For my second assignment, I decided to do the Google History Maps Web Assignment. Here I’ve created a rough map of the path of Alexander the Great using Google Maps’ MyMaps tool. The MyMaps tool doesn’t give an HTML code or a file to embed, so I’ve included the following link and a screenshot:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WhFuQvcJIa5lWYwQQDtGPQKk5YE&usp=sharing

My first thought when reading the assignment description (to recreate the travels of a literary or historical character using this tool) was to do Alexander the Great. Very few historical figures before the modern era had travelled as far as Alexander. In fact, he marched a total of about 22,000 miles! Most people today have trouble getting in 3 or 4 miles a day. Imagine marching with an entire army on foot or horseback without a phone, computer, A/C or heat, or even basic medicine! The map I’ve created here actually only includes a total of about 9,000 miles, so needless to say I’m very far off. Like I said, I didn’t exactly want to turn this assignment into a history essay, so I used the timelines available from the Encyclopedia of Ancient History and SoftSchools.com to sketch out his travels. The information available on each site is actually pretty sparse, which was probably the biggest difficulty I had with this assignment.

As a history major and someone who’s a huge nerd for ancient history, I found this really fun. It took me about 45 minutes to complete, but after I got the hang of it, I was able to add place after place pretty easily. A lot of the names of ancient battlefields or cities were hard to find because those places have changed hands over time and have been renamed. I also didn’t want to crack open a textbook or biography, so I guessed the general straightest route from place to place (except southwest Iran, where Alexander also stopped – I just forgot to add the city). Looking up the names of cities in online encyclopedias solved that issue quickly, so it was really more of a nuisance than a real problem. Overall, I really loved this assignment. I did something sort of similar to it in History Colloquium, where my class mapped major battles of the French and Indian War with Dr. Sellers. MyMaps actually offers layers of depth beyond what I did here. Although ideally I would have included descriptions with links and pictures for all points on the map, there were so many and each with its own huge significance that I excluded a couple for the sake of time. But, the fact that I got to pick my own favorite person for this assignment was a big bonus, and I hope more people choose it and have fun with it in the future.

This web assignment is Google History Maps Story, and I chose Abu Abdullah Mohammad Ibn Battuta, more commonly referred to as simply Mohammad Ibn Battuta or just Ibn Battuta. (Fun fact: ibn means “son” in Arabic, so “ibn Battuta” means “son of Battuta”; this is my three years of Arabic at work, folks!)

It was a mistake.

I knew this guy was well-traveled, but YIKES. I clicked on the Wiki page and almost cried.

SO. In order to not go insane by spending 5 hours making google maps of this man (did you know that there’s only so many places you can put in at a time?), I made an executive decision to only do the Maghreb, which consists of most of North/Northwest Africa.  This way, I got more detailed maps as well.

The trip map for the Maghreb still took two maps to make, so here’s the first one:

He started in Tangier, Morocco and made his way to Sfax, Tunisia. Then, he made his way back:

My only beef with google maps is that it doesn’t tell you the order of the steps. Ibn Battuta went in a pretty straight line for the first map, but starts to show his wanderlust in the second. So, from the Wikia:

Maghreb

Confession time: this assignment is worth 4 1/2 stars, and I think it might be partially my fault. When I went to rate it to a more appropriate 3 stars, it told me I had already rated it. Now I’m afraid I accidentally clicked on it somehow, and since it’s only been rated by three other people, I may have hyper-inflated it. Oops. Feel free to rate it yourselves and course-correct.

I used Google Maps for this, like it says on the label. Then, I screenshotted and cropped in paint. I was going to try and merge the maps somehow, but I couldn’t get the two to scale the same. Plus, I realized I have 0 clue how on earth to merge them. So that didn’t happen.

Just.. can you imagine traveling as much as this guy? In a time where the only method of transport was a camel/horse/animal? It couldn’t have been very comfortable, but geez would it have been worth it. BRB, gonna go see if the library has a copy of his memoirs, “The Travels of Ibn Battuta”.

For this assignment you had to use Google Maps to create a story and for this I not only used Kendall Parker’s character to work with I also worked on this assignment with Kendall. We did our story basing the backgrounds of both of our characters and it made it pretty easy since our characters are related and that we used them in our radio show. The plot to this story map we made was that my character( Margaret) is dead and her granddaughter( Julia) is going to visit her grave but really she is going as a cover up for her second profession. She was really sent there to kill a man hired by his wife but visiting all of my character’s locations (grave, home, work place) is the perfect coverup when she comes back to Chicago with a painting done by her grandmother Margaret. To do this project we obviously used Google Maps but we had to pin the location and then draw a line from that place to the next. For the main pinned location we described what was there and for each of the lines we explained what happened or was going to happen at the next location. We did add photos for most of the locations to go with the story. I hope you guys enjoy our story and pictures  Story Map

P.S. Don’t Kendall and I just look so studious in the Convergence Center