On the afternoon of December 18, 2024, the 71st lecture of the "Suiyuan Teacher Talk" Academic Innovation Forum on Teacher Education was successfully held in Room 314 of Xueming Building, Xianlin Campus. Jiang Xiaorun, a Jiangsu Province Special-Grade Teacher, Senior Teacher, and Geography Subject Leader in Nanjing, delivered an academic lecture titled *"Design and Production of Maps for Geography Teaching."* The event was hosted by Professor Wu Xiaotang and attended by master’s students majoring in Geography Education from the Class of 2023 at the School of Teacher Education, as well as some master’s students from the Department of Geography Education in the School of Geographical Sciences. The lecture was also broadcast live nationwide as part of the National Public Online Lecture Series by Special-Grade Geography Teachers, attracting over 100 online participants.

         Jiang Xiaorun structured her lecture around three key questions: *"What characteristics should maps used in teaching possess? What tools can be used to create maps? What resources are available for use?"* Step by step, she shared her expertise in designing and producing maps for geography education. 

 

First, Mr. Jiang explained the differences between vector and raster graphics, demonstrating why vector graphics are better suited for geography teaching. By showing how two world maps could be zoomed in, zoomed out, and cropped, she illustrated the scalability and flexibility of vector graphics. She used a classic textbook illustration to highlight how vector graphics can be decomposed into individual elements, which can then be rearranged as needed. Additionally, she emphasized how vector graphics, composed of points, lines, and polygons, align perfectly with the requirements of geography teaching maps. 

Next, Mr. Jiang introduced tools for creating geography teaching maps, focusing on GIS software, vector graphics editing tools, and Office or WPS software. She emphasized the most user-friendly and least technically demanding approach—using the drawing tools in Office or WPS. Mr. Jiang guided participants through practical exercises, such as creating knowledge structure diagrams with text and shape boxes, drawing coordinate graphs with line tools and alignment features, producing statistical graphs with curves and polylines, creating simple maps using base maps and freeform lines, and designing rivers, railways, and distribution diagrams using layer stacking and Boolean operations. These methods, which are both practical and easy to implement, were well-received, and many participants actively practiced them during the lecture. 

Finally, Mr. Jiang recommended three categories of resources for map creation. The first category consisted of standard map resources, including platforms like the National Map Service and Tianditu, where she demonstrated how to use and process these resources with vector graphics software. The second category was a WPS map plugin developed by Mr. Jiang herself, which allows users to insert commonly used teaching maps into WPS documents for customization, layer coloring, and other adjustments. The third category was professional mapping software, such as Global Mapper, which she used to illustrate how to create contour maps and demonstrated techniques for creating population pyramids using Excel spreadsheets.

At the conclusion of the lecture, student representative Cai Sixuan summarized the event and facilitated a Q&A session with Mr. Jiang. This lecture not only introduced technical solutions and practical tools for creating maps tailored to secondary school geography education but also enhanced participants' geographic thinking and teaching skills. It laid a solid foundation for their future careers in geography education.