“I Never Use ‘Maps’ Anymore”: Engaging with Sat Nav Technologies and the Implications for Cartographic Literacy and Spatial Awareness

It is somewhat paradoxical that at a time of widespread and increasing adoption of Satellite Navigation (Sat Nav) technologies of wayfinding, geographic and cartographic research has engaged very little with issues relating to their impact on spatial awareness and cartographic literacy. Through exploration of geography students’ engagements with Sat Nav, we investigate how these latest forms of wayfinding technologies are influencing choice and methods of navigation and how they affect attitudes towards more ‘traditional’ forms of maps and map use. We explore engagement in terms of what geography students know about, feel towards, and achieve with, Sat Nav technologies. Principally, Sat Nav is not seen as a ‘map’ but as something different and distinctive. This, in turn, has implications for how people navigate, how they relate to the places and spaces around them and for their spatial cognition and ‘map-reading’ abilities.