About every week in the past Larry Ferlazzo talked about a brand new mapping software in certainly one of his weblog posts. That software is known as Felt. I attempted it just a few days in the past and I’ve to say that I prefer it so much. Felt presents a whole lot of easy-to-use instruments for creating customized maps. Some of the options that instantly stood out to me included the power to attract and sort on maps, highlighting on the map, and including multimedia placemarks to your map. But in my preliminary testing of Felt I discovered the most effective function to be the library of knowledge layers you could overlay onto your map.
To use Felt to create a customized map you do must register for a free account. Once you’ve got registered there’s a useful tutorial that walks you thru ten issues that you are able to do with Felt. The tutorial is displayed on an interactive map that jogs my memory a little bit of gameboard such as you may discover in The Game of Life or Candy Land.
The best strategy to customise a map on Felt is to make use of the drawing, typing, and highlighting instruments. Those instruments and all the different Felt instruments are displayed on the backside of any map that you just view. To draw on the map merely click on the marker icon then draw on the map. You can select completely different marker colours and marker stroke thicknesses to fulfill your wants. Highlighting is simply as straightforward as drawing on the map and is finished in the identical method. Typing on the map merely requires you to click on on the kind icon then click on wherever you need your textual content to look. And, after all, you should utilize all three instruments collectively on the map.
As beforehand talked about, Felt presents a library of knowledge layers you could apply to your customized map. That library incorporates dozens of datasets divided into 5 classes. Those classes are Boundaries, Climate, Infrastructure, Nature & Exploration, and Science. All that you might want to do to show an information layer in your map is click on on it as soon as within the library whereas working in your map. You can show a number of layers on the identical time. For instance, within the demonstration video that’s embedded beneath I displayed each county borders and time zones.
Applications for Education
My preliminary impression of Felt is that it’s straightforward to make use of to create a customized map. In truth, I feel it is in all probability simpler to make use of for the primary time than Google’s My Maps or Google Earth is to make use of for the primary time. And if you do not have a Google account, you possibly can nonetheless use Felt to create a customized map (you do have to have a legitimate e-mail handle). That mentioned, Felt does not have as many information layers as Google Earth so in case you’re seeking to have college students to dive into making detailed, mapped information shows, Google Earth remains to be going to be your higher choice.