NearbyWiki - A Mapped Display of Wikipedia

NearbyWiki is a new website that displays Wikipedia entries on an interactive map. The purpose of NearbyWiki is for visitors to learn about buildings, statues, and parks by clicking through a map. For example, a search for Boston on NearbyWiki will reveal more than 500 markers on the map in and around Boston. You can then click on any of those markers to learn more about the place they represent. 

In the screenshot below you can see that I clicked on the marker on NearbyWiki for Brewer Fountain in Boston Common. I was then able to click through to read more about the fountain and bookmark it for later reference. 

Applications for Education
NearbyWiki could be a good tool for students to use to discover and learn about some interesting landmarks in a city or town. The upside to using NearbyWiki instead of Google Maps for this purpose is that students won't come across things like restaurant reviews that are written and published on Google Maps. 

Another way to think about using NearbyWiki in your classroom is to have students use it to find the Wikipedia entries for places in their local communities and then fact-check those entries. 

Try ArcGIS Explorer Online for Mapping Data and More

In my previous post I mentioned ArcGIS Explorer along with Google Earth. While I've written about Google Earth many times I've only mentioned ArcGIS once even though it is an excellent alternative to Google Earth.

ArcGIS Explorer Online allows users to create mash-ups of geographic data on a map. Users can add data layers to the whole map or to a section of the map. A dozen map base layers are available to build upon. To add data users can select the ArcGIS data base or upload their own data files. As you create in ArcGIS Explorer Online you can switch between "mapping" mode and "presentation" mode. Presentation mode allows you to create map-based slides like you can see in this interactive map of The Odyssey.

ArcGIS does offer free accounts to students. The free accounts are "public" accounts and have some limitations on the amount of information you can map.

Applications for Education
ArcGIS Explorer Online could be a good tool for geography teachers whose students cannot access Google Earth. And for some students ArcGIS Explorer Online might be easier to navigate than Google Earth. In either case ArcGIS Explorer Online provides a good tool that will get students analyzing data in a geographic context quickly.