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GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

Supporting geography educators everywhere with current digital resources.

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sethdixon

I am a geography professor at Rhode Island College.

New census data projects which states could gain or lose congressional seats in 2020 reapportionment

the Census Bureau released its population estimates for 2017 for every state, detailing how many residents each state has gained or lost since the 2010 census. The firm Election Data Services has used these estimates to project how many congressional seats each state might gain or lose in the 2020 round of reapportionment, which assigns each state its share of the House’s 435 districts based on its population.

Source: www.dailykos.com

Reapportionment is a forgotten step.  Before a state can redistrict the congressional districts within the state, every 10 years, the Federal government is constitutionally required to conduct a census with the main goal of being able to reapportion the congressional seats based on the decennial census.  The upcoming 2020 Census is big deal, showing regional population shifts with political ramifications.   

Tags: electoral, political, mapping.

WordPress TAGS: electoral,  political, mapping.

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How to Win Florida

"It’s the southernmost section of the Deep South, the sixth borough of New York City, and the northernmost nation of Latin America. But even in the ultimate swing state, some voters are more equal than others."

Source: www.politico.com

Sure this article might be used for partisan purposes, but it’s analysis of how a diverse group of interlocking demographic communities vote in the United States is very insightful.  This article doesn’t focus on identity politics, but it does show how identity shapes political views and how the demographics of a particular constituency might shape the platforms of candidates. 

 

Questions to Ponder: What makes a swing state a swing state? How is Florida emblematic of the nation as a whole? 

 

Scoop.it Tags: electoral, political, ethnicity.

WordPress TAGS: electoral, political, ethnicity.

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Job openings in U.S. down

On the last business day of May 2018, the number of job openings edged down to 6.6 million from a revised April level of 6.8 million, a series high. Combined, over one-third of those job openings were in professional and business services (1,190,000) and health care and social assistance (1,119,000).

Source: www.bls.gov

I’m not sharing this article because of the monthly fluctuations in labor.  The interactive chart in this article is an excellent visualization of the shifts in labor in the various economic sectors. 

Tags: labor, visualization, economic, industry. 

WordPress TAGS: labor, visualization, economic, industry.

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USGS’s Streamer Tool

Streamer is a new way to visualize and understand water flow across America. With Streamer you can explore our Nation’s major streams by tracing upstream to their source or downstream to where they empty.

Source: txpub.usgs.gov

Streamer is the online mapping application that lets anyone explore downstream and upstream along America’s rivers and streams (here is a YouTube tutorial). Streamer can be used to follow the paths of rivers up to their headwaters and down to the sea, to view location-related information such as weather radar and near real-time streamflow data, and to discover hydrologic connections between distant places.

 

Scoop.it Tags: water, mapping, physical, fluvial, regions.

WordPress TAGS: water, mapping, physical, fluvial, regions.

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The Root Causes of Food Insecurity

Why are some communities more vulnerable to hunger and famine? There are many reasons, which together add up to food insecurity, the world’s no.1 health risk.

Source: www.youtube.com

This video is an excellent summary of the geographic factors that lead to food insecurity and hunger and the main ways NGO’s are trying to combat the issues. This is an incredibly complex problem that, at it’s heart, is a geographic issue that can challenge student to synthesize information and make the connections between topics.

 

Scoop.it Tags: food, poverty, economic, political, food desert, agriculture, food production.

WordPress TAGS: food, poverty, economic, Political, food desert, agriculture, food production.

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How language shapes the way we think

"There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world — and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language — from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian — that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. ‘The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,’ Broditsky says. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000."

Source: www.ted.com

Sense of direction, numerical concepts, gendered traits, even the colors that we perceive with our own eyes…all these are shaped by the language(s) we speak.  If language shapes how an individual shapes their own worldview, a cultural group’s worldview is also powerfully impacted by the language that frames how they think.  

 

Scoop.it Tags: language, culture, TED, video.

WordPress TAGS: language, culture, TED, video.

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Here’s How America Uses Its Land

The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures.

Source: www.bloomberg.com

This set of 15 maps on how land is used in the 48 contiguous U.S. states is a phenomenal resource to visualize how we use our land (admittedly this does exclude Alaska and Hawaii, but given that Alaska’s land use patterns can skew the patterns considerably).  This is especially useful in agricultural units, but has many other applications. 

Scoop.it Tags: agriculture, food production, land use, rural, USA.

WordPress TAGS: agriculture, food production, land use, rural, USA.

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Why no-one speaks Indonesia’s language

Bahasa Indonesia was adopted to make communication easier across the vast Indonesian archipelago, but its simplicity has only created new barriers.

Source: www.bbc.com

Linguistic diffusion faces many barriers, and an island state like Indonesia faces cultural centrifugal forces.  Adopting a national language might be good political policy, but culturally, that doesn’t ensure it’s viability.  This is a great case study for human geography classes that touches on many curricular topics.

Scoop.it Tags: language, culture, diffusion, Indonesia.

WordPress TAGS: language, culture, diffusion, Indonesia, SouthEast Asia.

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The Sling Shot Man

This is the story of a man who makes sling shots and shoots them like an expert marksman.

Source: www.youtube.com

While I don’t think that the folk/popular dichotomy is the most important way to conceptualize differences in culture traits and groups, it is still how many textbooks arrange their cultural chapters.  Given that, I love showing this clip–this man is the embodiment of folk culture and his story shows the elements that differentiate folk culture from popular culture. 

Scoop.it Tags: culture, rural, folk culture, the South,

WordPress Tags: culture, rural, folk culture, the South.

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