GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

See on Scoop.it – History and Social Studies Education

Best of History Web Sites, created by EdTechTeacher, is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1200 history web sites and activities.

“Designed for history educators and students, this useful portal provides access to more than 700 of the best history resources online. Sites are organized into 10 categories—Prehistory, Ancient/Biblical, Medieval, U.S History, Early Modern European, 20th Century, World War II, Art History, General Resources, and Maps. Many of the five-star Pre-history, Ancient, and Medieval sites are hosted by Smithsonian Institution, PBS, and the Internet History Sourcebooks; and the Library of Congress is the creator of a wide-range of top-rated sites for U.S. history. The 20th-century and World War II sections are voluminous, the latter presenting 42 sites. There are three special categories: Lesson Plans/Activities, Multimedia, and Research. “Multimedia” includes 18 map sites, including the Rumsey collection with more than 8,000 maps. Instructors will find the section on “Teaching with Technology” especially informative. It offers articles and advice about integrating computers into lessons and links to dozens of useful resources on teaching with technology. Visitors can sign up to receive monthly email updates.” –review from http://teachinghistory.org

See on www.besthistorysites.net

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Guidelines to run a Family Geography Night at a school or Alliance function…

This week I’ve had the privilege of working with NEGEN (New England Geography Education Network). The great people in the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance have collaborated to create a template to run Family Geography Nights at schools. The Family Nights are incredibly successful in showing the relevance of geography education to administrators, other teachers, parents and the general public.

See on www.youtube.com

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Guidelines to run a Family Geography Night at a school or Alliance function…

This week I’ve had the privilege of working with NEGEN (New England Geography Education Network). The great people in the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance have collaborated to create a template to run Family Geography Nights at schools. The Family Nights are incredibly successful in showing the relevance of geography education to administrators, other teachers, parents and the general public.

See on www.youtube.com

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

2010 Poverty Rate: 15.1%, 46.2 million people in poverty.

Here are the numbers behind the face of poverty in America.

See on visual.ly

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

This historical collection of USGS 15 minute topographic maps dates from the 1890s to the 1950s. Geographic coverage is complete for New Hampshire and nearly complete for the rest of New England.

This is a great warehouse of historical maps of New England.  The picture above what is today South Providence and Cranston, but in 1894 the area around the lakes was a part of the City of Cranston.  Why would the city of Cranston ‘lose’ territory?  When did this happen?  This is just one example of the questions in historical geography that this resource can inspire.

See on docs.unh.edu

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

A decade ago, Botswana was facing a national crisis as AIDS appeared on the verge of decimating the country’s adult population. Now, the country provides free, life-saving AIDS drugs to almost all of its citizens who need them.

This is a great example, and possibly a template on how to tackle the AIDS/HIV crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Botswana was as hard hit as any country, but they fully invested their economic initiatives into tackling this and actively changed cultural attitudes and behaviors that faciliate transmission.  Not all is ‘doom and gloom’ when looking at poverty and disease-stricken countries.   

See on www.npr.org

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Rather than focusing on how to make cities safe at any hour for citizens of both genders, the official response has been to curtail women’s access to public areas deemed sensitive by authorities.

This is an interesting topic to use to debate urban policies and planning issues.  What leads to a safer city for women?  How does the creation of zones not safe for women impact the city long-term?  Think about scale: Is what is best for the city policy what is best for the individual? 

See on blogs.wsj.com

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Research news from leading universities…

Sometimes whe teach human geography as though it is not connected to physical geography.  The geographical distribution patterns of agriculture are some of the most highly correlated human activities to the physical environment.  This one, dairy productivity, changes greatly based on temperatures, humidity and latitude. 

See on www.futurity.org

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

As a graduate student I wrote my dissertation on the meanings within the symbolic landscape.  Since very few are clamoring to read my 500 page dissertation, this is a sampling that shows one of my …

I didn’t intend for this to be the weekend of statue resources, but the Joe Paterno controversy (for more opinions on that see: https://geographyeducation.org/2012/07/13/the-joe-paterno-statue-on-penn-state-campus/ ) has me thinking of other controversial statues that I researched while in Mexico City.  I wrote an article in the Journal of Geography showing how you can teach cultural patterns and processes using contested monuments in the symbolic landscape.  Consider this site a supplemental resource to that article (with the original article, photos, videos and Google Earth files attached). 

See on geographyeducation.org