1. If the sun can't see both sides of the globe at the same time, chances are pretty good that a student won't be able to, either. Classroom maps place geography in a bigger picture, providing an eyes-on illustration that perfectly complements the hands-on education of interactive and classroom globes. Maps for the classroom can also open up activity opportunities that are more difficult with globes, such as tracing or making two-dimensional drawings of countries and continents.
2. A classroom world map may not have the technical sophistication of an interactive globe, but sometimes low-tech has its own unique advantages. Dry erase maps, for example, allow students and teachers to engage in interactive learning such as using dry erase markers to identify capitals on a dry erase USA map. Wall decal dry erase maps from Fathead can also be applied to virtually any wall surface. Just pick a spot, clean the wall, and apply.
3. An important difference between classroom wall maps and classroom globes is that because the earth is a sphere, flat maps can't represent its dimensions with 100% accuracy. Mapmakers must introduce distortions in distances and directions to achieve reasonable accuracy with a two-dimensional map. The various methods for doing this are called projections. Some of the most common geometric projections are called cylindrical (cylindrical projection maps have unequally spaced latitude lines and distortions toward the poles), azimuthal, and conic.
4. Though globes aren't called maps, their construction requires map pieces known as gores. Map gores are triangular map sections that are pieced together on the surface of a globe to create a three-dimensional representation. One of the earliest creators of map gores for globes was the German mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520). Yet Waldseemüller is probably most famous for another innovation: he created the map which first used the word America.
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