How do you use maps in your AP World classroom?

Oh maps!  I use maps constantly and have various projections of maps all over my classroom.  In part,  I'm sure it's because I am a visual learner myself, but I do believe that one misses a lot of basic analysis if one doesn't understand, for example, who's next to whom, how to get from point A to Point B, and how tech and science is reflected in an era's map. There is a 10 - point map on every test I give, AP or on-level: it's 10 places we have talked about in class.  States, water bodies, key cities. It's not memorizing. It becomes the easiest 10 points on a 100 point test for them. I number places ona blank map from 1-10, give them a key that tells them what they are, and they just write down what it is.

In terms of skills, I give them blank maps on paper and online, and I often have them draw the maps in their notebooks, as I draw it on the board in squares, triangles, and circles.  It's kinesthetic learning, really!

Skills: visual document reading & sourcing (POV, intended audience) + CONTEXTUALIZATION.

The students tend to be fascinated by non-Mercator maps.  Here's what I have pinned to my boards and taped to my walls  (along with an aging set of standard roll-up maps): 

• a modern western hemisphere with south on the top.  That usually catches their eyes first, and I stop class to have the Maps as History discussions.  Maps, too, have a POV and an intended audience.  Western hemisphere "turnabout" map
• I have a Walters Museum map of ancient Egypt with south at the top and  the Nile flowing "down"  to the sea from northern mountains. Piri Reis -Map of the River Nile
• I have a Peters Projection (shout out to the West Wing episode discussed earlier) peters-projection-map
• I have a Chinese world map with the Pacific Ocean basin in the middle, and the Atlantic sliced on two sides, looking very insignificant. the-map-youll-see-in-chinese-classrooms
• I have a Ptolemaic map of the world  with no western hemisphere digital maps of the ancient world
• I have a modern demographic map Mapping by relative pop. size (this isn't the one I have; I think a Human Geo teacher gave me one)
• I have a map of world languages, size dictated by # of speakers a-world-of-languages  (this isn't the one I have, but I might have to get it as a replacement)
• I have an Australia-centered modern map, which is the one I saw as a new teacher and my head exploded, because no one had ever shown me anything like this before.  Here's a good article + 2 maps on "why is North UP?": maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html..  These tend to be called Upside down maps (sigh) if you are googling them.
• I bought a globe literally to illustrate the obvious: There is no up and down in space.
• I also sacrificed a National Geographic beachball of the world and pinned it up like an insect specimen, to show that when you dissect it, you get an unusable map with blank spaces (orange peel-like).  So all 2 dimensional maps have distortions, and the cartographer picks which one she uses.  Goode_homolosine_projection

As my last words on the subject, there are maps all over the AP exams that students are asked to read and analyze in a variety of ways.  If you don't have your own classroom, you could create a slideshow that lives on your LMS and use that, too, or have a "weird" map as your screen saver when kids come into class.

Oh maps!  I use maps constantly and have various projections of maps all over my classroom.  In part,  I'm sure it's because I am a visual learner myself, but I do believe that one misses a lot of basic analysis if one doesn't understand, for example, who's next to whom, how to get from point A to Point B, and how tech and science is reflected in an era's map. There is a 10 - point map on every test I give, AP or on-level: it's 10 places we have talked about in class.  States, water bodies, key cities. It's not memorizing. It becomes the easiest 10 points on a 100 point test for them. I number places ona blank map from 1-10, give them a key that tells them what they are, and they just write down what it is.

In terms of skills, I give them blank maps on paper and online, and I often have them draw the maps in their notebooks, as I draw it on the board in squares, triangles, and circles.  It's kinesthetic learning, really!

Skills: visual document reading & sourcing (POV, intended audience) + CONTEXTUALIZATION.

The students tend to be fascinated by non-Mercator maps.  Here's what I have pinned to my boards and taped to my walls  (along with an aging set of standard roll-up maps): 

• a modern western hemisphere with south on the top.  That usually catches their eyes first, and I stop class to have the Maps as History discussions.  Maps, too, have a POV and an intended audience.  Western hemisphere "turnabout" map
• I have a Walters Museum map of ancient Egypt with south at the top and  the Nile flowing "down"  to the sea from northern mountains. Piri Reis -Map of the River Nile
• I have a Peters Projection (shout out to the West Wing episode discussed earlier) peters-projection-map
• I have a Chinese world map with the Pacific Ocean basin in the middle, and the Atlantic sliced on two sides, looking very insignificant. the-map-youll-see-in-chinese-classrooms
• I have a Ptolemaic map of the world  with no western hemisphere digital maps of the ancient world
• I have a modern demographic map Mapping by relative pop. size (this isn't the one I have; I think a Human Geo teacher gave me one)
• I have a map of world languages, size dictated by # of speakers a-world-of-languages  (this isn't the one I have, but I might have to get it as a replacement)
• I have an Australia-centered modern map, which is the one I saw as a new teacher and my head exploded, because no one had ever shown me anything like this before.  Here's a good article + 2 maps on "why is North UP?": maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html..  These tend to be called Upside down maps (sigh) if you are googling them.
• I bought a globe literally to illustrate the obvious: There is no up and down in space.
• I also sacrificed a National Geographic beachball of the world and pinned it up like an insect specimen, to show that when you dissect it, you get an unusable map with blank spaces (orange peel-like).  So all 2 dimensional maps have distortions, and the cartographer picks which one she uses.  Goode_homolosine_projection

As my last words on the subject, there are maps all over the AP exams that students are asked to read and analyze in a variety of ways.  If you don't have your own classroom, you could create a slideshow that lives on your LMS and use that, too, or have a "weird" map as your screen saver when kids come into class.