Control Alt Achieve: Make Educational Maps with AI

By now we are all pretty used to AI chatbots being able to generate a wide range of content from lesson plans to images to even educational songs. However, another creative use for AI chatbots is to create content for informational maps.

Google My Maps is a free tool that allows you to create your own custom maps, where you can add pins for different locations, and then add content to each pin to explain what it represents.

Although you can do this by hand, that can take quite a while. It turns out that Google My Maps allows you to upload a CSV file (comma separated values) with all of the data needed to create a map.

Well the good news is, we can use an AI chatbot to generate that CSV file, complete with all the data needed for our informational map.

See below for a short video tutorial and detailed directions on how to do this, along with several demo examples I created that you can explore. And of course I would love to see examples of what you create. Please feel free to share with me the maps you make.

▶️ Video Tutorial (14 minutes)

💡 Map Topics

For my example I chose to have AI help make a map about the battles of the American Revolutionary War. However there are many possible topics that such a map could cover. Some ideas include:

Historical landmarks - significant landmarks from history, individuals involved, and the impact of these events on history
Ancient civilizations - major ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley
Geographical features - major rivers, mountains, and deserts around the world
National parks & protected areas - including details of when they were designated
Natural disasters - significant earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions in history
Endangered species - the habitats of endangered species around the world
Inventions and discoveries - where significant inventions or scientific discoveries were made
Literary journeys - locations from a novel and what happened in the story at each location
Famous authors - where they were born or where the wrote, along with details on their literary works
Settings of classic novels - where stories are set around the world
Cultural festivals around the world - where major cultural festivals (like Carnival, Diwali, or Chinese New Year) take place
Music genres - origins of different musical genres, along with representative artists and works
Olympics - Olympic host cities through history
Geometry in the real world - architectural marvels and their geometric shapes

🤖 AI Chatbots

There are many AI chatbots that can be used to generate the CSV file with map data. For this project I tested out three options:

ChatGPT - https://chatgpt.com/
Google Gemini - https://gemini.google.com/
Claude (from Anthropic) - https://claude.ai/

All three of these can be used for free to generate the data needed.

💬 Map Generation Prompt

For my example, I used the following prompt with the AI chatbots:

Generate a CSV file that can be imported into Google My Maps.

Be sure to include double-quotes around any data that contains commas.

The topic of the map is "Battles of the American Revolutionary War".

Each location should be an important battle from the war.

Include at least 20 battles.

Include the following headers in the CSV file with corresponding data for each location:

Latitude - the latitude of the specific location

Longitude - the longitude of the specific location

Battle - the name of the battle

Start Date - when the battle began (in MM/DD/YYYY format)

End Date - when the battle ended (in MM/DD/YYYY format)

American Leader - the commanding officer(s) for this battle from the American side

British Leader - the commanding officer(s) for this battle from the English side

Cause - reason(s) for this specific battle

Recap - any specific key details or happenings during the battle

Result - who won the battle and how many casualties there were on each side

You can easily copy and modify this prompt to address the specific topic for your map. Here is a generalized version you can work from:

Generate a CSV file that can be imported into Google My Maps.

Be sure to include double-quotes around any data that contains commas.

The topic of the map is [topic].

Each location should be [related to topic].

Include at least [number] locations.

Include the following headers in the CSV file with corresponding data for each location:

[item] - [details]

[list as many as needed]

📄 Creating the CSV File

Depending on the AI chatbot you are using, you may be able to directly download the CSV file, or you might need to copy and paste it elsewhere. If the AI chatbot provides you with a direct link to the generated CSV file, simply click the link and download the file for use later.

However, the AI chatbot may instead display the CSV data as text on the screen. If that is the case, do the following:

Select and copy all the CSV content.
Paste the copied content into a text editor or Google Docs or other word processor tool.
Save (or export) the content in "Text" format or as "All Files" type, but simply change the extension from ".txt" to ".csv" when saving.

If that doesn't work for you or if you prefer a different option you can:

Change the original prompt to ask for a table instead of a CSV file.
For example you could use this modified version of the prompt:

Generate a table that can later be saved as a CSV file and imported into Google My Maps.

The topic of the map is [topic].

Each location should be [related to topic].

Include at least [number] locations.

Include the following headers in the table with corresponding data for each location:

[item] - [details]

[list as many as needed]

Save (or export) that table as a Google Sheet, or copy and paste the table into a Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet.
From the spreadsheet, download (or export) the data as a CSV file. For example in Google Sheets you would click "File" then "Download" then "Comma Separated Values (.csv)".

If you would like to see the example CSV files I created, here are links to the three files generated with the different AI chatbots:

ChatGPT Revolutionary Battles - CSV file
Gemini Revolutionary Battles - CSV file
Claude Revolutionary Battles - CSV file

🗺️ Creating the Map

Now that you have the CSV file, you can import it into Google My Maps to create your custom educational map. Here are the directions:

First, go to the website for Google My Maps at https://www.google.com/mymaps
Click the "Create a New Map" button.
Feel free to give the map a name by clicking on "Untitled map".
Now click the "Import" link below "Untitled layer".

Upload the CSV file you have created.
My Maps will ask you to choose which columns indicate the placemark locations, such as "Latitude" and "Longitude".

Next My Maps will ask which column to use for the title of your placemarks. In my example I chose the "Battle" column since that had the names of each battle.
Click "Finish" to do the import.

You now will have your custom map with your placemarks. You can click on any placemark to read all of the details for that location.

📍 Further Editing

At this point, if you want, you can continue to edit the map. The AI chatbot might be used to save you time and get you started, but you may want to add more information to the map. For each placemark you could edit items such as: