Mapholm

For teachers

Geography on a world your class builds

Draw an island together and watch the land answer: rivers run downhill to the sea, forests and deserts follow the rain, and towns grow where people would settle. Then fly over it in 3D, or print it as a map.

Open the example Start an empty world

Drawing Landform Island

Landform Island: a fjord, a strait, an isthmus, a delta, a plateau and a rain shadow, each lettered on the map. Click a town to read why it grew where it did.

What it does

The land behaves like land

Rivers that find their own way

Start a river at its source and it runs downhill to the sea, round the hills and along the valleys, the way water does. Raise a ridge with the brushes and trace it again to see where the water goes now.

The drawing tools

Climate you can see

Draft the biomes from a climate: a warm and a cold side, rain blowing in off the sea, and dry land in the lee of the mountains. Forests, grassland and deserts land where they would, rain shadow and all.

The generators

Where people settle

Place towns at river mouths and harbours, at fords, crossroads and mountain passes, then join them with roads along the easiest ground. A start for talking about why cities are where they are.

Towns, roads and kingdoms

The 2D map

Print it, or hand out a blank one

Every world can be saved as a drawn map: a PDF to print on A3, or an image for a slide. The blank map leaves the names out, for students to fill in.

Ideas

In the classroom

  • Build an island as a class: one group draws the coast, another raises the mountains, a third traces the rivers.
  • Ask why each town on Landform Island is where it is, then click it to check: a ford, a river mouth, a pass, an oasis.
  • Compare with the real thing: the Europe example has the Alps, the great rivers and the capitals, from real coordinates.
  • Measure it: every coastline, river and road shows its length in kilometres, at a scale you set.
  • Raise the land with the sculpting brushes and watch snow settle on the heights above the snow line.
  • Print blank maps for students to label: the rivers, ranges, seas and towns.

Good to know

Made to be easy to use in school

No accounts for students

Worlds are kept in the browser they're made in. Nobody has to sign up or give an email address.

Nothing to install

It runs in the browser. A world can be exported as a file and opened on another laptop.

Share with the class

Signed in, you can share a world with a link that opens it in 3D, or as a 2D map, without an account.

Start with your class

Open Landform Island to explore, or start from an empty sea.

Open the example Start an empty world

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