I started playing around a bit with the Google Maps API. The API allows you to include Google Maps content on your own web pages. For example I have wanted to create a boundary map for my school. With a little bit of work, I was able to create a rough outline of our boundary and include it with the map that displays on our page.

I found the process to be pretty straightforward. If you are comfortable playing around with html code, then utilizing Google Maps on your own site should not be hard to do. For my boundary map, I had to find the latitude and longitude information for specific addresses in order to create the boundary line. The site Portlandmaps.com contained all the information I needed to find specific locations and also the latitude and longitude coordinates for those locations. The Google Maps API documentation page provides easy to follow instructions for including this information to form the outline of your boundary.

Our school boundary gets a little confusing on the east side of our attendance area. I checked addresses I wasn't sure of against an address database that our district maintains to help parents locate their neighborhood school. I plotted the coordinates to form a rough outline, entered them into the Google Maps code, saved the page, and was happy to see that it worked.

This is a first rough draft. Once school starts I hope to work with teachers and students to create maps that can be helpful to our local community. For example maps that include information such as bus stop locations, mailbox locations and crosswalks locations. We will also be involved with a project sponsored by the City of Portland's Transportation Office called Safe Routes To School. I anticipate working with teachers and students to create maps of bike and walking routes based on traffic safety information provide by the city.

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