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Our Histories was formed after a New Zealand Government declaration in 2019 that indigenous history would be required curriculum in all schools beginning in 2022. Our Histories began gathering research material and resources for the effort and envisioned a learning platform based around interactive and engaging web maps and StoryMaps as a medium for presenting the material to students.

Our Histories approached GISCorps requesting a volunteer to assist in georeferencing several historic maps and digitizing historic events to be presented as interactive maps in the proposed learning platform. This learning platform will be configured inside of an ArcGIS Online StoryMap, which the volunteer will also assist in building. The volunteer will also provide instruction and documentation to Our Histories for the continued maintenance of their new learning platform.

Keenan Smith, a volunteer from Arkansas, was selected to transform Our Histories’ historic data and maps into digital map images and data layers, construct the planned StoryMap, and document best practices for governing their data in ArcGIS Online.

Our Histories provided Keenan with digitized historic maps, images and content for five topics. Keenan geo-referenced a number of digitized historic maps and created a StoryMap, a timeline using TimelineJS and a set of questions for each topic using Survey123. Keenan’s knowledge of StoryMaps has provided Our Histories with an engaging and multi-perspective history resource with great graphics. The platform provides school students and teachers with easy access to and a visually appealing history resource. As well, Our Histories members were able to be trained, without too much difficulty, on how to edit StoryMaps and geo-reference historic maps making it possible to update the resource in a timely and cost-effective way.

Keenan created an ESRI StoryMaps story and began populating it with the supplied educational content.  The story was arranged chronologically, grouped into sections based on the major historical topics and events.  Keenan used ArcGIS Pro to georeference the several historic scanned maps to incorporate into web maps in the story and to allow for the digitization of the maps’ features for future geospatial analysis.

Historical map of Lower Hutt Borough.
Example historical map that required georeferencing.

To provide temporal context, an interactive timeline was included at the beginning of each section. These timelines were created using Knight Lab’s TimelineJS. However, to work around display limitations in StoryMaps, the TimelineJS timeline was embedded into an ESRI Web Experience and then that was embedded into the story.

Screenshot of StoryMap Timeline.
Example of an interactive timeline embedded in the story. The timeline can be panned side to side and links can be added for a deeper dive into each event.

Several web maps were created and placed in the story to display where events occurred. The maps pan and zoom to prescribed locations automatically and layers appear and disappear, coinciding with the sidecar text as the user scrolls.

Screenshot of StoryMap Interactive Map
Interactive web maps are placed throughout, providing geographic context behind the events.

As proof of concept, Keenan embedded a Survey 123 form in the story to allow the instructor to ask review questions at the end of a section. The form is set up to tell the user whether they answered correctly. The students’ responses are recorded for the instructor to review later. Keenan also supplied Our Histories Project with training, various how-to documents, and links to existing tutorials to enable continued development of the story beyond Keenan’s involvement. This StoryMaps story provided Our Histories Project with a proof-of-concept to demonstrate to stakeholders the merits of the story format as an educational tool and will aid them in securing funding and administrative approval to incorporate the story format in school curricula.

If you would like additional information about the Our Histories StoryMap, please contact Jennie Henton at ruruproductionsnz@gmail.com.

Project complete.

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