For making your custom Google maps (for the walking/virtual tour exercise): You can find information here. If you get stuck on something, let me know and I'll help you with it. Check out the links on the schedule page under "day 9" for some projects and other things related to embodied and virtual experiences of place/space.
For the future:
What I'd like us to do following the walking/virtual tour exercise is develop either a) one project, with multiple parts, that the class produces collectively OR b) a suite of a few projects by small groups that we can bring together somehow.
The goal for these that I'm setting is that they should use the experiential/theoretical methods of tourism (including art/critical tours) that we've been discussing in service of exploring aspects of our locality not widely accessible already.
Some links for potential subjects:
James Lowen's research on Sundown Towns in Illinois
Chicago Torture Justice Memorial
MLK Jr. Park proposals for City of Urbana
Interurban Rail History
Research Funding and the University
Boneyard Creek
Some ideas for form and method:
Pocket Guide to Hell Tours: Haymarket Reenactment & University of Chicago's Hidden Histories
Spectres of Liberty
Bureau of Urban Secrets' Tour of the Presidio
The Futurefarmers' Politics of Play
Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City (I'll bring a copy of this to class)
Some basic research tools
UIUC Map Library collections
Image above from Solnit's Infinite City
