Pursued and Google Maps: Stay one step ahead

Imagine you are a trained undercover agent. While helping a little old lady across the street after saving stranded kittens stuck in a tree, you’re ambushed by evil doers.

You’re taken prisoner, shoved in the trunk of their getaway car, and transported to a secret location.

But because you are a trained undercover agent, you’re able to escape. The problem? You’re not sure where you are. You could be in any city in the world!

And so begins your adventure in the very cool, free, online, geo-based game called Pursued. Using the Street View feature of Google Maps, the makers of Pursued have created a great way for you to trains kids to ask questions, use visual clues, think spatially, become comfortable with geography tools, create mental maps, and solve problems all while having a good time.

Tip of the Week: Updated Google Earth Tour Guide Feature is Sweet

The title should really read Sweeeeet – with a lot of  extra eeee’s. Because Google Earth’s latest update incorporates an incredibly tasty feature.

Called Tour Guide, the feature provides guided excursions to and through a wide variety of geographic places, both famous and obscure. There are over 100,000 tours in 200 countries with more than 1,000,000 photos now available – from flying tours of the Roman Coliseum to Dodge City’s Boot Hill.

Old Maps Online

For any newbies out there, I love a good map. I buy maps. I like the smell of old maps. I especially like using technology with maps.

And I think that as social studies teachers we sometimes forget the power of maps. We have “too much to cover” and “don’t have time for geography.” But we do our students a disservice when we ignore the fascination and appeal of maps.

Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps, understands what a good map can do:

Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory or the fantastic landscape of dreams.

A recent addition to the interwebs is right up my alley.

Called Old Maps Online, it lets you search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.

The difference between Old Maps Online and other online map sites is that OMO is a portal, not a collection. It basically uses a Google Mpa interface and a slider timeline feature to help you narrow down time and place – it then uses its access to the online collections of five institutions to give you a set of maps from which to choose.

Pretty sweet.

Newspaper Map tool perfect for social studies

As social studies teachers, we’re always looking for great current events resources. And what history teacher doesn’t love old newspapers as primary sources?

I just ran across a site that does both. And translates stuff into English for you. And provides a very cool way to visual browse over 10,000 newspaper in map form. And has a mobile version for iPods, iPads and cell phones.

Called newspaper map, the relatively new webapp uses Google Maps to visually display newspapers from almost every country in the world. You can filter the map results by place, address, newspaper name and language. The further you zoom in, the more pins you see. The larger the pin, the larger the paper.

When you find and select a specific paper, you have the option of going directly to that paper’s web site or selecting a specific language for translation.

So . . . read the New York Times to get a sense of what is happening in Tripoli and then browse over to the Arabic language paper Libya Almostakbal. Click the English hyperlink and another page opens with a Google Translate version of that paper.

Seems like a great way for kids to see and read different perspectives of the same event. Have kids read and compare papers from different parts of the US. Have kids read and compare papers from a variety of countries. You could even have different kids read different papers and then debate based on the perspective of their paper.

And if that’s all newspaper map did, it would be pretty awesome. But wait . . . there’s more. There is also a Historical layer that you can turn on and off in the filter box. Clicking that button gives you a different set of papers. Opening any of these papers link back to a variety of historical archives including the Library of Congress Chronicling America site.

So now . . . not only are you finding historical primary sources that discuss events of the day, your kids can do the same compare and contrast activity they were doing earlier with current events. Or simply use newspaper map to find and share some great historical documents.

No matter how you use it, the site is one that needs to be added to your toolkit.

Tip of the Week – Tripline is perfect for history and geography!

I heard about TripLine just this week and haven’t had a real chance to play with it much yet. But the samples and basic idea seem very cool. It’s a timeline slash history paper slash multimedia presentation all built on top of Google Maps. The completed projects work on mobile devices and there is a handy iPad/iPod app to go with it. Social media sharing tools are built in and it looks pretty simple to use. It’s digital storytelling made easy!

At its most basic level, Tripline is a way for you to communicate by putting places on a map. That’s a very human activity that has been happening for thousands of years. It’s also a way for you to easily ask and answer questions about your favorite places and topics and the best way to tell your travel stories. And just like in the movies, the Tripline player gives you an animated line moving across the map with a soundtrack. That’s appropriate, because our journeys are our own epic tales of discovery and adventure.

If you like history, you could use Tripline to create The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere or Lewis & Clark’s Journey. If you’re into current events, you could create The Inauguration of Barack Obama or Capt. Chelsey Sullenberger’s famous Flight of US Air 1549. When we first started, I was amazed that map-based visuals of events like these were so difficult to find online. I think now that Tripline exists, that sort of map-based content will have a home. And the possibilities are endless: author and band tours, charity walks and rides, culinary adventures, fictional trips from books and movies, sporting events, scientific expeditions, etc.

Have fun!