My Maps Tutorial

1. Let’s make a simple map.

• Open My Maps
• Create a new map
• title your map (click on “Untitled map”)
• Using the My Maps tool bar:

• Add a blue marker to the map indicating your home town. Label it.
• [BONUS] Add a picture of a house to the info window that pops up when you click your blue marker
• Add a red marker to the map indicating where you are right now. (Zoom in to be specific). Add label.
• Draw an orange line between the two points. Add label.
• Create a brown semi-transparent polygon that outlines the District of Columbia. Label.

• Give the layer a name.
• Choose a different base map

2. Let’s make a data map!

• Download three datasets (you may open them in Excel to see what the raw data looks like)

• Virginia Museums (.xlsx)
• Virginia tornadoes (.csv)
• Encyclopedia Virginia contributors (.csv)

1. VIRGINIA MUSEUMS

• Click “Add Layer”
• Click “Import”
• Import “Virginia_museums.xslx”. Select the fields in your data that describe the geography of the location of each row of data.

• Address
• City
• State
• Zip

• Click “Continue”
• Choose “Name” as your markers title and click “Finish”

We want to give markers a style based on what kind of museum they are. The information is contained in the field “DISCIPL” in the data that you imported.

• [BONUS] Can you figure out how to view the underlying spreadsheet data in My Maps?
• Click “Uniform style”
• Choose “Style by data column” and DISCIPL
• Change the colors associated with each museum type if you wish.
• Give the map layer that you just created a new name. (It should currently be named Virginia_museums.xslx)

(2) VIRGINIA TORNADOES

• Add second layer and name it.
• Import “Virginia_tornadoes.csv”

• Use “StartLat” for Latitude and “StartLon” for Longitude
• Use “Date” for column title

• Style by categories “injuries”, Range - 4
• (Uncheck your Museums layer to see your Tornado data more clearly)
• Change color scheme
• Change markers to diamond shapes
•  For the four most fatal tornadoes add a custom marker (use the url “http://phedlund.com/images/tornado-2.png” in “more icons” and click “add icon”)

(3) ENCYCLOPEDIA VIRGINIA CONTRIBUTORS

• Add third layer (EV contributors) - more problematic data set.
• Fix the addresses (simplify?) to get rid of the four data errors (you can double-click on a cell to edit the text)
• Edit markers that appear WAY outside of Virginia to move them to Virginia (you can use the My Maps search bar to help locate the proper location for those wayward markers)
• Change markers to circles.

3. Let’s Share our Map

• make public
• share URL
• embed code

4. Accessing Your Map on Mobile (Android only?)