Day: February 8, 2018

Historical pinned pictures


This is absolutely brilliant.

Read on if you enjoy taking a pictorial walk back in time.  I started with the historypin website.

Screenshot 2018-02-07 at 10.51.48

I tried an experiment, fully expecting to strike out.  I asked historypin about my hometown.  I didn’t think that there would be anything about Clinton, Ontario.

I was wrong.

historypin returned an interesting split screen.  On the left of the screen was a Google map showing the town.  On the right was a small, but interesting collection of images.  The first one actually had the Google Peg that, when clicked, overlaid the current Streetview with the image that was posted.  It was an interesting display of then and now.

I did enjoy the pictures that were there but then I started to pay a little more attention.  Except for the first picture which was a sort of default generated icon, all of the other images had a reference to Western Archives, Western University.  I opened that link in a new tab before doing a little more exploring just entering random locations into the historypin search and enjoying the results.  Stratford, Goderich, Chatham, Sarnia, Windsor, Kingsville, Petrolia, …

Then, I went back to the open tab.  It was a summary of activity from the Western Archives.  They had indeed been busy with a total of 3500 pins.  As you would expect, most of the pins were from their London, ON collection.

But not all.

Screenshot 2018-02-07 at 11.08.46

And, I was off.  This is a delightful collection to explore and the positioning on Google Maps puts everything into context.

Those from Southwestern Ontario will appreciate their efforts.  I can only imagine what students would think about the history of their community displayed right before their eyes.

And, of course, that’s just the beginning.  I know that early morning readers of this blog post will come from Hamilton, Peterborough, Thunder Bay, Toronto … you won’t be disappointed.  If you’re checking in from Zug though, it’s empty.  Zurich does have some.

Why not take a digital tour with your students soon?

OTR Links 02/08/2018


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.