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E. Simonne-Dombovari, M. Gede:
"New possibilities of mute map games on virtual globes";
Talk: 25th International Cartographic Conference ICC, Paris; 2011-07-03 - 2011-07-08; in: "Proceedings of the 25th International Cartographic Conference", Paris (2011), ISBN: 978-1-907075-05-6; Paper ID Paper-Nr. CO-273, 7 pages.

These days witness a still increasing development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Its context and importance is determinative even in schoolwork. The various computer programs play more and more important role in the education of geographic knowledge. In the past few years an exciting map game, the Blind Mouse - mute map game has been developed by the authors for entertainment and for education. This game based on a website is founded on a concept of edutainment (concept from words education and entertainment), which is the method of attractive teaching and learning with multimedia applications. On the other hand, it can be used to enhance the attractiveness of cartography in different age groups.
This website, originally addressed to pupils of different school levels, corresponds to the Hungarian Curriculum requirements. The developers of the website can meet two important aims of the education. First, the game itself is an attractive interface that can raise the attention of the users (pupils) in the maps and geographic concepts; on the other hand, because of the education components in the game, it can be an important way of learning and teaching as well. The currently available themes are Hungary and Turkey, while Austria and several areas are under construction. This program was implemented in Hungarian, English, German and Turkish languages. The feedbacks and the number of registrants show the real usefulness of the website.
The aim is to develop and the create a complete web application for enriching the topographic knowledge of pupils with the introduction of new functions of web mapping technology. The capacity of WebMapping 2.0 makes it possible to collect and integrate various sources (e.g. Wikipedia, Panoramio) and visualise them on a website via an API. Another choice may be to use three-dimensional, steerablezoomable virtual globes instead of traditional maps in these educational or entertaining programs. This solution allows us to handle global datasets in addition to national or regional data (such as world heritage, 100 wonders of the world and capitals of the world). This is important in the education of geographic content, as it helps to gain basic insight into the global dimension of many geographical issues. The pupils can learn with a virtual version of the traditional classroom globe, and this which fits well in today´s expectations.
These programs and the related areas of webcartography should be of interest to anyone involved in teaching cartography or using maps in school or at university. This paper introduces the Blind Mouse - mute map game and its three-dimensional version with the Google Earth plug-in as well as discusses its prospective role in the education of geographic content.

web mapping, knowledge representation