Bing Releases Teacher Map App

Bing has been working with the United States Department of Education and along with the launch of the new US teacher resource – teach.gov, Bing is presenting its new Teach Here map application.

There are many teaching jobs vacant in the United States, so Bing wanted to do something to help and support teacher recruitment and the teaching profession.

Teach Here is an application that shows a teacher, or a teacher-to-be, an easy way of searching for teacher preparation programs, state teaching certification offices, school district headquarters, or local teaching jobs.

Bing has already given the Department of Education, access to Bing Maps data for use on their website, and you can see it on teach.gov, but the Bing REDU team wanted to do more.

With the new education reform started in May, data about not having enough teachers in public schools came out, and something needed to be done to help fill up these important positions.

People are needed for teaching math, science, special education and English and the right ones for the job need as much encouragement as they can get.

Betsy Aoki, Senior Program Manager at Bing said that working with the team from teach.gov determined the appropriate shaping of the Teach Here map application, and most of the data available is coming from the government.

You can see the sources of each information in the About section, and remember that the map application is embeddable for use on other websites.

All this week, visitors to NBC’s Education Nation event, an interactive summit on Rockefeller Plaza, in New York, will see a selection of the Teach Here map application in the Rockefeller plaza pavilion.

You can find more information about the teachers' situation in the US at the upcoming TEACH initiative, or on teach.gov website.

Also, for further data on the Bing REDU project to rethink, reform and rebuild education, check out the project's website at www.bing.com/redu.