Playing and Learning With Google Maps

Remember school? Do you recall which your least-favorite subjects were? I do. And these include history and geography. For some reason, the concepts, ideas and other lessons the teachers taught didn’t register as easily. Maybe it was because things were so low tech during my time. Books were great, but it’s even better if you can explore with more interactive tools.

Here’s where Google Maps comes in. I’ve always thought that Maps and even its bigger brother Google Earth have great potentials as learning tools, both for in-school students, and on your own.

For one, history and geography students can be made to search and explore for locations of interest online. They can now visualize better where Mt. Rushmore, the Himalayas, or even the Ural mountains are. And they can better understand why Pearl Harbor was a strategic location for the US in the Pacific, especially during World War II. There is a lot that one can learn from exploring a virtual representation of our world. And what’s great is that compared to maps or a globe, Google Maps can give you satellite imagery–you can see what’s actually there in the place you’re exploring, or at least a fairly recent photo capture, that is.

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Now all work and no play makes one dull, right? You can also rely on Google Maps for some excellent entertainment. There are a handful of people who have designed games based on Google Maps, and using the Google Maps interface itself.

Take Find the Landmark, for instance. This game asks the player to search the Google Map for the landmark stated. Users can even add their own entries, which may include countries, places, actual landmarks, and other things. (It took me more than ten minutes plus some cheating to find where the country Djibouti is located.)

And if you’re a fan of the Carmen Sandiego series when you were a kid (I was!), you can try the Brewster Jennings Protects America global spy hunt game. Players are asked to hunt for places from some clues given, which will eventually lead you, for instance, to where the nuclear bomb is planted. And there’s a time limit! If you don’t succeed, you might get to witness some rogue organization destroy the world!

Brewster Jennings Protects America

Have fun!