Old Maps Online is a good use of Google Maps that I recently learned about through Google Maps Mania. Old Maps Online is designed to help you find historical maps of where you live or any other location that you enter into the search function. By default Old Maps Online searches for maps near your location. You can refine your search to a specific time using the timeline slider on Old Maps Online.

Old Maps Online doesn’t host the maps that you find through their search box. Old Maps Online refers you to the host of the maps. One of the frequently used hosts is the David Rumsey Historical Map collection.

Applications for Education
There are other ways to find historical maps online, but Old Maps Online makes it very easy to do. The maps that you and your students find could be used as overlays in the Google Earth layers. You might also use the maps for a local history comparison activity by comparing your students’ current vision of where they live with what it looked like in the past.