society.
Want to bring Mapbox to your classroom?
Whether you are looking for an opportunity to build with our visualization APIs, do accessibility analysis with our traffic data, bring customized map tiles into print, or you want to learn about how to create mapping integrations with Tableau or Microsoft BI or R—or something else—we want to work with you! Our partnerships with educators, students and researchers span curriculum development, guest lectures, and direct mentorship.
If you are interested in teaching Mapbox, having us visit your classroom, or are interested in exploring research opportunities, reach out to the team here.
Megan Danielson - Community Program Manager - Mapbox | LinkedIn
Maps in the classroom was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.