AM3: Mashups with Google Maps

Overview

For AM3 (Achievement Milestone 3), students first learned to work with the Google Maps API: showing a map on the page, using the geocoding service to find coordinates for random addresses, creating markers and info windows to display on the ma, as well as calculate distances between locations.

Secondly, students could choose to use a second API to provide additional data about the entitites that they display on the Google Maps.

Finally, the mashup needed to have interesting user-interface features to provide informational, educational, or entertainment value.

Student Work

Game: Finding US Capitals

One group of students, MR, Jamie, and Sophia worked on the idea of a game about US state capitals. They took this idea and each implemented their own version.

  1. MR's version can be found here. Cool feature: countdown clock set to 10 seconds to keep the user guessing fast.

Informational app: Find businnesses in your own locality

Susie and Lee worked on the idea of searching the Yelp API to find desired businesses in the area and show them on the map.

  1. Susie's version of Around the Town.Cool feature: the "Refinements" button that can reorder results, and do an animation of the markers on the page.
  2. Lee's version of Around the Town.Cool feature: when clicking a marker, bringing the information about that location at the top of the page.

Food at the Wellesley Dining Halls

Audrey worked on parsing data from the Wellesley Fresh menus and make them searchable. Her app shows the days and halls when you can find desired foods.

Food options this week an app by Audrey.

Location Information Finder

Diana combined the Google Maps API with the Wikipedia API to search for places and display information about them.

Location Information Finder by Diana.