Saturday, June 16, 2012

Maps of Cook County Government boundaries 2012

Visit this link to find maps showing the current Cook County Government boundaries and the proposed new boundaries.


With more and more people learning to use maps our hope is that they will use them to mobilize volunteer talent and dollars to support the growth of mentor-rich youth programs in areas with highest concentrations of poverty, violence and poorly performing schools.

Elected officials can provide the leadership to bring people together and focus attention on this issue and they can be held accountable by voters for what they do or do not do.

Businesses, hospitals, faith groups in a geographic area can also provide leadership and be held accountable.

Visit more of the articles on this blog to see how maps can be used. This project is in a dormant stage now since funding is no longer available to create these maps and write these stories. However the examples illustrate what is possible.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Public and Private Schools in Chicago. Create Your Own Map

Great Schools offers this widget for making maps showing private schools in a city. I've mapped Chicago. If you're someone writing about public education I'd like to connect so we expand the conversation to include private schools as well as public. Maps like this can help. This map does not include poverty overlays, or show which schools are under performing, but I'm sure others may be developing map-tools to do this. The Interactive Map that the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC hosts includes these features and points to the location of non-school tutoring and/or mentoring programs. However, our map has not been updated in three years and without the resources to do this we can't expand it's impact.