Sound Maps -- British Library

Creator: The British Library | visit site

Grade Range: - 11

Find over 50,000 sounds of music, nature sounds, spoken words/poetry and human environments. Click dots on a map to see the location and play the sound. Search by keyword or by category and save to your playlist for future use once you create a free account.

In the Classroom

This site is a great addition to any world language, history, music, English, or science class. Use the oral history section to hear stories from Holocaust survivors. Listen to accents from around the world. Have you ever wanted to know what a cicada sounds like? Use the recordings from the nature and environment section. Science and music teachers can use the site to show how sound waves look. Use the site to demonstrate how to create an oral history. Then have cooperative learning groups create podcasts demonstrating their understanding of a particular topic you are studying. Use a site such as PodOmatic (reviewed here). In world language classes, have students explore locations to learn more about the sound of that country. Then have them create a recording that uses recorded sounds as background to their own spoken words in their new language.

At Home

Tour the world for different sounds using the clicking maps. Use another tool, such as the Panoramio layer in Google Earth to view pictures of the same locations.

Tags

multimedia, sounds, cultures,

Subjects

English, Geography (US/World), History & Culture: World, Language Arts, Music, Science, Social Studies, Social Studies, World Languages, World Languages,