Make Your Own Educational Map

[This post is out-of-date. The growth in online maps in the past couple of years has been staggering. If you are interested in customizing maps for educational use, I recommend the My Maps feature in Google Maps. And make your maps public, so the rest of us can use them, too!]

I've recently created a website that I want to share with other homeschoolers. It's here (www.kids.criticalmap.com).

When I first saw Google's online maps over a year ago, I thought they would be useful in education. I pictured some kind of website where parent-teachers and students could mark up an electronic map with whatever they were studying.

The map would be on a website, so students could see it and manipulate it from anywhere. The map would store their notes and let other people view them. Students could change it at any time. Also they could send to friends or to Grandma an email that linked to their map.

Since the maps are zoomable, they could do anything from labeling the countries that provided components for the International Space Station, to tracking troop placements at Barrett's Farm and South Bridge during the Battle of Concord.

Now the site is up. It's free and anonymous. (I don't like posting children's names on the Internet.)

So create some maps with your children, and let me know what you think.

Feel free to invite anyone else to try it out as well. (I even have a couple of public school teachers interested. . . . )