Spatial sites and images for the classroom

Spatial Worlds website
Picture descriptions:
Left image: Toronto skyline from the CN Tower
Right image: The snow on the Italian Alps, flying from Rome to Prague on December 27th, 2007.

Whereis Map search
This site should be familiar to everyone. Its main purpose is as an online street directory but more information is being added to the site regularly (e.g. parking, wireless internet connections). Maps can be saved and easily pasted into word files or emails. This is a very useful site for introducing basic GIS concepts to younger students.
http://www.whereis.com

European Space Agency
Here is another website to have a look at. This website provides some excellent resources, particularly remote sensing imagery, of major cities around the world. You can register your school and access free software to create images etc using basic GIS principles. What is impressive is that any layers you create, can be transfered over to either ArcView or MapInfo
http.www.esa.int/education/eduspace

Several links from the National Geographic's My Wonderful World gateway. Some great activities for students to get involved in.
My Wonderful World
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org

The GIS games
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/toolsforadventure/games/gis.html

Running Ahead
On this site you can register (free) and use Google Earth to track out your running/biking track and determine how far you have gone (or are intending to go!).
http://www.runningahead.com/

A new blog role: Teacher resource repository

Spatial Worlds website
Now that my travels have been put on pause, the Spatialworlds blog can serve a new purpose. What I plan to do over coming months is to develop via blog postings a repository of neat spatial websites and pictures for teachers to use. Each site posted will have a brief summary of its nature and functions to guide their use. Naturally only sites I consider as having a useful classroom function will be posted but their worth and quality is up to the reader to decide. I promise not to post more that 10 at a time and look forward to suggestions from others about any spatial sites they have found of use. There are so many great spatial websites up there now that it impossible to see the trees for the forest. To that end I hope this blog can help. Many of the sites would have already or will be in the future be posted via the GTASA's infoservice. To register for free on the GTASA infoservice facility go to http://www.gtasa.asn.au. The aim of this blog is for these resources to be in one place for easy access.
With each posting I will also post several pictures which could be useful to geography teachers. The images can be saved by enlarging the picture, right clicking the mouse and selecting 'Save as'. Over time these free copyright images will supply geography teachers with a collection of images from around the world which can be used in the classroom whilst teaching a wide range of topics.
I hope to make a posting at least once a fortnight just to keep things rolling along with the blog. Hope these are a good start for this new blog purpose.

The beginning of the repository:

Wikimapia
Satellite imagery of the world that you can zoom into. People can add information to the maps freely. . It is like wikipedia, but for maps. Fun for students to get involved in adding places to the world!
http://wikimapia.org/

Spatial Literacy in Teaching (Splint) site from the University of Nottingham
As well as supplying some useful links on spatial literacy the site has a great surname search platform. Once you reach the home page - click on the Search a Surname and Start a surname search. It provides thematic maps of surname prevalence in the UK. You can also see the change over time. Let’s hope it includes Australia one day.
www.spatial-literacy.org

Mapzone and GIS zone
UK Ordnance Survey website. Great for introducing mapping skills and GIS into the
classroom. Very student friendly and excellent for classroom activities on the applications of GIS.
http://mapzone.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/mapzone/index.html
http://mapzone.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/mapzone/giszone.html

National Geographic site
A great site for images, podcasts, maps and much more. Fantastic resource for the geography teacher.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/maps/

Reef base is a global information system for coral reefs.
A great GIS interface for classroom activities on coral reefs and global warming impact.
http://reefgis.reefbase.org/mapper.asp

Great climate and travel site
This site enables one to calculate the environmental of flying.
http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/index.html