By Cordelia<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience that was exploring the \u201cGeography of the Post\u201d digital map created by Stanford University. I found that the Status View of the map was much more helpful than the Duration View in terms of taking advantage of the information presented by the map. The Duration View was harder to distinguish the separate spans of time, as the shades of teal were difficult to tell apart from each other and therefore, much of the information was lost. Yet, with the Status View, post offices could be easily distinguished and the same information is present with the use of the adjustable timeline.<\/p>\n

What I liked the most about this map, however, was the ability to view historical events as they happen through the establishment of post offices. For example, the California Gold Rush is suddenly visible, as is the great Mormon migration to Utah. This is, arguably, the true purpose of the map, unless one were to conduct research on actual post office establishments and closings. Post Offices represent a settlement’s ability to communicate, survive, and be a part of the nation so, post offices are completely representative of a settlement and a map of them can, therefore, showcase the growth of the west.<\/p>\n

I agree with what Alec mentions regarding the right, eastern half of the United States. Although leaving this section of the map blank doesn’t change the usefulness of the map, as its entire purpose lies in the illustration of the west, it is slightly eerie and can cause confusion. I would, therefore, suggest to fill in the east, or just get rid of that part of the map. It really serves no purpose as the audience this map is reaching will be well acquainted of what the United States looks like and can figure out that the eastern half is missing. I also agree with the idea that Alec mentioned and that we mentioned in our discussion in class that including natural features such as rivers or mountain ranges could benefit this map. It would add a higher level of focus to identifying city locations as well as provide insight as to possible motivations behind settlement locations. As most features of this digital map can be toggled on and off, this could easily be done for this feature as well.<\/p>\n

As I stated before, I really enjoyed this map and found it to be very insightful and an interesting medium through which to navigate the westward expansion of America.<\/p>\n

<\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cordelia I thoroughly enjoyed the experience that was exploring the \u201cGeography of the Post\u201d digital map created by Stanford University. I found that the Status View of the map was much more helpful than the Duration View in terms of taking advantage of the information presented by the map. The Duration View was harder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}