Animaps
There has been quite a reaction to Animaps this week on the social networks. The ease with which you can create an animated map with Animaps seems to have particularly appealed to a lot of teachers.
Animaps lets you create your own animated maps. You could use the application to create an animated map of a journey you have taken, or to show how a bike / yacht race progressed or even to show the progress of armies in a famous battle.
With Animaps you can quickly animate, map markers, polylines or polygons. As well as the animation features you can add photographs and video, that will appear (and play) at the points you say in your animated map.
Weaving History
Another map that should appeal to teachers - well at least history teachers, is Weaving History. This application from the Open Knowledge Foundation lets you create your own history maps with a little help from the
Simile Timeline and Google Maps.
With Weaving History you can create your own historical timeline and map without any programming skills. To create a new timeline map you just need to start a new 'thread' on Weaving History and add some relevant 'factlets'.
When adding factlets you can just add the URL of a Wikipedia article and the factlet is added automatically. As you add factlets to your thread they are automatically added to your thread. It is as easy as that.
Add a few factlets to a thread and you soon have your own historical timeline map.
World of Fourcraft
Why settle for being the Mayor of Macy's when you can be the King of New York?
World of Fourcraft is a clever new Google Maps based game that turns your foursquare check-ins into a giant game of Risk. If you live in New York you can sign in with your foursquare account and then swear your allegiance to one of the city's boroughs.
After you have chosen a team every time you check-in with foursquare in New York you add one of your armies to that neighborhood. If your team places the most armies in a neighborhood you win that area for your borough.
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