This article argues that the integration of local history and geography through collaborative digital mapping can lead to greater interest in civic participation by early adolescent learners. In the study, twenty-nine middle school students were asked to research, represent, and discuss local urban sites of historical significance on an interactive Web platform. As students learned more about local community events, people, and historical forces, they became increasingly engaged with the material and enthusiastic about making connections to larger issues and processes. In the final session, students expressed interest in participating in their own communities through joining nonprofit organizations and educating others about community history and daily life.

This exercise illustrates the concept of spatial correlation, the categorizing of data for mapping, and the use of the scatter diagram. It employs the variables of infant mortality and life expectancy as applied to the Arab World, though any region can be used. The factor of oil exports is added to enhance discussion of the findings. An extra advantage of the exercise is the learning of names of countries in a relatively painless way. The exercise teaches both content and methods of interpretation, and it is adaptable to high school and college levels.

Mapping is a simple activity that can be effectively linked to popular education of non-students. Mapping exercises have the potential to contribute to profound shifts in thought because the activity simultaneously draws on and challenges deep-seated experiential knowledge. The transformative potential of mapping is illustrated with health-promoter workshops for Latino migrant farmworkers in Benson, North Carolina, that took place in 1998 and 1999. The workshops are part of a larger project designed to reduce pesticide exposure by using community participatory research to develop and disseminate culturally appropriate teaching materials among Latino workers.

"In 1930, the majority of Hispanics were of Mexican descent and lived in the five Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. After World War II the Latino migrant stream began to diversify and include large numbers of Caribbeans, and Central and South Americans who generally settled in the Eastern states and California.... The U.S. Hispanic population has increased from approximately one million in 1930, to approximately 32 million in 1997. County maps chronicle the changing distribution and numbers of Hispanics from 1850 to 1990."

"This paper explores four selected facets of the geography of population in the [U.S.] Midwest that are related to the movement of people: (1) the spread of occupance across the land; (2) the growth of the population of counties once they had been occupied; (3) the distribution of the foreign-born population; and (4) the distribution of retired people who have migrated after they have retired."