Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3
Tweet visualization environment demonstrating a discussion theme of Maltese tourism
study area. The following day after the students had gained familiarity with the
area, small groups were assigned ''service areas'' (Fig.
2
) and given the same
instructions. The land categorizations were deliberately vague to encourage the
students to use Twitter to collaborate.
Figure
3
illustrates the various elements discussed within the methodology. The
greyscale photo overlaying the Google
TM
base map data is supplied from our
ArcGIS
Server. The tweets are reorganized around a central point to depict a
discussion theme of tourism with common terms linked to the tweets which make
reference to them. Only the most commonly used terms are mapped (no con-
junctions or prepositions & greater than 5 uses of the term). The line thickness
denotes the position of the term in the tweet as a primitive indicator of signifi-
cance. The search bar for themes is shown in the bottom right corner and supports
logical operators such as AND, OR and NOT.
The students used Trimble
TM
Juno
TM
PDAs and ArcPad
for data collection
and made supplementary use of Garmin eTrex devices as a backup and for pro-
viding tweet coordinates. Students sent tweets via SMS from their mobile phones
and had the ability to send and receive data via 3G cellular network to an ArcGIS
Server. The high cost of 3G access in Malta (approx. $8USD/Mb) limited students
from sharing data in this manner but they did upload data to the server via local
WiFi hotspots and/or via the staff's portable WiFi hotspot located at their initial
starting location.
