How do you use maps in your classroom?

Just to get them started thinking about maps, when I assign reading "Communities in Afro-Eurasia" I display and walk them through the first step of "3 close reads" with a particular focus on its maps and images -  without even looking at the captions, what can they figure out that will inform their reading.  I want them to recognize that they do know something about maps before we even delve into them.

I like to use the introductory map activities from the 1200 course as a way to get students thinking about prominent themes and locations in the upcoming unit. 

We just did the Unit 1 "Maptivity" yesterday - inviting students to pronounce this Welsh city is always good for a laugh!

I prefaced the activity with a "pretest" inspired by this community. Students made world maps out of graham crackers from memory (no googling!) to show their prior knowledge. It was good for a laugh and a fun/tasty way to wrap up the first week of school. 

I like to do an activity, trying to understand the issues with projection, and why projection is so difficult from a 3D globe to a 2D map. So I bring in oranges/clementines for a day and have the kids try and take off the peel and turn the 3D orange peel into a flat 2D map. They are then able to visualize how they have to rip it and distort it in order to make it work.

Mike Weisensel as a geographer, I use maps all the time. It is very important that students visualize the content they learn. I responded a similar question on another thread. 

Maps are super important in the classroom and a great resource! I use maps all of the time in my Latin American and Caribbean course. It's helpful when you are showing students movement of people, revolution, ideas, etc. There are so many interactive and online maps that are free! It just takes time to go through them all and find the right ones for your class/students. OER project has wonderful ones! 

UTexas at Austin has AMAZING maps spanning centuries - it's a must see resource that is useful in any global history course! Here is the link: PCL Maps | The University of Texas at Austin (utexas.edu)

What a really creative way of pre-testing, Anne ! 

For my 9th graders, we always start with a "pre-test" and have students draw maps from memory just on a white sheet of paper, they take a picture and upload it. After we do mental maps through the year, and they compare their end-of-the-year maps with their very first. 

This is everything we put on the map by the end of the year (mental map - drawn from memory). For AP World, our first maps are outside with sidewalk chalk - we'll be doing that next week, and hoping for good weather and no rain! (If there's rain, I have small white boards for each student to draw their first maps). 

I love these maps that you can zoom into!  When I first started teaching I would have these map overlays on the overhead projector (am I dating myself???) and have always wondered if anyone had a program that could do that.  I know there are animated maps that do something similar, but there's something about overlaying a map that shows a bigger leap in time. 

I do have a quick accessibility question for the maps. While I have had lots of color deficient students through the years, I have a “first” this year with a 504 plan for a student with red-green color blindness that specifically mentions colored maps. 

Does anyone have suggestions regarding how to make these maps accessible to color-deficient students?

Thank you Jazmin Puicon for adding the UTexas map collection. It is an excellent repository of maps at different scales of analysis. 

 Freda Anderson after reading your post I thought you could incorporate this awesome video that explains projections and distortions in a visual and compelling way. Do you know it?