Title Card: Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Intermediate | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersCritical literacy includes learning to see absence, exclusion, and uneven representation. GCDI’s Geochicas: beyond map making highlights Geochicas as a collective producing geodata from a feminist perspective, organizing mapathons and pedagogical spaces, and working to reduce the gender…

Title Card: Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Intermediate | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersMaps are often treated as illustrations, but some of the most interesting maps function as arguments. GCDI’s Mapping Occupation is a good example: it was designed to convey newly organized data about Army outposts after Appomattox and to…

Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Beginner | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersScale and projection are basic features of maps, but they are easy to ignore because they often sit quietly in the background. Open cartography texts explain that scale concerns the relationship between map units and real-world units, while projection concerns…

Title Card: Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Beginner–Intermediate | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersA useful literacy skill is learning not just how to admire a map, but how to diagnose one. GCDI’s Top Mapping Mistakes is especially valuable because it frames recurring problems as a mix of cartographic issues, skipped planning,…

Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Beginner | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersMany people think map design is cosmetic, but it is actually interpretive. Open cartography resources emphasize that visual hierarchy helps readers notice the most important information first, while symbolization and visual variables such as size, shape, hue, and value determine…

Creator: Parisa Setayesh | Level: Beginner | Category: Literacy: Visual and Critical Literacy Why this mattersVisual literacy is not just about looking at a map and recognizing locations. It is about interpreting visual information, noticing how attention is guided, and understanding how a map produces meaning. Your GCDI post Beyond the Map: Visual Literacy &…