4/27/2025
I’m actually quite familiar with Storymaps and really enjoy using it for various projects. I was first introduced to it in Professor Kapila’s Travel Narratives class and have used it for a number of classes since then. I feel quite comfortable helping someone else learn how to use this program, and I actually thoroughly enjoy working in it, so no problems there. As for benefits and limitations of this tool, I think there are a great deal of wonderful things about being able to use a map alongside detailing information–primarily in how you can represent different data and create a visually interesting presentation–though there is the downside of being pretty hard to load and move through. I’ve done a number of project where by the end, my Storymap has a hard time loading with the sheer amount of stuff in it. I think accessibility wise, Storymaps can be quite difficult, but also doesn’t necessarily need to be. Considering that it is a very visual-heavy program, making sure that colors are high contrast but not offensive to the eyes, and that images have captions and alt text is very important. Storymaps can get really complex really quickly, but as long as you keep track of what you’re doing as you do it, they tend to turn out fine.