Citizen Cartographer

As researchers of located learning, we are interested in the public use of vantage points to gain different perspectives and views that can be linked into a way of navigating an area of the city and comparing the distinctions of areas and specialised districts that both spatially and emotionally define our understanding of urban places. Specifically, we investigate how locating vantage points and viewing the city from above can be described as wayfinding activity. The street with its buildings and infrastructure, green spaces and private/public zones becomes a site for learning. Here, data such as longitude, latitude and altitude points provide a more abstract plane for recording waymarks that can be utilised to make and share personal excursions. The point of our research is exploratory; to devise ways of finding and recording views of the city for pleasure - using user-generated data to plot new kinds of topographical map. In this chapter we describe the ideas behind a ‘height sensitive’ project and investigate how an abstract system of referencing, geo-location, may contribute to learning through direct experience. We present the development of a service for mobile devices that begins to articulate what we have gained from making physical vantage points into recorded waymarks in excursions that involve users in mapping the urban environment.