World Map is a free program developed by the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. World Map is designed to enable creation, visualization, and exploration of geographically referenced information. In other words, you can build some great mapped data visualizations on the service.

To create a map on World Map you can use the more than 1800 data sets that are stored in the service or you can upload your own data sets. The majority of the data sets in the World Map library have abstracts explaining a bit about the purpose and scope of the data. There are five default base maps that you can choose to build upon. Alternatively, you can choose to create your map completely from scratch and upload your own base layer to build upon. Maps that you create on World Map can be embedded into a website, printed, or viewed in Google Earth.

The video below provides a short overview of how to create a map using World Map. There are many other how-to videos on the HGA YouTube channel.

Applications for Education
If you’re looking for web-based map creation and analysis tools that offer more than you can find in Google Maps, give World Map a try. You might start out using World Map in your classroom by using the data set library then expand its use by having students create and or find other data sets to import.