Tube yourself: How to use Thimble to create a personal map

Mozilla

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Meet Chad Sansing: he’s a humanities teacher, a webmaking mentor and a champion of the open web. If the rumors are true, he’s also an all-around nice guy. Chad helps run the National Writing Project’s MOOC (that stands for Massive Open Online Collaboration) on the topic of connected, participatory learning.
Recently, Chad helped facilitate a MOOC session called Make a Map. One of the learners, Sara Green, used PowerPoint to create a simple but highly impressive graphical representation of her life based on London’s Tube map.


“Plotting the lines and seeing the connections was great fun – and I find it interesting how insignificant my line of formal education is in the great map of lifelong learning.”– Sara Green
Chad recognized a fantastic opportunity for remixing and turned her graphic into a Thimble page called Tube Me. Thimble is an easy-to-use tool that lets anyone build websites from scratch or remix the work of others.
“I thought Sara’s Make was a beautiful hack not only of PowerPoint, but also of the official Tube map and all its beloved parodies. While I’m not a good enough coder to write a random map generator, I knew enough HTML and CSS to make Sara’s map remixable in Thimble, so I borrowed her map as a background image and got to work placing hackable names next to the lines and stations. After a few hours of work, the map, its 8 lines, and 56 stations were open for others to use to describe their own lives, map their travels, or connect favorite lists of stuff.” — Chad Sansing, web mentor
Tube Me
Give it a try!  Check out Sara’s map on Thimble. Follow the instructions on the left-hand side of the screen to customize the map however you like. When you’re done, you’ll have your own Tube Me map, plus you’ll know a little code!
When asked to reflect on his role as a web mentor, Chad had this to say:
Being a web mentor gives me the chance to help other people pursue and share their passions in new media. Some people want to learn to code. Some people are interested in code as a way to share what they’re really passionate about in their daily lives. Regardless, that I can be of service to them and make new stuff with code at the same time is a delight, privilege and honor.
Our thanks to Chad for creating such a fun opportunity to remix the web. We are always on the lookout for great mentors like him. If you are interested in teaching others how to use the web, visit our mentor page to learn more.

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  1. Jared Lamenzo wrote on :

    Hey Chad–I really enjoyed checking out the NWP MOOC on map making. Sara’s idea is a productive metaphor–i’m trying to think how i would order the colors to represent express vs. local (i.e., lines you are on a lot and visit often vs. lines that are important but perhaps tangential). i guess i’m interested in the narrative of how all of these nodes fit into a temporal story.
    I’m working on a Mozilla/Ignite project called http://openpath.me, where people develop their own learning paths based on experiences at locations. Some of these locations/events are tied together thematically or by subject. I might use what you made in a Maker Party of our own to see what kinds of paths through cultural institutions, libraries, parks, etc. we come up with…will let you know.
    Cheers, Jared
    @jaredlamenzo