Cartography Training/Go natural

Mary Liwhu Marcellinus is a determined, world-travelling cartography expert on a mission to make maps and education accessible to all. With an adventurous spirit and a knack for teaching, Mary’s YouTube channels (Spatial Intelligent and one focused on the African diaspora) reflect her passion for geospatial tech and community building. Her journey has been anything but ordinary, shaped by resilience and a drive to turn hardship into opportunity. She's blending mapping, teaching, and environmental advocacy. Along the way, she's crafting children's storybooks and productivity systems while exploring creative ways to integrate offline solutions for her MapSmart Kids app. Above all, Mary is dedicated to making the world a more informed, connected place—one map at a time.

When we look at a map, we usually expect "north" to be at the top. It's such a normal part of map reading that we rarely question it. But have you ever noticed how confusing it can be to actually navigate with that kind of map—especially when you're not facing north? In 1992, cartographer Alan MacEachren explored this exact problem in his paper “Learning Spatial Information from Maps: Can Orientation-Specificity Be Overcome?”. His work asked a simple but important question: Does the way a map is oriented affect how well we learn from it? 🔄 What Is Orientation-Specificity? Orientation-specificity means that our memory and understanding of a map can get "locked" to how the map was first presented to us. For example, if you learn a route on a north-up map and later try to recall it while facing south, you might struggle. This effect shows how our brains tend to connect spatial memory to specific visual frames—even if those frames don’t match our real-world ori...