At first glance, Daylight Map doesn’t look like much, but upon further evaluation I found a number of interesting uses for it. The basic concept of Daylight Map.com is to demonstrate, on a Google Map, the patterns of day and night around the world. The options menu gives users a choice of viewing the map in (near) real-time or view in an alternate day and time. A deeper exploration of Daylight Map.com shows that it can be used to view changing cloud cover around the world. Daylight Map also has an interesting map of city lights visible at night across the globe.

Applications for Education
Daylight Map can be used by students and teachers to follow the changes in daylight throughout the world. The Daylight Map is useful for showing the shape of the Earth’s shadow on its surface. Teachers and students may also want to look at the Solstice and Equinox plots available on from the Daylight Map. Finally, if your students are building websites or personalized start pages, they may want to add the Daylight Map overlays to their page using the options provided by Daylight Map.com.