Thursday, July 3, 2014

SmartyPins: a new Google game to teach about Google maps (and a bit of geography)

Google just launched a new game--SmartyPins--that lets you answer geographic trivia questions by dropping a map pin on the right place.  

The game comes from the Google Maps team and is intended to highlight both the scope of Google Maps (namely, worldwide and high resolution), and the 

SmartyPins is currently featuring questions about the WorldCup, but it also has a "regular" trivia questions section.  

It asks a question, then you drop a pin on the place in the world where the geographic feature is located.  


This one's not too hard, but some of the questions get a bit more sophisticated.  

It's a bit like AGoogleADay.com, but with a very slick (and beautiful) Maps interface.  

Kudos to the folks on Maps team that produced this.  (In truth, I wish I'd done this!)  

Teachers & Librarians:  I can imagine a few uses of this.  Can't you? 


Search on!  Geographically! 




3 comments:

  1. I really like SmartyPins and A Google A day. Both are fantastic to learn, practice and have fun.

    I'd love that Smart Pins gives the option to search in the maps because for some answers find the perfect spot is very hard if you don't know the place. And, in my case for example, need to look for the place in regular Google Maps and then locate it in Pins, so I lost points.

    Agree with you, Dr. Russell. SmartyPins, will be huge and a lot can be done.

    Great day!

    ReplyDelete
  2. SECOND TRY == Hitting PREVIEW first worked

    If you like SmartyPins you will probably also like

    geoguessr.com

    You have to much more precise in GeoGuesser which is based on StreetView

    Cheers

    jon tU

    ReplyDelete
  3. another try using Preview instead of publish

    ReplyDelete