“A comprehensive listing of world capital cities that have moved from one city to another.”
What happens when a country moves it’s capital city? Why would a country choose to move it’s capital? This list (with some short historic and geographic context) helps answer those questions.
See on geography.about.com
“The AidData Center for Development Policy creates geospatial data and tools enabling development stakeholders to more effectively target, coordinate and evaluate aid. Funded through a five-year, $25 million cooperative agreement with USAID, the Center is a partnership between the College of William and Mary, Development Gateway, Brigham Young University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Esri.”
This article in the Washington Post asks if foreign aid can make elections more competitive (spoiler alert: mapping the data at the sub-national level helps answer research questions like this). What intrigued me even more than the article was the mapping platform that it was introducing. AidData is a fabulous new mapping platform to access information about international aid, it’s effectiveness and where it is needed and what current projects are being funded by U.S. AID.
See on aiddata.org
A Danish graphic designer has pieced together historic photos and maps to create an interactive digital diorama of the fateful moments
The Maps 101 podcast that I wrote was more on the life of JFK, this Smithsonian Blog article is more about his death. Which is more interesting? It all depends on your perspective as there was plenty of mystery and drama in both life and death for JFK.
See on blogs.smithsonianmag.com
“This visualization shows global winds from a GEOS-5 simulation using 10-kilometer resolution. Surface winds (0 to 40 meters/second) are shown in white and trace features including Atlantic and Pacific cyclones. Upper-level winds (250 hectopascals) are colored by speed (0 to 175 meters/second), with red indicating faster.”
This global map of wind speeds is a great companion to this United States map. This interactive map is a ‘nearly live’ dynamic display of United States winds patterns (speed, direction and broad spatial context).
See on www.nasa.gov
“Just as you shouldn’t trust everything you read or see on television, you should never blindly trust information just because it is on a map. All maps posit arguments. Maps present information about how something is. All maps posit arguments. Maps present information about how something is. Just as there are no unbiased arguments, there are no unbiased maps.”
This is a really good article that explores the idea of how to critically read maps. It gives good guidelines, techniques and questions to ask when assessing the positionality of the map. If you are looking for a video for a younger audience to teach this same principle, see this clip.
Tags: mapping, perspective.
See on nasaesw.strategies.org
In New Hampshire they are doing great work to make mapping data useful in the classroom. This site is one that they use to show how students can map locally relevant data from an online data set. CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network) is a crowd-sourced network that gathers North American precipitation data. The data (especially the total precipitation summary) can be easily copied into as spread sheet and saved as a CSV file (which can be uploaded to ArcGIS online).
Tags: mapping, CSV, water, GIS, ESRI, geography education, geospatial, edtech.
See on www.cocorahs.org
“This video captures some amazing footage of the 2011 tsunami in Japan.”
This is an absolutely gripping video (not embeddable), that is equally amazing and horrifying. In Kesennuma, Japan, the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused catastrophic damage, although many were able to survive on the high-rise rooftop (like the videographer). Much like a tsunami, the video starts out slow with only alarm bells, but at around the 2:20 minute mark the first sign of the small wave makes its way up the river, with onlookers unsure of the magnitude of the impending damage. The riverbanks are breached at 7:43. By 14 minutes, the debris and wreckage is massive, and the quantity of water flooding in is still growing. The last 6 minutes shows the waters receding, but the impact of the tsunami still spreads as fires spread through town. For a full documentary on the tsunami, click here. I surely hope that no one reading ever gets a closer look at what a tsunami looks like in person. This time lapse audiovisual representation of global seismic activity puts the Japanese tsunami into it proper context (wait for the dramatic event at the 1:45 mark).
See on www.youtube.com
Happy GIS day! Discover some great GIS resources that you can use in the classroom to help students gain spatial thinking skills and expand their global awareness. Don’t think there is a career for you in geography? Think again.
Tags: mapping, GIS, ESRI, geography education, geospatial, edtech.
See on www.youtube.com
“It’s rare that a video from a brand will spark any real emotion–but a new spot from Google India is so powerful, and so honest to the product, that it’s a testament not only to the deft touch of the ad team that put it together, but to the strength of Google’s current offering.”–Forbes
True, this is a commercial–but what a great commercial to show that the history of of a geopolitical conflict has many casualties including friendships across lines. This isn’t the only commercial in India that is raising eyebrows. This one from a jewelry company is proudly showing a divorced woman remarrying–something unthinkable for Indian TV one generation ago.
Questions to Ponder: How does the Indian media reflect the values and beliefs of Indian culture? How does the Indian media shape Indian culture?
Tags: India, borders, political, Pakistan, media, gender, popular culture.
See on www.youtube.com
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 