There are many educational tools available to parents and teachers these days. From the Internet to PowerPoint presentations, the tools seem limitless. But one of the most useful and powerful tools is still the old fashioned world map.
Many of us grew up in the days when one of the most interesting and most used items in the classroom was the world map. Countless hours have been spent by countless children standing in front of one of these things, their eyes hovering over the various countries and continents as they searched for a particular place. Who can forget coming across some strange named place and how our imaginations would immediately take hold with visions of what life in that place must be like? There was almost a sense of adventure as we studied those far away places and names.
For many of us, the geography alone was a thrill. We looked with interest at the vast area that the oceans occupied on our planet and then we searched for the highest mountain range or the snow capped poles. All of it was pure fun to us, but it was also educational. The world map in the classroom was a focal point of the room, whether we believed it then or not.
The world...