“Scaling Up Classroom Maps”
Daniel C. Edelson
Vice President, National Geographic Education
Read Danny Edelson’s latest column in the Spring 2011 edition of ESRI’s ArcNews. An excerpt appears below.
Usually, when you talk about the scale of a map, you’re talking about the ratio of distances on the map to distances in the real world. These days, however, when educators working with National Geographic maps talk about scale, they may be talking about how big the map is. For example, a teacher may have her students working on a map at the “scale” of a tabletop, a large wall, or even a basketball court.
So what’s going on with all these big maps? Well, we’ve learned that kids find large maps to be magnetic. And not just young kids. Teens and adults find large maps irresistible as well.
Imagine walking into your school gym and finding half of the floor covered in a glorious, full-color, National Geographic map of Asia. If your school is one of those that has signed up for a visit from one of National Geographic’s Giant Traveling Maps, you could.
Continue reading “Scaling Up Classroom Maps” in ArcNews.
Photograph courtesy Mark Thiessen, National Geographic.
Reading your post took me back down memory lane when our maps were small and nothing compared to what you describe. Fortunately, a great geography teacher inspired us to see beyond the small maps and think “big”: to visualize beyond and see the world for what it is and could be in our imagination.
Wonderful for students today to enjoy fabulous new mapping tools and mapping resources. Really enjoyed your insights, thank you for sharing.