Which software program to use

[michele0464@gmail.com]

Hi,
I teach 8th grade US History and am thinking of creating a class that will have students create a large US map. I would like to start with the outline of North America and then as students are learning about the geography of North America they will add to the basic map. Then after the physical aspects of the map is created I want them to study US History through the lens of map making. Ideally I would like a software program that would allow students to have layers on their maps a little like vellum or tissue paper. They would be able to take off and change the layers depending on what we were studying at the time. The basic physical map of North America would always remain the same. This way they could student the development of the transcontinental railroad and maybe the routes of the pony express.

Being new to this as well I would need something user friendly with great tech support. I came across this website and registered with the hope that many of you may be able to point me in the right direction.

I appreciate any and all support and suggestions.

Sincerely,
Michele Lawrence

[Josiah VE]

Photoshop is excellent for maps (it's the program I use). GIMP is similar to photoshop, almost as good, and free! You might want to check it out. Of course there is a learning curve to all programs, and it might take a little bit to figure GIMP out. Good luck!

[Gamerprinter]

I am partial to using Xara Photo & Graphic Designer x11, which though is paid for software ($89), I find it very easy to learn and use, though a very powerful vector drawing program. Inkscape is a free vector drawing program though not as easy to learn and use as Xara. I use Xara to create all my professional map commission work, however.

[waldronate]

The first few questions would be:

1) What's your budget in terms of monetary units? I have a suspicion that it's very small, suggesting an open-source product.

2) What's your target platform? By this, I mean Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, cross-platform, or browser-based?

3) Is the goal for each student to work independently on their own map, to allow students to sync with and contribute to a master map, or some other model such as peer-to-peer?

4) Will the work be graded for each student or is this purely intended as a study guide?

5) For the basic elements, do you want students to place things (drawing on the map directly) or do you want students to be able to reveal portions of the map for the current unit. You may be familiar with the water-painting toy where a brush is used to paint water onto rice paper to cause the paper to become transparent in the painted area, which reveals an underlying image. This sort of thing can be accomplished in software fairly easily. A more complex version would require that students correctly answer questions to reveal an area (this variant requires curriculum development and entering data into a product or use of a commercial product such as http://lizardpoint.com/geography/americas-quiz.php or http://online.seterra.com/en with the caveat that getting per-student information can be difficult ).

6) How much time to you expect students to need to operate the software? The art-oriented products suggested above are excellent at what they do, but may have too steep of a learning curve given the already-tight time constraints of a typical classroom.

I can keep going on, but those are the major ones. From a cost and complexity measure, you might be better off with a set of handouts, transparencies, markers, and (depending on your collaboration goals) an overhead projector. A simple light table (or the windows in your classroom, if any, and some tape) can be a fun way to have students trace from one sheet to another. Transparencies and markers are good for adding information to a base map without affecting that base map. Tracing paper and pen is the traditional solution, of course.

[johnvanvliet]

as above a bit more information is needed

but some guesses

almost all are using win10 with a few Apple Mac users and the one or two LINUX users ( the nerds in the class , like ME-- or is it " I " -- see XKCD comic strip )

i use almost ALL "opensource" code

mapmaking
I work with NASA JPL and ESA imaging data and use some specializes software , but a few things would work for you

Qgis
a GIS ( geographical information system ) that is opensource
AKA --- FREE

and it runs on Linux,Apple,and windows

in GIS software one corporation has 90% market share and use that monoplay to charge $1500 to $7000 per license

so Arcgis by esri is out of the question



photo editor

The Gimp - great full service image editor ( been using it for over 15 years)
and it runs on Linux,Apple,and windows

Krita - nice for basic things ( and looks"cool" )
and it runs on Linux,Apple,and windows



for the geography / Topography of the USA have a look at the North America DEM
-- start here
http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/
and
http://eros.usgs.gov/
http://eros.usgs.gov/elevation-products
and direct link to the global height data
https://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/

-- a few images i did a bit back from the STRM data ( Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)
-- random bits of the world
https://goo.gl/photos/QvpzL85r5SsdcKwd7




Qgis can use almost all the data for the usa
https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/NED

https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

[Hai-Etlik]

QGIS is certainly worth a look. It's designed for this sort of thing and is able to read raw geographic data like that you can get from Natural Earth, or national mapping agencies like USGS, NRCan, and INEGI (The three you'll probably be interested in for North American data sets). It can also automatically line up data and match projections.

Historical data can be more troublesome and may require georeferencing (Taking an image and positioning it precisely on the globe) and digitizing (tracing). QGIS has tools for that, but it does mean going a bit deeper. You might find the corresponding tools in graphics editors like GIMP or Inkscape more intuitive, even if they aren't really designed for this task. You can also run QGIS as a web server where it will provide a web site based on a project you developed in the web app.

You might find MapStory interesting https://www.mapstory.org/ MapStory is a web site that allows temporal maps to be "played" kind of like videos. You'll need a GIS tool like QGIS to prep any data you want to load into it although you might find what you need already included in its library.

Disclaimer: MapStory is a client of my employer and I was recently assigned to work on MapStory although my contribution is decidedly back end stuff so I'm not that familiar with actually using it. My employer also contributes to QGIS and sells commercial support for it although I'm not involved in that project.