As a part of my School University Dialogues research project, I’ve been visiting high school and college writing classrooms. I spent some time with my UNH colleague Leah Williams yesterday. She’s a creative writer, primarily, and has done some amazing things as far as developing techniques for teaching students about multimodal writing and digital composition. I sat with her students, who were writing stories about first jobs and summer camps, landmarks and realizations.

They were working on Googlemaps biographies —using maps to chart their narratives through physical locations — which seemed like a lovely way to think about this week’s #walkmyworld theme, our Journeys.

So, I tried it. I didn’t include full stories or original photos for every location I’ve lived, but I enjoyed combining the map, my own stories, and images that I’ve made and saved over the years. This snapshots-like technique appeals to the poet who still lurks inside of me (and is a little afraid of long-form personal writing).

Here’s a link to my Googlemaps essay. You can’t see much in this tiny screenshot.