Digital Mapping provides many benefits for understanding the past. For example, we can see patterns that we otherwise may have not seen if not for the map. Or, maybe we would have seen all of this information, but we wouldn’t have been able to connect it in our minds, which the map already does for you. For our in class assignment we completed the first week, we had to map the students who attended Central College. The goal was to try and see patterns in the living situations that maybe a raw data set wouldn’t show us, or we wouldn’t be able to piece together this information on our own. We did see these patterns, and if my memory serves me correctly, a historical thesis that emerged form our spatial analysis of the data was that we also were able to find some sort of pattern with religion, and that was shocking to me. Its pretty amazing to see these benefits that digital mapping provides us with. Before this course I knew absolutely nothing about mapping, and I would have never guessed or even thought that data like what we have seen could be provided in a map. Personally for me, I need to physically see things in order to make sense of them because I am a visual learner. I feel as if most people would agree with that and say that they are visual learners as well, and this is why I believe that mapping is very beneficial for everyone. It is definitely a little confusing at first, especially if you have to make the map yourself, and that part I am not a fan of. However if I was looking up information for a project or something of that nature and I found a digital map, I would be very happy because it would provide me with a boatload of vital information right at my finger tips.
Megan Bender