Fall is Data Hunting Season

If you're on the hunt for data, there are many resources available where the data is free for educators. Often the challenge is how to search for it efficiently. Like the rest of the globe, I tend to start with a Google search to see what I get. I thought the folks who need simplicity in searching might like the source, GeoCommons.

They have created two tools, Finder! and Maker!. If you go directly to their "finder," you get a simple search field that delivers search results and other possible tags that might relate. For the items I found today, there was a *.kml, a *.csv and a *.shp for each one. I'm not saying this is the only source, but the folks over at GeoCommons have made it nice and clean for us to get data!

Grab your butterfly net and visit them at http://www.geocommons.com for some data!