The "Big Map": a hands-on, shoes off tool for geographic education

The floor of a classroom or a gymnasium can be turned into an enormous walk-on map using United States government aeronautical charts, which cover the land area of the earth at scales of 1:1,000,000 or 1:500,000. When students are invited to kick off their shoes and crawl around on this map, they get a graphic sense of "facts on the ground" in a way that lectures, readings, and other instructional modes cannot provide. The map is striking in showing the immense size and intricacy of the world and also gives a graphic sense of relative scale. The combination of high tech (the maps are the product of enormously complex technology, including satellite imagery and computer graphics) and high touch (the students can literally walk over the world) make the large-scale map a highly effective teaching tool. Techniques include map setup, map-reading games, roving lectures, role playing, use of props, personal histories, and class displays.