Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7 #malta10 TweetMap at small scale zoom level used as a general fieldcourse log (base
map 2010 CloudMade Map data CCBYSA 2010 OpenStreetMap.org)
and
As well as this twitter was used between the six groups to work out a specification of what
features to map so that data collected between the six groups would have similar char-
acteristics when joined together to create the land cover(not land use!) map.
Twitter also enabled current and former students who had attended the Uni-
versity and other interested followers of the field course to contribute from a
distance which widened the participation of the trip (''@Muchel1977: nice sitting
in Germany reading #malta10 tweets. Some nice memories. Enjoy your trip'').
None of these external observers contributed to the discussion perhaps high-
lighting that local observation was important for category formation. A compar-
ison of 2008 versus 2010 data collected by students demonstrates a greater level of
consistency and accuracy in data collection (O'Brien and Field
2012
; Field and
O'Brien
2010a
). In 2009 a beta version of the TweetMap was tested with 2008
being the last iteration of the exercise incorporating no m-Learning tools, hence its
comparison to the 2010 exercise.
Student/staff collaboration was enhanced through the use of Twitter and the
monitoring infrastructure of the TweetMap geocollaboratory. Determining student
location based on tweets allowed progress to be coarsely estimated. Data updates
