GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

“Weak and failing states pose a challenge to the international community. In today’s world, with its highly globalized economy, information systems and interlaced security, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe.  The Fragile States Index (FSI), produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure.”

Source: http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/analytics/fsi-heat-map/

If you want to understand the Islamic State, better known as ISIS, the first thing you have to know about them is that they are not crazy. Murderous adherents to a violent medieval ideology, sure. But not insane.

Source: www.vox.com

This interactive is a series of related articles, each designed to tackle popular narratives that have been constructed to explain ISIS; there are bits of truths in these myths, but they fail to fully contextualize the reality on the ground.  These nine myths are:

1. ISIS is crazy and irrational
2. People support ISIS because they like its radical form of Islam
3. ISIS is part of al-Qaeda
4. ISIS is a Syrian rebel group
5. ISIS is only strong because of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki
6. ISIS is afraid of female soldiers
7. The US can destroy ISIS
8. ISIS will self-destruct on its own
9. ISIS is invincible

Tags: Syria, Iraq, MiddleEast, conflict, political, geopolitics.

Source: www.youtube.com

This video covers various topics important to mapping and satellite imagery (and a lesson from an APHG teacher on how to use this video with other resources).  There is so much more to the world and space than what we can see see.  Chromoscope, referenced in the video, simulates other forms of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum besides just visible light.  This type of information is at the core of the science behind all of our satellite imagery.  This video also covers many map projection issues and highlights online resources to understand map distortion including:

• Google’s Mercator Map Puzzle
• Jason Davies’ interactive map projection website
• Interactive Gnomonic Projection
• and the military’s live rendering of what the Earth looks like right now. 
  

Tags: mapping, perspective, images, remote sensing, geospatial, unit 1 Geoprinciples.

“It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. With the help of massive amounts of computer muscle, they have scrubbed away cloud cover, filled in missing pixels, digitally stitched puzzle-piece pictures together, until the growing, thriving, sometimes dying planet is revealed in all its dynamic churn. The images are striking not just because of their vast sweep of geography and time but also because of their staggering detail.”

Source: plus.google.com

In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat — stunning aerial photographs in his series “The Earth From Above,” personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project “6 billion Others,” and his soon-to-be-released movie, “Home,” which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.

Source: www.ted.com

I’ve linked galleries of the artistic, aerial photography of Yann Arthus-Bertrand several times before.  In this Ted Talk, you can hear what motivates his artistic vision and the global perspectives that he wants to bring to the fore.  You can also watch the 90-minute video ‘Home’ that he discusses in the talk here.    

Tags: images, art, worldwide, TED, environment, video.

“The Pew survey sorts people into major groupings–Christians; other religions, including Jewish and Muslim; and ‘unaffiliated,’ which includes atheist, agnostic and ‘nothing in particular.’  Roll your cursor over the map to see how faiths and traditions break down by state.”

Source: usatoday30.usatoday.com

This is a particularly useful interactive map with a lot of teaching applications.  It is a nice visual aid to process the religious data in the United States.  

Questions to Ponder: What patterns do you notice?  Are there religious regions that could be drawn based on this data?   What geographic factors have created the differences in the religious geographies of the United States?

Tags: culture, religion, Christianity, USA. regions, diffusion, mapping.

“Amsterdam City Dashboard presents the city of Amsterdam through the lens of data, including demographic statistics, traffic reports, noise readings or political messages.

The small collection of information graphics are divided in distinct domains, such as transport, environment, statistics, economy, social, cultural and security. All data is shown in near real-time, based on blocks of 24 hours. Larger dots and darker colors symbolize higher values, whereas an interactive map provides a geographic reference.”

Tags: Netherlands, urban, statistics, urban ecology, transportation, planning.

Source: infosthetics.com

Pharmaceutical companies would need to compensate indigenous people for using their knowhow in creating new medicines

Source: www.theguardian.com

I’d never hear the term biopiracy before this month, but this idea is this: companies from wealthy countries commercially develop the genetic resources of developing countries with local assistance but don’t fairly compensate the local population.  I never had the vocabulary to describe such a thing, but that is biopiracy in a nutshell and the EU is working to end that.  It doesn’t only impact the pharmaceutical companies but heavily impact the agricultural industries as well.  Anyone in the developed world eating quinoa and kale 20 years ago?  Being marketed as ‘superfoods’ has changed the global production systems but also impacted local indigenous food supplies (some are referring to this as food gentrification). 

Tags: food production, technology, industry, food, agriculture, agribusiness, globalization, folk cultures, indigenous.