Yesterday I was teaching geography to my younger brother. He needed my help in map pointing. In this geographic lesson he has to identify and mark the locations of different cities, mines, rivers and lakes in an outline map. When I was a child I used to practice these lessons regularly. So When my brother asked me for help I was confident that I can help him out. I told him the trick to do these lessons. I also told him that only regular practice can help him do the lessons efficiently.

I showed him a mapping website named mapsofworld.com. From this site he can get a good help. He can learn about the exact shapes of the continents and countries from the outline maps. This site will also help him learn about the neighboring countries of China from the location map of China. The political map of USA will help him to learn about the political boundaries of the country while the information given in this site will help him gain knowledge about the country and its important cities, airports, ports and travel destinations.

When I was a child I did not have access to the Internet. So I could not get the assistance of such fine sites. But the kids in this age of information and Internet can easily access the web and get useful information about their studies.

Recently when I was cleaning my study and found a whole set of school books. I used to read them when I was a kid. I became very nostalgic and started flipping through the pages of an old geography book that I used to study as a student. In this book I found a number of outline maps.

I can still remember how these outline maps gave us the very first Idea about a country, continent or the world. When I was reading about North America I had my first impression of the continent looking at the outline map of North America. There was no political or geological boundaries on the map. However different gulfs, bays and oceans are clearly mentioned on it along with the lakes and rivers inside the land area of the continent. This outline map helped me to get a fair Idea about the shape and size of the continent. I could also learn abut the important water bodies in and around the continent.

I also used the blank outline map of North America for the purpose of map pointing. I have to locate different cities roads, rivers and other geographical areas in this blank outline map. Practicing the geographical lesson fetched me good marks in the subject. The habit has helped me in several ways later on. Even today I help my brother in his studies with my knowledge about map pointing.

When I first chanced upon the educational web sites created by Enchanted Learning for Kindergarten, pre-school and  elementary school children, I was awestruck. There is an entire range of study materials, fun school activities and games that are aimed at making the learning process a fun filled, enjoyable experience for school children. The well illustrated websites developed by enchantedlearning deal with various branches of education. These include geography, biology, history, physical sciences and European and Asian languages. The Math dictionary and fun activities sites are simply awesome.

As I scrolled through the fun educational sites of enchantedlearning, I rediscovered the joy of learning. The colorful, picturesque educational contents aim at bringing out the creative and imaginative spirit in the young learners as well as providing an in-depth understanding of the subject matter. Enchantedlearning has a special section that deals with the different maps and flags of the world. Other interesting sections are the science pages and activities, zoom dinosaurs, zoom rain forests and  nursery rhymes.

Another feature that caught my attention was that the various topics have been systematically organized under different subject heads. For example, dinosaurs, butterflies, biomes, birds, mammals, human anatomy, plants, food chains, rain forests, sharks and whales falls under the biology section. Likewise, astronomy, geology, oceans, volcano, hurricane, tsunami and land forms, fall under the physical sciences section. The K-3 section holds in store an amusing plethora of rebus rhymes, stories, crafts, ‘little explorers’ and picture dictionary. There is also a well illustrated section on scientists and their inventions.

The Enchanted Learning Software website offers an innovative method of teaching that gets the learners hooked on to the process of learning. The picturesque websites with added links to thousands of educational and fun school activities on the Internet, are indeed an innovative and fun filled way to explore the realm of studies and learning.

Europe is the sixth largest continent in the world. There are 47 countries in the Europe and many a times it is not known as continent but considered to be a part of the Eurasia Peninsula. It is better to consult a Europe Map to get all the details about Europe.

I found out different types of Europe maps on various websites. A number of Europe road maps are available which will help you to know about the road transportation in Europe. Similarly, rail maps of Europe are also available. The Travel Europe Map helps in spotting the various tourist attractions of Europe.

 I also found out a vacation Europe map which marks those places where you will love to spend your vacation. All the major hill resorts, beach towns and also the medieval cities of Germany, Italy and France are marked on this map.

So before visiting any of the major cities in Europe, take a look at the maps and you know all about the place!

Our world is full of mysteries and the island of Atlantis is obviously one of them. It is still a mystery whether this island really existed somewhere in the Europe map. It is not possible to guess where this island was located coming across all the modern Europe maps. The name of this island and some details are available in Plato’s writings. Since then, geologists and historians have no other options than just to make assumptions about its actual location.
Plato’s ‘Dialogues’ is considered as a literary masterpiece and he has confidently described the Utopian  society which existed on this island. Greece is one of the main countries in the European map. And as the idea of the Atlantis has evolved from this country, it has been guessed that this island actually existed somewhere near this country. Trysts have been made by the researchers to supply evidences supporting their theories but nothing concrete has come out.
Francis Bacon is another person who describes the New Atlantis society. But in his writings, Atlantis has been described to be located somewhere close to the American continent. It has also been suspected that this island existed in the Neolithic Age. The Pillars of Hercules have been described in many of the writings as the landmark of this island but until now, none has been successful in locating these pillars anywhere in the map.

Searching for a map of India yesterday, I came to know a lot about cartography – the art of map making. I was amazed to find that cartography includes so many things – aesthetics, science as well as technical ability. Moreover, the cartographers have to represent a three dimensional curved surface into a two dimensional flat surface. So much just to make a map!

I was surprised to know the fact that cartography was an integral part of the human civilization since last 8,000 years. Earlier maps of various scales were drawn by hand. In the present times, however, computers have been of great help. CAD, GIS and illustration softwares are of great help for map making in the recent times. A large number of symbols and lines are used in order to depict geographic information on the maps.  A cartographer has to know all these symbols and lines.

Cartography also has two categories – thematic and general. General cartography is done for general users whereas the thematic cartography is meant for specific audience. Apart from this, there is also an orienteering map which is a combination of thematic and general cartography.  Topographic (contour lines) map and topological maps are also available. Most importantly all these maps are available online.