Map Games

Maps are used in almost every class room in the country and around the world. Maps help students get oriented with location of certain places on the globe. With today's technology, maps are no longer just stationary on paper. Students can now use map games on the internet that allow them to interact with the maps. Some maps light up when the curser is placed over a location. This turns into a memory type game. When something lights up, it enables the brain to associate that lit up place with the color that lights. The website http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm, has a list of interactive games for children involving maps. Examples are landscape maps that highlight a specific geographic region, lake maps that highlight the lakes in the U.S., capital maps that involving picking the correct capital for the highlighted states and many more. This website is mainly geared towards a younger population, most likely 1st to 6th grade. The next website, http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx is for an older population such as middle school to highschool. It has games such as trivia and crossword puzzles. It also deals with the whole world unlike the other website which is U.S. based. By turning maps into games, it gets students actively involved in what they are learning, rather than just staring at a paper map and listening to a techer talk. Also, some of the games keep score so it is a competitive thing to want to have a high score. In order to get that high score, the students have to learn places on the map.

New England Recreation Mapping

New England has great places to vacation and enjoy the great outdoors. From camping to white water rafting, New England has something for everyone. In the 2009-2010 getaway guide for Massachusetts, there are plenty of suggestions for family trips. The guide uses more charts than maps to show various activities. It is a very visual guide in order to catch the reader's eye. Pictures portray Massachusetts recreation in a way that makes you want to pack right now. There are a few small maps in the guide, but they just show generalized locations of the activity. In the very back of the guide, there is a road map of Massachusetts, but it is a little small, and hard to use if one is trying to find a route. The other guide is very similar, except it's for New Hampshire. It uses photographs to pull you into the recreation being advertised. There is also a road map in the back, but again, a little small. As far as mapping the actual recreational activity, these guides aren't the best. They can tell you how to get to an area, but the maps don't show the actual state forest or campsite.