Mapper

- Engaged Spatial Learning -

By Brendan Clark

The technology of the map gave to man a new and more comprehending mind, better able to
understand the unseen forces that shape his surroundings and his existence.
- Nicholas Carr, author of In the Shallows

Demand for geospatial technology professionals has grown significantly... growing at an

annual rate of almost 35 percent, with the commercial subsection of the market expanding at
the rate of 100 percent each year.
- Jack Dangermond, president of Esri
The Entrepreneur

Brendan Clark
Geographer, Educator, Entrepreneur

Brendan has a background in geography, ten years of

teaching experience, and is a graduate student in the
Masters of Education Technology program at the University
of British Columbia. Through direct experience, he has
developed the leadership skills needed for bringing out the full potential of a venture team, as
well as an understanding of the education markets technology needs and challenges.

Brendans goal is to provide an educational tool that lets students take information from their
environment and map it using the same techniques as industry professionals. Through
engaging activities, students will learn valuable skills that are used in numerous industries and
develop complex learning through mapping.

The Ask

1) Team members - Educators, Geographers, Developers, Marketers

Mapper is in the early stages of development. Assembling a knowledgeable team is the highest
priority for the venture. Involvement at this point will have a significant impact on the product
and the financial outcome of the venture. The team behind this venture is committed to
geographic education, and is seeking creative individuals with venture and software
development experience.

2) Financial investment - a fundraising goal of $1 million CAN

Mapper utilizes the same open source tools used to develop Foursquare, an application with 45
million users worldwide. Foursquare began with 1.35 million dollars in initial funding. Mappers
early fundraising goal is based on this similar venture.

Investment will be used for the development of the product, including developer and marketer
wages, cloud space, and hardware. The relatively low development costs of this venture mean
that any size of investment will be significant. The tools for development are already in place,
allowing Mapper to reach market quickly, and for investors to see returns in a timely fashion.
The Problem

Countless students will remember having been handed

a generic black-outlined map of Canada with an
accompanying set of instructions. The long numbered
list would include tasks like label the continents or
colour the following bodies of water blue. These
activities may have seemed pointless; copying
information from an atlas was neither creative nor
engaging. When returning to the classroom as a
teacher, ten years later, one would expect to see
something different. The number of classrooms using
maps has increased. The B.C curriculum now includes
Geology, Science and Technology, Earth Science, and
Sustainable Resources on top of the regular Social Studies classes. The textbooks have better
maps, some showing pollution, or historical political boundaries, but the activities are largely the
same. In a place where students have access to Google Earth on their smartphones and
professionals use Global Positioning and Geographical Information Systems (GPS/ GIS) to
create powerful thematic maps, why are we still asking students to colour the oceans blue?

Educators have not adopted mapping technology for the geography components of the
curriculum because suitable applications do not exist. The mapping programs on the market
are either too simplistic and lack functionality, or they are too complex and require too much
prior knowledge, investment, or processing power. Very few of the products on the market were
designed with the education market in mind; cloud-based applications lack the security and
privacy needed in the secondary school classroom, and learning and assessment tools are
absent.
So What?

There are innumerable benefits of learning how to map. Using maps teaches the brain to think
in symbolic terms, students learn to think visually and spatially in both the real and abstract
world. Maps teach the mapmaker to view reality with a specific lens. This lens has the unique
ability to view multiple sets of data and observe the spatial relationships between them. With
the correct tool, students can develop abstract thought by creating and manipulating dynamic
spatial information instead of merely analyzing the static images in textbooks.

Making maps is far more engaging than analyzing them; students learn to use problem-solving
and creativity to take control of their projects and personalize their learning.

Finally, map-making skills are job skills. GIS is

used in a wide range of industries including:
transportation, public safety, natural resource
management, health services, communication,
marketing, and the military. Workopolis lists
over 10,000 jobs across Canada that require
GIS skills and the American Bureau of Labor
Statistics predicts an increase in well-paying
employment for cartographers. Students
thinking about their future may be motivated
by the demand for mapping knowledge.

What is Mapper?
Mapper is a cloud-based map-building tool designed for students in grades 8-12. The goal of
Mapper is to provide a selection of tools that allow the student to play with geographic data to
create interactive, thematic maps. Students use tutorials to guide their learning through a
variety of mapping skills, ultimately learning how to use existing collections of geographic data
from open sources, customize and analyze maps created by themselves and their peers, and
learn a platform modelled after the industry standard, Esri GIS.

Mapbox will provide all the tools necessary to

create Mapper, simplifying the development of
the application and making it cost effective for
the venture team and ultimately its
consumers.

Mapbox provides its users with several

map-making tools to use in commercial
ventures. Foursquare, Pinterest, and The
Financial Times are just a few ventures that
use Mapbox to enable map functionality to
their applications. The list of successful apps
that use Mapboxs tools shows the versatility
available to its users. Mapbox provides its
TileMill Design Studio and kits designed for
Android, IOS and Javascript, allowing
developers to customize tools for any platform
they desire.

Map development tools, and open source geographic data will allow Mappers team to create
the only affordable mapping solution designed specifically for the education market.
The Market

The Software and Information Industry Association found that the education technology market
grew from $7.76 billion USD in 2010 to $7.97 billion USD in 2012. This growth, however, is not
shared across all forms of education technology. Of the 207 curriculum products listed by
Edsurge, a curator of education technology, only eleven are listed under geography and none
specifically teach mapping skills. Competition in the map-making market comes from a few
education-specific interactive maps
available online, a few map-making
cloud-based apps designed for specific
consumers, and Esri Arcmap, a
professional application used across a
variety of industries; demand for this
type of software and people who know
how to use it has increased over the last
ten years.

Both fixed and customizable maps are

easy to find. The websites of The
National Geographic and the U.S
Geological Survey let users play with
thematic layers to learn about
environmental trends and resources. These tools are far more useful than the maps founds in
textbooks, but they lack the functionality that allows students to move from analysis to synthesis
and beyond. Google Map Maker, Map Creator, Open Street Map and Esri GIS allow the user to
create or modify maps. Consumers also interact with a wide range of tools with mapping
components; Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and many others utilize maps for specific functions.

The functional capability and cost of these tools are polarized. Free tools, like Google Earth,
allow users to add destination markers, tags, notes or routes; these functions are useful for
users, but they are designed to be easy to use, not educational. By contrast, tools aimed at
developers and professionals require skills that are too advanced for learners, and they are
expensive; Esri Arcmap Online can cost in excess of $10,000 USD per year for fifty users and
requires a deep understanding of geographical data.

Marketing
Mapper will be marketed as an affordable,
education-focused map-making application with the
functionality of the professional industry standards.
Educators will be able to teach the geography
components of the curriculum in a way that is
engaging and aligned with todays technology.

The initial goal is to market to North American school

districts and secondary schools or classrooms.
Mapper will be available through multiple cloud-based
platforms. Access can be achieved through mobile
apps or online, using a web browser. The
functionality will not limit Mapper to this market; the
product could eventually be marketed to colleges for
introductory courses, or to education systems outside
North America.

Yearly licenses will be offered at affordable costs. The license will give users updates, support,
and the security and privacy essential for educational settings. Yearly licensing will allow
Mapper to maintain relationships with its consumers and users, providing an opportunity for
support, feedback, and a steady stream of revenue.

Why Invest?

1) Environmental curriculum has grown, but there are very few mapping applications designed
for the education market, and none with the functionality of Mapper.

2) The learning benefits and job skills gained from mapping will make Mapper marketable to a
wide variety of educators.

3) Mapper will utilize the advantages of cloud-based, and open source tools, making the
powerful application efficient and affordable to develop. This will allow the product to be offered
at an affordable cost to the consumer, creating a high return on investment over a short time
period for investors.

Reflection
Creating an elevator pitch and a venture pitch has been a new and very challenging task. I will
take away a lot of valuable information about the unique qualities of the education technology
market, and about the vast amount of tools available that now make pitching a venture much
easier than it must have been in the past.

After struggling to think of an original educational technology idea, I realized that there are a
number of opportunities to take a professional product or service and create a version designed
for the education market. Introductory tutorials and videos that often accompany hardware and
software are not designed for education, theyre designed to get a consumer started. Building
engaging and interactive tools that teach the technology in depth would help educators use
complex technology in the classroom.

When creating my pitch, I found it difficult to imagine an audience of real potential investors.
How knowledgeable an investor may be about a topic could very greatly and I was having
trouble finding the middle ground between dumbing the idea down and presenting the concept
with too much depth or technical jargon. Having a variety of elevator pitches could be beneficial
to help deliver the message to different audiences.

I also found market information difficult to find and present. It seems that many education
products are unique and relevant data is hard to find. Trends in the education technology
market as a whole are too broad to get a clear picture of how much demand a product could
have. Specific market data may only be available for a products that are too dissimilar to be
useful. Strategizing how to attract investment then becomes difficult because there is too little
information to prove that your new product is part of a growing market. Before taking the initial
leap into pitching a venture, I would put more energy into researching the potential market
directly in addition to finding existing market data.

Works Cited
1. Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, W.W. Norton and Company, June 2010.

2. Cartographers and Photogrammetrists,

bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/cartographers-and-photogrammetrists.htm#tab-6. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2014. Web.

3. Esri Industries, esri.com/industries. Esri, 2014. Web

4. Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014, Gartner.com. Gartner Inc, 9 Oct 2013. Web.

5. GIS Industry Trends and Outlook, gislounge.com/gis-industry-trends. GIS Lounge, 2014. Web.

6. Job Seeker, Workopolis.com. 2014. Web

7. Manton, Prakash, Saleh. Factors Affecting the Acceptance of Game Based Learning. International Journal of
Computer Applications, 92, 13, 1-10, 2014.

8. Mapbox - Design and Publish Beautiful Maps, Mapbox.com. Mapbox 2014. Web.

9. National Geographic Map Maker,

education.nationalgeographic.com/education/mapping/interactive-map/?ar_a=1. National Geographic, 2014. Web.

10. Occupation Title: Geographic Information Systems Technicians,

aag.org/cs/Salary_Data_and_Trends/Professional_Scientific_and_Technical_Services/15-1099.07. Association of
American Geographers, 2014. Web.

11. Open Street Map - The Free Wiki World Map, Openstreetmap.org. Openstreetmap, 2014. Web.

12. Secondary Curriculum Map by Subject, bced.gov.bc.ca/environment_ed/ele_maps_sc8_12.pdf. BC Ministry of

Education, 2014. Web.

13. The EdSurge Edtech Index, edsurge.com. Edsurge, 2014. Web.