One thing that confused me when studying history is that, through time, maps would change. Borders of countries and empires change, people and cultures migrate. We would learn that the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Mongols, for instance, all conquered a particular area, but at different times.

I think two-dimentional maps should be combined with timelines to create Quicktime movies or Flash animations that show how anything that can be mapped changes over time. This could include political borders, population density, demographics, etc. You could show where explorers traveled or armies moved or wolves migrated - but the important thing is you could show visually what order things happened in, and which things happened simultaneously. Even on a global scale, a moving world map could show what was going on in China while the Romans were moving into Britain, for example. And when used with computers as Quicktime or Flash, students could pause, reverse, and move around in time to see changes.

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