Lab 3 - Neogeography

View Road Trip Through Mexico in a larger map

This map here details one of the trips that my family and I took while we were in Mexico this past summer. The trip is centered mainly around historical landmarks and religious iconographic images because of our family devotion to the Catholic faith. The trip because in northern Mexico, at the Mexico/U.S. border in the city of Tijuana. Here there is a famous arch that is meant to welcome visitors with its sign that reads "Bienvenidos A Tijuana." The next stop is 5 minutes from my dad's hometown village in El Verde, Sinaloa. Here rests the corpse of a famous Mexican singer whose songs are still frequently played on Spanish radio stations. After that we traveled down to Mazatlan, a major tourist city notable for it beaches and nightlife. The seafront here is referred to as "el Malecon." Next, we visited the church where lay a famous Catholic Saint in the heart of Zacatecas, where my mom was born. Furthermore, we visited a site where there is a enormous architectural body of Jesus Christ. Later, we went to El Zocalo, an outdoor plaza where the citizens gather for several types of activities including entertainment and political occasions. Then we made our way to the Temple of Kukulkan that attracts numerous tourists each year because of its awe-inspiring scenery. Lastly, we cruised around the Caribbean Sea in a boat that left from Cancun, also a major tourist site.
Using the Google Maps interface allows any user to become a neographer, a beginning geographer who can design his own maps but with limited knowledge. The pitfalls of using this program is that we are limited in the features that are available to us. The main features we have are plotting points and making descriptions. Aside from that, the interface is user-friendly and offers a tutorial that gives instructs a user about the main features available. With a program like this, we are able to share our own knowledge of the world with other users who may happen to run in to it. We are able to share it with friends and family who we may not see frequently. A pitfall about Google Maps is that it is like Wikipedia, we do not know if the information is valid or not. The only thing we can do is trust that users are using it with its intended purpose: to share knowledge.