Our Story

How GHM Academy developed

The Background of GHM

One sunny morning in September 2015, I decided to embark on a quest to interest children in learning more about world history. I asked myself, “How do we create an educational resource that would engage children and students?” I started by creating my first Social Science educational resource: a paper map with a historical timeline, and then quickly produced two more. This activity showed me how important it was to link time and geographical space together for students to better understand history.

Then one day a friend, while looking at my map, said, “Would it not be cool to have this online, as an interactive map where you could click and see the boats move?” I realized then that if we could produce an educational tool that would let the user access a map and interact with it directly, this would revolutionize the way that students learn and teachers teach history! To do all history would take millions of paper maps, but online they would be able to create millions of timelines with maps. They could interact with the events that they want to see and create animations of boats moving, link images, videos, write descriptive text and even link to other websites!

GHM Begins Online

I searched online to see if a history educational app for kids, like the one we have now, already existed, but did not find anything. I spoke with people in the industry, and most of them said that it was not possible and that some had already tried and failed. But I did not believe it could not be done, so we decided to look into it and see if we could succeed where many had failed. 

With new programming languages just being released, my project seemed like it was within the realm of possibility. We started and as time passed, there were many hurdles and problems. But one by one, week after week, we overcame them. Many times I said to myself and the team, “If it were easy, everyone would have done it.”

Various GHM Versions

By September of 2017, we had a good beta version of the Geo History Map (GHM) program ready. But the problems were not over because many more corrections and changes needed to be made. Then when teachers and students started using GHM, even more changes were necessary to make it more user-friendly. 

In 2019, after spending more than 120,000 man hours, Geo History Map was ready! Many people from different fields of study — programmers, geographers, archeologists, sociologists, anthropologists, lawyers, linguists, educators, students, graphic artists, historians, engineers, cartographers, etc — have worked together to overcome each issue, all to help create one of the best learning apps for students. One day history will remember what was accomplished, and generations of teachers and students will embrace this new way of learning, as GHM has the capability to help teachers and students not just learn about history, but to relive it — to make history something that is tangible to them. It helps students learn history in an EASY, INTERESTING and FUN way!

In 2020, as we continued to update GHM with new features and easier navigation, GHM was rebranded GHM Academy. GHM no longer was just for learning about history (though the history is still there!), but GHM can now be used to learn about any subject that can be entered.

Further GHM Updates

As GHM continues to advance and streamline the program, many new fuctionalities are being added. One of them is the ability to add partner content. Museums and Organizations can now add their existing educational material, creating lessons online in GHM, allowing many more students to discover their content and bring learning to new heights.

A big thank you to everyone that has contributed in making GHM Academy possible and the best it can be!