While I was exploring the Lost Museum, I was really excited to see how interactive this site was. When you first go to the website, you get to see an introductory video about the Lost Museum and what it actually is. You can explore the museum, solve the mystery, search the archive, and visit the classroom all while on this site. This website is actually really awesome, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to explore it.
As for the blog question: digital mapping makes historical facts more accessible. I really like the idea of a public digital history museum because of how universal it is. For people who do not live in proximity of the materials the museum actually has, it makes these materials available to a population that they were not once. By digitizing artifacts, we also are making them available for time to come. What I mean by this is that some historical artifacts will not be around in another hundred years just due to the fact that they are already old and decaying in a sense. Paper in particular will not always be accessible in the physical form. Digitized materials and artifacts make it so we are able to access the material even if there is no longer a physical version of what we are seeing. This is helpful in natural disaster cases as well as cases of fire or water damage. The materials will always be able to be viewed.
The only negative takeaway is the desensitization of the physical materials. It is much more humbling to be able to physically touch or hold a piece of history, or to physically see the spot where something occurred. By having this online, the physical component is no longer the forefront affect. In the case of mapping however, I do not believe this is a negative issue. In my opinion, it makes the locations more accessible because you are able to track movement patterns across the globe, across the nation, across continents- you are able to visualize the spatial component that is history. Without the visualization, patterns can be harder to detect.
I would be interested in incorporating digital mapping in my future classrooms (especially upper level high school) in order to make canonical literature newer, fresher, and more accessible for students. I plan on teaching in an urban area (like NYC) where many of my students come from diverse backgrounds, but have not necessarily been too many places where the history has occurred. This would make the literature and activities more relatable for students if they were able to map the author or characters within a book on a real life actual map. I definitely do not feel one hundred percent comfortable with digital mapping myself, but now I at least know one resource (Dr. Moranda) and a few websites to go towards for further practice and help.
-Emily Hatch