At CU Denver, I recently helped design and implement a mapping application to collect feedback from Denver's youth about what they like and dislike in their neighborhoods. The application wasn't simply a static map often used by car rental companies, like ­car hire shannon­. It was an interactive mapping application that was used to conduct a survey. Children and teenagers were able to add markers to their home or other important places and answered three short questions about the neighborhoods around them. The whole application was built as a kiosk, and participants at the exhibition were able leave their feedback right at the spot.

The big opening was last Friday and I heard back from Darcy Varney, the curator of the exhibition, today: "... it adds a wonderful interactive dimension that has already engaged lots of people and was consistently popular throughout the weekend."

For the mapping part I rediscovered the WorldKit toolkit. One, because of its annotation feature, which is really easy of use and its ability to attach all kinds of input, especially in this case survey questions. The lack of an internet connection was another reason to go with WorldKit as a lightweight mapping solution without having to add something like GeoServer or MapServer to the mix.

Also, as much pain it is to make websites work with Internet Explorer, the kiosk mode is wonderful. If you're looking to adding kiosks as part of your eParticipation projects, you should definitely take a look at this feature.