Teaching the Middle Ages (TMA)
ArcGIS StoryMaps
Giovanni Boccaccio's One Hundred Tales
Students at Victoria University in the University of Toronto participated in an expertiential learning project, building a new story map of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron by applying methods of semiotics to storytelling.Teachers can use the maps to teach The Decameron and ideas of storytelling to High School students by considering signs and meaning, narratology, and intertexuality. The tales also are accompanied with images and maps, set up as a virtual museum, and useful for Art History, Geography, Medieval History in addition to Medieval Literature. A few tales were completed in 2021. More tales will be added as the project grows each year.
The ArcGIS project, entitled Giovanni Boccaccio’s One Hundred Tales: The Decameron StoryMap, was created by Dr. Teresa Russo and powered by the University of Toronto's Map and Data Library with the support of Gerald Romme, GIS Analyst. Students from Material Culture and Semiotics Program (MCS) received an EWO WIL Student of the Year Award and are grateful to teachers, industry partners in Ontario - York and Niagara Regions - for their knowledge and support, especially Dr. Gianluca Agostinelli of the Niagara Catholic District School Board. TMA shares the project here for teachers.
StoryMaps
Stolen
The Library of Congress used its collection to create a StoryMap about the Aztec Conquest and the arrival of "the white bearded visitors" to the lands of the Mēxihcah, which took place around 1519 or the beginning of the Early Modern period. The story recounted with material culture and maps by Maria Guadalupe Partida of the indigenous people of Mexico also includes information from 1325 and the later Middle Ages. The school curriculum in Ontario includes learning about the Indigenous people, and this ArcGIS is a great opportunity to learn about indigenous people outside of Canada to compare to the Indigenous communities in Canada.
The project called Stolen was created by Maria Guadalupe Partida
in collaboration with the Library of Congress Hispanic Division. TMA shares the project here for teachers.
