13 Great Map Web Apps

1] FlickrVision: Great workshop tone-setter (mind you the risk will always be there for inappropriate photos...)

2] ClustrMaps: Easy to embed, and great for tracking site visitors. Scroll to the bottom of this page for a sample.

3] Google Maps: Easy to create; You can add text, hyperlinks, photos. An evolving example: CCK08 Participant Map.

4] Visual Complexity: Maps of many different types to show 'information'. See more than the screen captures by visiting the links from each page... simply amazing visualizations!

5] FlashEarth: Not quite Google Earth, but a full screen interactive model of the earth. Tour NASA map; open layers; Microsoft Virtual Earth...

6] TwittEarth: Twitter fans might like to see where international tweets are coming from. This is another great tone-setter.

7] Map of the World 2.0: A mosaic of logos recreates the planet.

8] Traveler IQ Challenge: A fast-paced game that rewards both speed and accuracy in plotting major cities on a world map. If you prefer to learn countries, a slower paced 'blackline master' game is available at GameDesign

9] MapMe.com: Create and share maps that include photos, audio and video.

10] GeoGraffiti: One for iPhone users! Add audio tags to locations you visit. Other users can use the GPS capabilities of their phones to listen to historic re-enactments; public reminiscing, or live anecdotes.

11] Music Map: Which bands are closely related to others? It is surprisingly relevant for finding artists similar to your favourites.

12] Intellicast: My favourite North American weather map resource. Animated radar is super-effective in helping me anticipate precipitation.

13] Global Political Map: This full screen, zoomable PDF is the best I've found. The map is accurate as of 2007. The 2004 version is also available.

What other great mapping tools would you add to this list?

Photo Credit: NASA

Top Ten Tech Tools (Summer 2008)

Recently, Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies asked me to reflect on my top ten learning technologies, and while I've made sustained use of many tools from my original list (January 7, 2008), a number of new tools have cracked my Top 10. As we head into a new school year, my revised list now includes:

1. ScreenSteps: This is superior and simple to use tutorial creation utility. Great for creating software 'how to' documents as either PDFs or HTML pages.

2. ScreenFlow: Optimized for OS 10.5, this is the most polished screen grab utility on the market today. It's the best tool out there for creating engaging software demos and tutorials.

3. G-Mail: Simple, reliable, sortable, with effective filters (including spam filters) and plenty of room for large files and archives. The included writing tools and survey tools form a significant part of my 'cloud office'.

4. Google Reader: The Google franchise provides a common look/feel for my daily work. It helps that Google makes it simple for me to export/embed my RSS collections.

5. Blogger: I'm here many times a week, as this tool resulted in the genesis of www.thecleversheep.com

6. Twitter: Along with tools like Twhirl, and Twitterific, I leverage this tool to keep in touch with colleagues near and far. There is no other tool that provides as many links to rich content and ideas.

7. Garageband: Since January, I've been producing the Teacher 2.0 Podcast 3-4 times each week using this iLife app. Simple to use, it is a powerful creativity app.

8. Flickr's Creative Commons: I regularly use licensed photos from photographers around the world in my creative work.

9. Adobe Connect: This tool and it's online cousin Adobe ConnectNow continue to allow me to engage in meetings with geographically scattered colleagues, as both host and participant.

10. Keynote: Oooh-la-la! Stunning graphics, transitions and exports to clickable movie files, what more could you ask for in presentation software?

Check out the newly released Top Ten Tech Tools podcast on Teacher 2.0 for more details on these top ten learning technologies.

Photo Credit: David Guzikowski

You Call 'This' a Normal Day?!

I was just reflecting back on the different applications I've used today... pretty much a normal day, and I'm coming to the realization that there are many tools that are a normal part of my workflow.  Consider the following rough timeline:

Midnight: Access my Del.icio.us bookmarks to find the name of the 'wakeup call' website I'd recently bookmarked.

12:02 a.m.: Set up a 7 a.m. wakeup call at http://www.wakerupper.com/

7:00 a.m.: Awake to the sound of my cell phone ringing... Upon answer, a mechanized voice reads back to me the message I'd posted 7 hours earlier.

7:10 a.m.: Load Camino web browser and with one click, open my 'Daily' bookmarks folder to read the news of the day. 

7:20 a.m.: Quick check on Twitter to see who was up to what last evening...

8:00 a.m.: Early arrival at the workshop site provides me with time to a few recent skating photos from iPhoto to my Keynote presentation

8:10 a.m.: My district e-learning contact is not yet on site, so I decided to select a topic from my Xpad notebook and to record a quick little Podcast using Garageband

8:18 a.m.: Convert podcast to MP3 format in iTunes.

8:20 a.m.: Upload podcast to Libsyn and ping the iTunes server.

9:00 a.m.: Share Keynote presentation with workshop attendees (various 'photos of ice-skating', zamboni, shovel man... as a metaphor for e-learning).

9:15 a.m.: Open multiple tabs in Camino to highlight e-Learning tools in Ontario.  Work with participants on course customization in their browser of choice: MS Explorer (yuck!)

10:30 a.m.: Highlight for participants how Flickr and Audacity can be used to create more memorable communications in the online course environment.

11:00 a.m.: Tweak 'how to' documents in ScreenSteps and send PDF versions to participants via First Class

11:45 a.m.: Check on my work mail for urgent messages via First Class

1:00 p.m.: Assist district ICT consultant in mini-workshop to tame Google Documents, and Wet Paint wikis as places to host online course materials.  My take is that these tools can be leveraged by students for electronic portfolios.

1:30 p.m.: Assist district e-learning contact in enrolling students in courses by using an Excel spreadsheet (csv format)

1:45 p.m.: Phone Desire2Learn to investigate internal email issues in the learning management system.

2:00 p.m.: Partner with district ICT consultant to highlight how Google Analytics tracks web traffic (my RPT site has hits from 162 countries to date!)

2:30 p.m.: Review evening ice skating in Komoka movie created in iMovie and uploaded to blip.tv to complete the metaphor: "If you build it, they will come."

2:45 p.m.: Time to drive home... Catching up on my favourite CBC podcasts on the 2 hour drive

7:00 p.m.: Visit the recording of an Adobe Connect e-learning session on 'course customization' that I missed while driving home

7:20 p.m.: Open Flock to check on my 'network' of education bloggers, twitterers,  and social learning networkers

7:40 p.m.: upload new links to my my Del.icio.us bookmarks

7:45 p.m.: type this blog entry in Flock

8:20 p.m.: upload blog entry to Blogger


There is nothing exceptional about this day... in most ways it is a mirror of my 'normal' working day. My exposure to multiple applications the past ten years or so make this seem all so natural and seemless.  I'm sure that this is far from a 'normal' day for a teacher, but with the way my day flows, I rarely reflect on the apps I'm using.  Then again, maybe I'm just a 'geek'?

Does anyone else think about their daily workflow in terms like these?

Blogged with Flock