Map games

Word got around to a student who wasn't at my focus group on Monday night that I had talked about doing some kind of games with maps. One of the games mentioned in Trefry's presentation on Big Games is to print a map of New York on one side of a piece of paper, and a map of Baghdad on the other side with landmarks marked on it. People hold the map up to the light and find how those points line up in NYC, then go to that part of the city to learn something about the landmark in Baghdad.

The focus group had suggested using fictional maps like Gotham City, Narnia, or Middle Earth with campus or even all of Williamsport. People could then go to these cites and do something. The students seem to be really excited about this, and it would be a great outreach event, and the student I just mentioned caught me in the caf yesterday to talk about it. But I'm not sure what to put at those sites that would be exciting... Plus the only one of these places I know anything about is Narnia. I'm not sure which of the three has the broadest interest, I know our campus has a popular annual Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit each year that pits faculty against students.

This will take some pondering.