Navigating Harvard Yard

Each of you has been paired with one other student to complete this assignment, as shown on this spreadsheet.

Your pair is assigned to a colored group: yellow, blue, orange, green, or pink.  Be VERY careful to use only the worksheet for YOUR color group.  Links to the right color sheet are provided for each pair in the same spreadsheet listing your pairings. 

Please coordinate with your partner to find a mutually convenient time to carry out this assignment "live" together via video chat, with one of you in Harvard Yard. It should be fun, we promise.  You can use whatever video chat system you prefer.

For all pairings, your starting point will be one of the doors to Harvard Hall, in Harvard Yard. Your colored worksheet gives details.

Ultimately, each student (not each pair) should INDEPENDENTLY submit a response to this assignment on Canvas.
When you are done, to submit this Assignment, here on Canvas, each student should:

1. fill in coordinate information from your outdoor exercise, after its conclusion, at this survey link.  Upload a screenshot of the "thank you" page you'll see when that's done
2. upload a photograph of the building nearest to your End point as explained on your worksheet (make sure your on-campus partner shares that photo with the off-campus partner right after you finish working together). If Canvas gives you any trouble with the upload, it is fine to include the photograph in your Prediction Journal.
3. in your Prediction Journal, enter  1 paragraph worth of text describing any challenges you and your partner faced WHILE navigating together, and 1 paragraph musing on how those challenges, or other factors, may have affected the uncertainty in your final result.  Please submit the URL of your journal as evidence that you've added these paragraphs.

This whole assignment should take 1/2 an hour or less of walking around (physically or virtually), and then 30-40 minutes to complete the uploads and Journal entry.

To carry out this assignment, the person "on the ground" in Harvard Yard, will need a smartphone or tablet that can run Google Maps.  That same device (or another) can be used for the video chat with your partner.  You will ONLY use Google maps briefly, three times, to determine GPS lat/long positions.  Please do NOT use Google Maps, or any other computational or mechanical tools, to estimate distances and angles.  If you feel at all tempted to "cheat" by using these devices, then please only let the remote member of your team do the distance and angle estimation. We have clever ways of knowing if you use measuring devices or electronics, so please don't--analyzing the class's collective navigations will be less fun if you do.

Instructions for finding your latitude and longitude using Google Maps

To retrieve your latitude & longitude from Google Maps on your smart phone, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Maps;
2. Tap the symbol (usually a compass arrow) to show your current location;
3. Wait a few seconds to let the phone's gps improve accuracy (you'll see the "error circle" minimize);
4. Press & hold at your current position to "drop a pin" at your location;
5. Swipe up to see the detailed information about your pin--and you will see a screen that looks like this:

The latitude and longitude are showing in decimal units, just above the line that reads "report a problem." 

The sample above shows latitude and longitude as  42.4465739, -71.2262361 . (Not in Harvard Yard!)

For reference only:

We will extract the Google Sheet from your responses to the Google Form once everyone is done in order to import the full class-worth of information into a display that you'll see in class.  We'll add the link to the final result here, as well as to the  "kmz" file needed to see all the paths you were sent on, once this is done.